[breizh]

This is a short article who shares some ideas expanded in Ellis book:
http://tnw.co/1meNzxo

[kbell]

I don't think chapter 14 was bad. A little redundant but some interesting theories on bullying.

[Dusty]

(04-22-2014 03:51 PM)kbell Wrote:  

I don't think chapter 14 was bad. A little redundant but some interesting theories on bullying.

Do you think my chapter summaries have been pretty representative of the book's message?

[kbell]

So far yes. They are actually better written in general, although I don't think you have covered the client cases. But the theme is there. I will reread them again after I finish the book to see if I missed anything. The problem with reading in general is its easy to forget about 80% of what you read.

[All or Nothing]

Finished the book awhile ago. Excellent.

I would recommend it to anybody.

[Peregrine]

Stumbled upon this thread. Just ordered off of Amazon. Looking forward to reading it.

[Macklin]

Started reading this thread last week. The summaries were in-depth and comprehensive. After reading through the first two pages I decided to buy the book myself.

I received my copy yesterday and I'm already 3 chapters in. I'm looking forward to the rest of the book.

Thanks again for this thread Dusty!

[philosophical_recovery]

Thank you for this thread, I stumbled upon it and read the entire book. I may actually end up reading it again.

It's made me realize how negative the normal thought processes are in my mind, and I've started working on correcting them. It requires me to be well rested, because I lose awareness of what I am doing. So far, it requires constant reminders to keep my mind from wandering. I'm surrounded by things that can trigger negative emotions, and some of those can be removed, others can't, but my reaction to them can change.

[Dusty]

(02-04-2015 09:25 AM)philosophical_recovery Wrote:  

Thank you for this thread, I stumbled upon it and read the entire book. I may actually end up reading it again.

It's made me realize how negative the normal thought processes are in my mind, and I've started working on correcting them. It requires me to be well rested, because I lose awareness of what I am doing. So far, it requires constant reminders to keep my mind from wandering. I'm surrounded by things that can trigger negative emotions, and some of those can be removed, others can't, but my reaction to them can change.

Yes it's difficult to be mindful of your new rational thoughts and easy to slip back into irrational thinking.

I recommend you do the work of disputing then keep some of your best disputes on an index card you carry in your pocket. Throughout the day pull it out and read them in order to remind yourself of your rational and healthy new thoughts/philosophies.

As far as being rested, see Lizard of Oz's thread on light box therapy.

I also recommend mindfulness/meditation which helps flush irrational thinking and can calm your racing mind before bedtime.


Good luck!

[CelMasc]

Thanks for this thread guys. Another one added to my reading list for this year, sounds like some very helpful stuff.

[game_ethic]

For those of you who don't like Albert Ellis' writing style, check out Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David D. Burns as an alternative. Burns was the student of Aaron T. Beck, the "father" of cognitive therapy. CT was founded on some principles of REBT, so it's pretty much a modern version of REBT that is preferred by therapists; think of it as REBT 2.0. Anyways, the book is a bit long winded(700+ pages), but if you like A Guide to Rational Living's core principles, then you'll like this book too.

[Dusty]

(02-07-2015 11:33 AM)game_ethic Wrote:  

For those of you who don't like Albert Ellis' writing style, check out Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David D. Burns as an alternative. Burns was the student of Aaron T. Beck, the "father" of cognitive therapy. CT was founded on some principles of REBT, so it's pretty much a modern version of REBT that is preferred by therapists; think of it as REBT 2.0. Anyways, the book is a bit long winded(700+ pages), but if you like A Guide to Rational Living's core principles, then you'll like this book too.

I think a Feelimg Good book review would be good for RVF members.

I nominate you game ethic.

[The Lizard of Oz]

I feel that Dusty's thread, when used in combination with Ellis' book, is an absolutely fantastic resource that is hard to improve on. It is one of the handful of the best threads on RVF, and probably one of if not the very best, clearest, and most actionable introductions to CBT and REBT anywhere online.

Although Ellis' book is a little older, nothing has changed about the basic principles of REBT, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with his writing style; it does not strive for elegance, but is strives for clarity of communication. It is a fairly brief book, and many things are repeated again and again, because they need to be. One of the most basic lessons of CBT/REBT is indeed that you need to repeat some very simple things many times to really understand them.

Of course that is not to say that other CBT books and resources cannot be of great value as well. But I wouldn't want anyone to be distracted from what a great resource has been put together right here. I link to this thread as often as I can, and I hope many guys go through it (and read the book at the same time) and get as much as they can out of it.

[Dusty]

There was a very good article recently in the Atlantic covered elsewhere in the forum about the emotional fragility of SJWs. I found it interesting that the article went into CBT to help shed some light on the craziness we see today with the trigger warnings and micro aggressions and what not. I'd thought I'd include that part of the article in this REBT/CBT thread.

Here's a few excerpts:

This a pretty good recap of what we talked about in this thread:

Quote:

For millennia, philosophers have understood that we don’t see life as it is; we see a version distorted by our hopes, fears, and other attachments. The Buddha said, “Our life is the creation of our mind.” Marcus Aurelius said, “Life itself is but what you deem it.” The quest for wisdom in many traditions begins with this insight. Early Buddhists and the Stoics, for example, developed practices for reducing attachments, thinking more clearly, and finding release from the emotional torments of normal mental life.

