I have been on hiatus recently with this page because I was busy with moving and other life events. Among other life events, I got a speeding ticket and ended up taking a defensive driving course. Fortunately, the class inspired me for this post!
The defensive driving course talked about the importance of wearing a seatbelt. Otherwise, in a crash, you could go flying through the windshield and end up who knows where outside the car. A seatbelt keeps you tethered inside the car. While you could still be hurt in a crash, staying inside the car is your best chance for survival. I started thinking about how realistic beliefs are like seatbelts, because they keep us safely tethered to reality. Although reality can be harsh and painful, staying in contact with reality whenever possible is still much safer than the alternative!
Imagine you are driving along in your car and get into an accident. You go flying through the windshield, sailing through the air, and eventually hit the pavement. If you end up cracking your skull open, you might blame the road for being there, but it’s not the road’s fault. If you had been wearing your seatbelt, you would never have been in a position to be on a collision course with it.
Similarly, it’s not reality’s fault when reality collides with our false beliefs. One famous therapist who pointed this out was Albert Ellis, who created Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT). Ellis said that we tend to make ourselves miserable through our own irrational beliefs. For example, he talked about “dogmatic demands,” in which we think things “should” or “ought” to be different from how they are. For example, I can keep myself miserable for years thinking my family “ought to” treat me differently, but I will just keep on having a painful collision between this belief and the fact that they don’t! Whereas, if I started with a more realistic belief, such as “I want my family to treat me differently,” it would be more clear that it’s up to me to either change what I can change or accept what I can’t. To give a more extreme example, let’s think about recent mass shooters who believed things such as: women must give me love and/or sex; if they don’t then I am justified in killing in revenge. A belief this detached from reality won’t just keep you unhappy, it can land you dead or in prison for the rest of your life.
Albert Ellis also pointed out that when our irrational beliefs conflict with reality, we can end up condemning and devaluing ourselves, others, or other aspects of life. For example, if I believe I must always be successful in my work, I can tell myself I’m a worthless therapist if I fail to help one of my clients. This is like failing to wear a seatbelt, flying out of the car, smashing into an underpass, and then calling my rib cage worthless for not holding up under the impact. I’m never worthless for not living up to my own demands; if my expectations of myself had been realistic, I wouldn’t have had to be in conflict with them. Ellis said that to be emotionally healthy, we should accept ourselves and others as we are rather than negatively rating ourselves and others based on our irrational beliefs.
People (and defensive driving classes) might seem annoying when they keep reminding you to wear your seatbelt, but they are trying to look out for your safety. Likewise, therapists can seem really annoying when they try to remind us to keep our beliefs in line with reality, but they are also looking out for us by doing that! When driving on the road of life, it’s good to remember to fasten our reality belt!