The initial appropriate negative emotions in response to infidelity include feeling very sad, confused (a sense that they do not know their spouse), grief and anger. These emotions, however, in most cases fail to last for any length of time and disturbance sets in rapidly. The initial shock has a way of causing a perceptual disturbance. Suddenly your spouse or mate seems to actually look different as if you are seeing him or her for the first time. The person now seems empty of all the qualities you attached to him or her. Once this initial shock abates, clients creatively employ their natural irrational tendencies to explain why our beloved cheated. He has been “lying about everything!” She is a “cheating b***! How could he?! He does not love me at all!” “This is horrible! My life is over” and on and on.
A client who presents with a depressed mood tends to engage in a combination of the later two irrational beliefs – absolutism for love and approval, the corollary derivative of global self-rating and the derivative of awfulizing. The emotional goal is an appropriate negative emotion of regret or deep regret. This emotion is really an appropriate grief where the client is sad but has the insight that life will go on and can go on happily. With the core ib ‘I am not loved as I must be by my mate,’ the client will then derive supporting irrationalities such as ‘I am not attractive’, ‘I am not smart’ or ‘not athletic’ or not anything that the client thinks explains why they are not lovable.
As the therapist you can dispute these other irrationalities. For instance you can say ‘well let’s suppose you are not attractive how does that make you an unlovable person?’ But it is important to not bypass the core ib, otherwise, you can get bogged down in disputing the derivatives. According to REB theory it is important to relentlessly dispute the absolutism. What I have found is that by doing this the derivatives crumble. In other words there is a logic to the illogical thinking. If the premise is “I must be loved and approved unconditionally by my mate” then it follows, that if this rule is violated, since there are two actors, the ‘I’ and ‘mate, their must either be something wrong with one or other, or both. This hypothetical logic based on an illogical premise generates Global self-rating and other-rating. So, cher chez la must cher chez le should as Ellis admonished. My next post will address the awfulizing aspect of infidelity.
Posted on October 31, 2011
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