Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy (29 page)

Figure 8–3.
The advantages and disadvantages of believing "I should be able to make my wife happy all the time."

Another anti-should method involves showing yourself that a should statement doesn’t fit reality. For example, when you say, “I shouldn’t have done X,” you assume (1) it is a fact that you
shouldn’t have
, and (2) it is going to help you to say this. The “reality method” reveals—to your surprise—that the truth is usually just the opposite: (a) In point of fact, you
should have
done what you did; and (b) it is going to hurt you to say you
shouldn’t have
.

Incredulous? Let me demonstrate. Assume you’ve been trying to diet and you ate some ice cream. So you have the thought, “I
shouldn’t
have eaten this ice cream.” In our dialogue I want you to argue that it’s
really true
that you
shouldn’t have
eaten the ice cream, and I will try to put the lie to your arguments. The following is modeled after an actual conversation, which I hope you find as delightful and helpful as I did:

In my case I used the “Dots and doughnuts” diet. Mason Dots (a gum candy) and glazed doughnuts are two of my favorite sweets. I found that the most difficult time to control my eating was in the evening when I was studying or watching TV. I’d have an urge to eat ice cream. So, I told myself that if I controlled this urge, I could reward myself with a big, fresh, glazed doughnut in the morning and a box of Mason Dots in the evening. Then I’d concentrate on how good they’d taste, and this helped me forget the ice cream. Incidentally, I also had the rule that if I
did
goof up and eat the ice cream, I could
still
have the Dots and the doughnut as a reward for trying or as a commiseration for slipping back. Either way it helped me, and I lost over fifty pounds this way.

I also made up the following syllogism:

This helped me greatly too, and it enabled me to binge on weekends and feel good about it. I usually lost more during the week than I gained on weekends; so, overall I lost weight and enjoyed myself. Every time I goofed up in my diet I didn’t allow myself to criticize the lapse or feel guilty. I began to think about it as the “Binge-on-whatever-you want-whenever-you-want-to-without-guilt-and-enjoy-it diet,” and it was so much fun it was a mild disappointment when I finally achieved my aimed-for weight. I actually lost over ten more pounds at that point because the diet was so enjoyable. I believe that the proper
attitude
and
feelings
are the key. With them you can move mountains—even mountains of flesh.

The major thing that holds you back when you’re trying to change a bad habit like eating, smoking, or drinking too much is your belief you are out of control. The cause of this lack of control is those should statements. They defeat you. Suppose, for example, you are trying to avoid eating ice cream. There you are watching TV, saying, “Oh, I really
should
study and I
shouldn’t
eat any ice cream.” Now ask yourself, “How do I feel when I say these things to myself?” I think you know the answer: You feel guilty and nervous. Then what do you do? You go and eat! That is the point. The reason you’re eating is that you’re telling yourself you shouldn’t! Then you try to bury your guilt and anxiety under more piles of food.

Another simple should removal technique involves your wrist counter. Once you become convinced that the shoulds are not to your advantage, you can count them. Every time you make a should statement, click the counter. If you do this, be sure to set up a reward system based on the daily
total. The more shoulds you spot this way, the greater the reward you deserve. Over a period of several weeks, your daily total of should statements will begin to go down, and you’ll notice you’re feeling less guilty.

Another should removal technique zeroes in on the fact that you don’t really trust yourself. You may believe that without all these should statements you would just turn wild and go on a rampage of destruction or murder, or even icecream eating. A way to evaluate this is to ask yourself if there was any period in your life when you were particularly happy and felt reasonably fulfilled, productive, and under control. Think it over for a moment before you read on, and make sure you have a mental picture of this time. Now ask yourself, “During that period in my life, was I whipping myself with a lot of should statements?” I believe your answer will be no. Now tell me—were you doing all these wild, terrible things then? I think you’ll realize you were “should-free” and under control. This is proof that you can lead a productive, happy life without all those shoulds.

You can test this hypothesis with an experiment in the next couple of weeks. Try reducing your should statements using these various techniques, and then see what happens to your mood and self-control. I think you’ll be pleased.

Another method that you can fall back on is the obsessional-filibuster technique described in Chapter 4. Schedule two minutes three times a day to recite all your should statements and self-persecutions out loud: “I
should
have gone to the market before it closed,” and “I
shouldn’t
have picked my nose at the country club,” and “I’m such a rotten bum,” etc. Just rattle off all the most abusive self-criticisms you can think of. It might be especially helpful to write them down or dictate them into a tape recorder. Then read them later out loud, or listen to the tape. I think this will help you see how ludicrous these statements are. Try to limit your shoulds to these scheduled periods so you won’t be bothered by them at other times.

Another technique to combat should statements involves getting in touch with the limits of your knowledge. When
I was growing up, I often heard people say, “Learn to accept your limits and you’ll become a happier person,” but no one ever bothered to explain what this meant or how to go about doing it. Furthermore, it always sounded like a bit of a put-down, as if they were saying, “Learn what a second-rate dud you actually are.”

In reality, it’s not as bad as all that. Suppose you frequently look into the past and mope about your mistakes. For example, as you review the financial section of the paper, you tell yourself, “I shouldn’t have bought that stock. It’s gone down two points.” As a way out of this trap, ask yourself, “Now, at the time I bought the stock, did I know it was going to go down in value?” I suspect you’ll say no. Now ask, “If I’d known it was going down, would I have bought it?” Again you’ll answer no. So what you’re really saying is that if you’d known this at the time, you’d have acted differently. To do this you would have to be able to predict the future with absolute certainty. Can you predict the future with absolute certainty? Again your answer must be no. You have two options: You can either decide to accept yourself as an imperfect human being with limited knowledge and realize that you will at times make mistakes, or you can hate yourself for it.

Another effective way to combat shoulds is to ask, “Why should I?” Then you can challenge the evidence you come up with so as to expose the faulty logic. In this way you can reduce your should statement to the level of absurdity. Suppose, for example, you hire someone to do some work for you. It could be lawn work, or a painting job, or anything. When he submits his bill, it seems higher than you understood it would be, but he gives you some fast talk, so you give in and end up paying his price. You feel taken advantage of. You begin to berate yourself for not acting more firmly. Let’s do some role-playing, and you can pretend that you’re the poor sucker who paid too much.