The New Rational Therapy

Author: Elliot D. Cohen
Tags: Books Self-help Philosophy
Use philosophy as therapy; being "Rational" about why we are the way we are and learn from Western philosophers throughout history.
- Faulty emotions are triggered and maintained by faulty thinking.
- Behavior depends on
  - Emotional rule: An implicit rule I expect to follow based on any external stimuli
  - Report: an opinion, an application of the rule with stimulus and what my response should be
Direct notes – bad behavior
- Building behavioral & emotional virtues
  - Perfectionism
    - Metaphysical security: accepting imperfections in reality
    - Don't control what I can't control
    - Antidotes:
      - Humans are inherently deficient, see & do more of the good (Augustine, Aquinas)
      - Seek truth through rational inquiry with an open mind (Socrates)
        
        The inquiry itself is the most valuable part
      - Celebrate the beauty of my natural body (Augustine, Hume)
      - Change absolutist, unrealistic musts & shoulds to preferences (Spinoza)
      - Expend efforts on what I can control (Spinoza, Epictetus)
      - Better instead of perfect (William James)
      - Dedicate yourself while being Human (Hume)
      - Take pleasure in the simpler things (Epicurus)
      - Remove the pain due to need.
  - Making bad things worse (litost)
    - Courage: confronting adversity without under/over-estimating it
    - Antidotes:
      - Turn suffering into something positive (Nietzsche)
      - Concern yourself with living well instead of dying (Socrates, Sarte, etc)
      - Confront adversity as a pure subject of will-less knowledge (Schopenhauer)
        
        Change perspective and look at things from the outside
        
        Emotional detachment and observation
      - Consider how much worse it could have been (Epictetus)
      - The awfulness is a reaction which I can control (Hume)
  - Damning everything
    - Respect: transcend judgement, including of myself
    - Antidotes to damning the world:
      - Look at the beauty of the grander scheme of things (Leibniz, etc.)
      - Accept suffering & loss as a universal truth; transcend self-pity with compassion (Buddha)
      - Embrace the goodness of others and the world (James, Epictetus)
      - Realize the universality of everything, including myself being part of the world (James)
      - Do something to make things better instead of whining (Buddha, Kaplan)
    - Antidotes to damning myself:
      - Accept self-worth unconditionally (Kant)
        
        Regardless of success or failure, you are still a person of dignity
      - Unconditional self acceptance because of my sentient nature
        
        The ability to experience pain and pleasure
        
        Unnecessarily inflicting self-pain makes no sense
      - Love yourself as your own best friend; assess accomplishments rationally & wish yourself well
      - You're thinking, self aware and capable of conceiving & fashioning your own, unique future. Act like it. (Descartes, Sartre)
        
        Celebrate your mind.
        
        Only by lying to yourself can you escape your freedom & responsibility to forge ahead; affirming your worth & dignity with each successive, conscious, self-aware decision.
      - Instead of withdrawing from life to avoid failing, live and learn from mistakes
        
        Failing is an essential part of trying; make sure to get up and try again
        
        Psychological problems are sustained through self-defeating behavioral responses to situations
      - Instead of condemning yourself, accept your self worth and do good things (Aquinas)
    - Antidotes to damning others
      - Rate people's behavior instead of the people themselves
      - Treat people with the dignity you want (Hobbes)
      - View character as something that can change instead of an inborn property (Aristotle)
  - Following the herd
    - Authenticity: being myself without social conformity
    - Antidotes:
      - Confront your existential angst (Heidegger)
      - Define your own essence (Sarte)
        
        Existence precedes essence; you are not born with a preordained purpose
      - Break the shackles of oppression and venture into the sunlight (plato)
      - Let the standard of utility be your guide (Mill)
      - Think of yourself as an independent, autonomous, creator of values (Nietzsche)
      - Don't believe things because they are official (Santayana, Mill)
      - Be a true patriot, not a parrot; support democracy, not parrotdom
        
        The educated person is one who has developed habits to creatively and intelligently managing the environment
      - Check the cash value before you believe something
        
        A true belief will lead to satisfying results if acted on (at least in the long run)
  - Hobbling myself with can't
    - Temperance: rational control over my actions, emotions and will
    - Antidotes
      - Blame irrational inferences instead of blaming others when I'm disturbed (Epictetus)
      - Use language of responsibility (I make myself nervous) (Epictetus, etc.)
        
