Page 42 - SILFlip

Thinking and emotion are closely connected. While it’s easy to assume that the events we experience create emotions, it’s what we tell ourselves about those events, how we think about them that cause emotions. For instance, I am expecting a text from my beloved and I am getting progressively more frustrated, disappointed and angry. I am checking my phone and checking my phone even though I am not getting a sound, a vibration or notihication. Maybe I should hold the phone upside down and shake it to see if the text is at the bottom of the inside of the phone and needs the help of gravity to come out. No, that’s not what is causing me to get more and more pissed off. What’s causing me to get pissed off is what I am telling myself...
“Why isn’t she texting? Doesn’t she realize I am waiting? She said she would text and she didn’t. She should keep her promises. People shouldn’t lie about texting. I should be too important to forget.”
Disappointment is often expressed in the language of “shoulds.” When we become disappointed it is usually about how we think people “should” behave or how the world “should” work. I wish I could take credit for the observation that we often let ourselves become slaves to the “tyranny of the shoulds,” but the credit actually goes to both Karen Horney who hirst coined the term, and Albert Ellis who emphasized it in his theory of Rational Emotive Therapy. Both of these practitioners were powerful inhluences in the hield of psychology. Me—not so much— but I try. Sufhice it to say that “shoulds” cause a lot of negative emotion, often in the form of anger
Staying in Love: Secret Recipes For Making Love Last 42