My Inner Guide.com
Just sharing some midnight thoughts with you about how REBT-CBT can
help you survive if you happen to live with a very open heart...Using REBT and CBT to live with a more open heart, despite rejection.
Have you ever extended yourself, made yourself vulnerable, and then been rejected by another?
As a child, one of my influences was the late Dr. Leo Buscaglia &
I loved his messages about being willing to take risks & be open
about love. Once in a while, after listening to Leo on PBS and
embarking on our weekly visit to Luby's, I'd even ask my mom if we could
invite lonely looking strangers to sit at our lunch table so that the
strangers wouldn’t have to be all alone. Sometimes she'd even let me
& how glorious it was to make a new friend and decrease the
loneliness of another!
Even still, as a supposedly more mature adult, my heart often &
almost always directs me to be just a little bit more open & take
those risks which I'd call living from my heart.
When we listen to this courageous part, we find that we can have a
radically open hearts. Yet, even in the spirit of love, kindness,
caring, and compassion, I have inner conflict about the topic. For
example, I recently cared so much about a client, and I really wanted to
check on the person. I had to turn inward and really ask, “Do I call
this person, leave this message, send this e-mail?”
I certainly want to be thoughtful about what I do. The logical part
of me does not want to scare another or do anything that could be deemed
professionally inappropriate. I am fully aware that it is a privilege
to be someone’s therapist, not a right & everyone is different.
But, within these boundaries, I find that the general pattern of
my self-direction would be to say “yes” when it comes to me to extending
myself in a loving, warm, open, and often expressive fashion. This
open-book transparency isn’t always cool to everyone, my friends tell
me. And sometimes in the aftermath of my openness, my knowledge of
REBT has led me to realize that I need to do some solid shame-attacking,
to balance out the feeling like my heart was breaking!
So, how can one live with a very loving and open heart,
knowing that not everyone desires to receive this? REBT says to live
without shame. And the shameless answer is, “Love on and learn to live
with rejection.”
Here are 5 things REBT teaches which will allow you to love on despite rejection:
1. You may label yourself as a reject when you get rejected. Just because someone rejected you, this doesn’t mean you are a reject–you
are simply a person who has had an experience of being rejected. Avoid
rating your entire personhood based upon what happens to you!
2. There are definitely many worse things than being rejected. Think about it,
feeling unloved, being treated like you're goofy, or being ignored by
someone you love; sometimes when you do what feels right to you, you can
still get rejected, fail to get the love you want, end up being treated
like a goof, or get ignored. If you avoid lableing this as awful, you’ll cut down the pain a lot. To anti-awfulize, remind
yourself that there are so many worse things that could have happened
to you & start dwelling on what is still good, right, and okay in
your life.
3. You may say that you shouldn’t feel what you feel, but you do feel what you feel, therefore you actually should feel as you do. To clarify, of course you’d prefer to feel better, but you feel as you feel because you think as you do!
Until you think differently, you will feel as you feel, so demanding
that you feel differently won’t change how you feel; it’ll just make you
feel worse. Accept how you feel and know that it is exactly fine for
now. If you’d like to change it, work on your distorted thoughts.
4. If you’re still standing, then you can stand whatever it is you’re saying you can’t stand!
5. You may be really outwardly expressive & not receive that
beautiful expression of your love in return from the person you
expressed it to. This may provoke thoughts in you such as “no one loves
you back”. First of all, how do you know that no one loves you back?
Second of all, sometimes people are in different head-spaces and
heart-spaces, so they can’t or won’t express their love back ever &
often won’t express it back right when you want it. Third of all, are
you ignoring evidence that there are those who have told you they love
you back?
When you feel badly, you’re more likely to spit out cognitive
distortions. This is called emotional reasoning by David Burns, M.D. You
basically think worse of yourself when you already feel badly
emotionally.
So, dear ones, keep this in mind, keep working on your distortions, and keep living with a full heart and open mind.
Love to you all,
Pam Garcy, PhD
My Inner Guide.com 
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