        The language of passive submission to emotions is not serviceable for attaining happiness
      - Prove that you are more than a flesh robot; put yourself to emperical testing.
        
        Prove it. Do it.
      - Put on a happy face (Ryle)
        
        Changing behavior can change feelings.
      - Change focus to less contentious object (Husserl)
      - Don't excuse succumbing to an irrational passion (Can't -> Won't)
      - Be passionate about overcoming your irrational emotions (Nietzsche)
      - Don't confuse what goes on inside for what I can or can't do.
      - Accept responsibility for things I could have changed.
      - Build habits by working against my inclination.
        
        Going to extremes is irrational.
      - When desire moves me in the wrong direction; know I can move in the right direction. (Aristotle, Campbell, Santas)
      - Start small and build up to improve my willpower.
        
        You're always recovering, not recovered. Keep working on the habits.
      - Reframe challenging situations as opportunities (Nietzsche)
      - Practice shame-attacking exercises (Ellis)
      - Be courageous: don't allow irrational passions to enslave you and turn life upside down.
        
        Soul = reason, appetites, spirit (will)
      - Apply hedonic calculus to long-term happiness (Bentham)
  - Obsessively disturbing myself & others
    - A "moral duty" to make yourself & others miserable when you encounter (what you think is a) significant life problem is morally bankrupt.
    - It is unrealistic to demand perfect certainty in resolving practical problems before stopping thinking about them.
      - Which allows constructive action instead of procrastination.
    - Moral creativity: frame life in constructive, unproblematic ways
    - Antidotes
      - You have a right to pursue your own happyness: don't have to force yourself to be unhappy if there's a problem in life.
      - Live according to probabilities – act instead of being paralyzed, take rational risks; play the odds, and hope for the best (Sartre)
      - Don't treat life as a problem or an unsolvable dilemma (Kierkegaard, buddha)
        
        Life is not a problem to be solved but an experience to be lived.
      - Take responsibility for interpretations of life and omens; make them constructive.
        
        If you are a chronic worrier, then you have made a poor choice about how to interpret the events of your life… you bear the weight of your own suffering.
      - Seek the truth instead of being upset.
        
        "We have to live today by what truth we can get today, and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood."
  - Manipulation
    - Empowerment: treating others as rational agents
    - Respect others instead of attempting to manipulate them.
    - Lying = state of the world, your belief & your intention
    - Antidotes to bullying
      - Deal justly with adversaries; apply just enough force for protection
      - Seek internalized cooperation with rational grounds
      - Strive for cooperation with autonomous, democratic participation
        
        Someone doesn't need to be the boss
      - Build power in a democratic forum based on freely given and informed consent
    - Don't use advice to get your own goals
    - Guide people instead of goading them; respect their rational dignity
    - Don't lie to others in a way that you wouldn't want others to lie to you
    - "The original position" – evaluate solely on general considerations
    - Put it to the public test
    - Be rational and self-congruent while relating to others
    - Use truth as a coherent way to navigate life
    - Believe the evidence, not what's comfortable
    - Avoid boastfulness and mock modesty; own up to what you have
  - The world revolves around me
    - Empathy – transcending my ego
    - "You have no more a claim on reality than anyone else"
    - Antidotes
      - Look for common interests and purposes
      - Be caring and empathetic
        
        "In insulating yourself from the suffering of others, you can easily lose sight of your own human frailty"
        
        Consider the welfare, interests and needs of others
      - Get as close to their subjectivity without losing yourself in it
      - Don't be too attached or detached from the other person (don't see yourself in them, don't detach completely)
      - Acknowledge the existence of others: seriously understand their desires, values, preferences and beliefs
      - Look for truth beyond your own subjectivity
      - Don't confuse belief for truth
      - The world can't revolve around everyone; not a good assumption
      - Be rationally tolerant of others while resolving disagreements
      - Break gender roles that adopt self-serving/denigrating standards
- Attaining practical wisdom
  - "Virtue aims us at the right mark; practical wisdom makes us take the right means" (Aristotle)
  - Judgement: sympathetic – equitable, and correct – true
  - Oversimplifying reality
    - Good judgment
    - Antidotes to pigeonholing/stereotyping reality
      - Life is a work of art in progress with unlimited possibilities and opportunities to be creative
      - The antidote might be in the synthesis of thesis and antithesis (middle-ground)
      - Look for the opposite: yin for yang, yang for yin
    - Antidotes to stereotyping people
      - Relate to people as individuals instead of as though their essence preceded their existence
        
        Do not define first and perceive second
      - Assess human worth, freedom, and dignity – in terms of membership in one transcendent community of ends
      - Build sympathy to transcend my personal experiences
      - Question all you believe instead of accepting insufficient evidence
        
        "The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery." – Clifford
  - Distorting probabilities
    - Looking correctly into the future: using generalization & prediction
    - Doing generalization badly leads to negatively pre-judging a group
    - Doing prediction badly leads to needless anxiety and self sabotage
    - Antidotes to hasty generalization
      - Base generalizations on probability and not certainty (Hume)
        
        All generalizations from experience are subject to the possibility of future discontinuation
        
        Don't expect a risk free world on Earth
      - Beware bias while generalizing
        
        Make sure the generalization is based on sufficient evidence
    - Antidotes to predictive fallacies
      - Change your circumstances to increase the probability of future prosperity
        
        Set yourself up for success
      - Invert Murphy's law by basing judgments on sufficient evidence
        
        Things can go right by setting up probabilities for success
      - Don't magnify risks; look at them appropriately
        
        Freedom to choose is the freedom to take chances
        
        Don't rationalize risks away, nor exaggerate them
      - Seek the golden mean while facing risk to myself or others (Aristotle)
        
        Courage is a mean between the feelings of fear and confidence
      - Expose the blind, perverse craving for security that keeps your life in limbo. then do what you can to increase the probability of a brighter future. (Schopenhauer)
        
        Change your circumstances in relevant respects, and you can change your future.
        
        Contemplate the destructiveness of your ways – expose this chaotic perverse craving for security; an inherently destructive and "evil" force that is taking you down.
        
        Turn off your blind optimism, which is a dangerous rationalization.
        
        Be pessimistic about your situation and the probability that things will be different; then do something to change your prospects.
  - Blind conjecture
    - Being scientific: explanatory rules, causal rules, contrary-to-fact rules
    - Explanatory rules: how to explain facts that make you curious or puzzled
      - Beware the fearful explanation (the one you fear the most)
      - And the Pet explanation (the one you prefer the most)
      - Antidotes
        
        Apply a scientific, critical method to arrive at explanations instead of fear or subjective preferences (Popper)
        
        Start with a problem or situation
        
        Attempt solutions, which consist of theories
        
        Learn by eliminating mistakes and false theories
        
        Apply falsification to eliminate theories
        
        Ockham's razor: choose the simplest explanation
        
        Fewest assumptions
    - Causal rules:
      - Assuming before-after causality
      - Antidotes:
        
        Determine causality with evidence from scientific analysis and experiment
        
        Don't overly rely on religion or on science; don't be a fanatic
    - Contrary-to-fact-rules
      - Retreating from reality by considering alternative paths through life
      - Too much room for groundless speculation
      - Antidotes
        
        Investigate the assumptions of the contrary-to-fact instance
        
        Instead of being stuck in the past look to the future with the wisdom of the past
        
        Reality alone is what counts, Sartre
    - Relying on reporting rules that sponsor jumping to conclusions on the basis of inadequate evidence defeats your own purposes by diminishing your prospects for personal and interpersonal happiness
Kick off point for a lot of books:
- Jean-Paul Sartre: humans are "condemned to be free"
- Epictetus
- Nietzsche
Willpower is a muscle that gets built up and becomes stronger the more it's applied
I wish you serenity, success, and profound happiness.