Cognitive behavioral therapy is a modern embodiment of this ancient wisdom. It is the most extensively studied nonpharmaceutical treatment of mental illness, and is used widely to treat depression, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, and addiction. It can even be of help to schizophrenics. No other form of psychotherapy has been shown to work for a broader range of problems. Studies have generally found that it is as effective as antidepressant drugs (such as Prozac) in the treatment of anxiety and depression. The therapy is relatively quick and easy to learn; after a few months of training, many patients can do it on their own. Unlike drugs, cognitive behavioral therapy keeps working long after treatment is stopped, because it teaches thinking skills that people can continue to use.

The goal is to minimize distorted thinking and see the world more accurately. You start by learning the names of the dozen or so most common cognitive distortions (such as overgeneralizing, discounting positives, and emotional reasoning; see the list at the bottom of this article). Each time you notice yourself falling prey to one of them, you name it, describe the facts of the situation, consider alternative interpretations, and then choose an interpretation of events more in line with those facts. Your emotions follow your new interpretation. In time, this process becomes automatic. When people improve their mental hygiene in this way—when they free themselves from the repetitive irrational thoughts that had previously filled so much of their consciousness—they become less depressed, anxious, and angry.

The parallel to formal education is clear: cognitive behavioral therapy teaches good critical-thinking skills, the sort that educators have striven for so long to impart. By almost any definition, critical thinking requires grounding one’s beliefs in evidence rather than in emotion or desire, and learning how to search for and evaluate evidence that might contradict one’s initial hypothesis. But does campus life today foster critical thinking? Or does it coax students to think in more-distorted ways?

Now using the framework of CBT to observe how SJWs distort reality which results in their frenzied emotions.

Emotional Reasoning (aka "Feels before Reals"):

Quote:

Burns defines emotional reasoning as assuming “that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: ‘I feel it, therefore it must be true.’ ” Leahy, Holland, and McGinn define it as letting “your feelings guide your interpretation of reality.” But, of course, subjective feelings are not always trustworthy guides; unrestrained, they can cause people to lash out at others who have done nothing wrong. Therapy often involves talking yourself down from the idea that each of your emotional responses represents something true or important.

Emotional reasoning dominates many campus debates and discussions. A claim that someone’s words are “offensive” is not just an expression of one’s own subjective feeling of offendedness. It is, rather, a public charge that the speaker has done something objectively wrong. It is a demand that the speaker apologize or be punished by some authority for committing an offense.

What are we doing to our students if we encourage them to develop extra-thin skin just before they leave the cocoon of adult protection?

...

Because there is a broad ban in academic circles on “blaming the victim,” it is generally considered unacceptable to question the reasonableness (let alone the sincerity) of someone’s emotional state, particularly if those emotions are linked to one’s group identity. The thin argument “I’m offended” becomes an unbeatable trump card. This leads to what Jonathan Rauch, a contributing editor at this magazine, calls the “offendedness sweepstakes,” in which opposing parties use claims of offense as cudgels. In the process, the bar for what we consider unacceptable speech is lowered further and further.

...

But in 2013, the Departments of Justice and Education greatly broadened the definition of sexual harassment to include verbal conduct that is simply “unwelcome.” Out of fear of federal investigations, universities are now applying that standard—defining unwelcome speech as harassment—not just to sex, but to race, religion, and veteran status as well. Everyone is supposed to rely upon his or her own subjective feelings to decide whether a comment by a professor or a fellow student is unwelcome, and therefore grounds for a harassment claim. Emotional reasoning is now accepted as evidence.

If our universities are teaching students that their emotions can be used effectively as weapons—or at least as evidence in administrative proceedings—then they are teaching students to nurture a kind of hypersensitivity that will lead them into countless drawn-out conflicts in college and beyond. Schools may be training students in thinking styles that will damage their careers and friendships, along with their mental health.

How many times have you seen this among SJW-types. They say outlandish things based on their emotions, and their beliefs have no basis in reality. Roosh in Canada being called a rapist over-and-over when in fact Roosh has a perfectly clean criminal record, has never raped nor been accused of rape, and in fact he has written about how rape is bad and how a societal return to more traditional male/female roles will result in less rape. The facts don't matter. These feminists/SJWs "feel" Roosh is a rapist, and they get all worked up and assault him and shit.

During this whole Montreal/Toronto brouhaha, I've seen those on our side confront feminist who say that Roosh is a rapist with questions such as "proof?" "evidence?" "send a link" "do you have a copy of a police record to prove that allegation?" etc, and they just get more emotional or block. At most they will link to an article by Roosh called "How to Stop Rape" as proof that Roosh is a serial rapist.

Fortune-Telling and Trigger Warnings:

Quote:

Burns defines fortune-telling as “anticipat[ing] that things will turn out badly” and feeling “convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact.”

The idea that words (or smells or any sensory input) can trigger searing memories of past trauma—and intense fear that it may be repeated—has been around at least since World War I, when psychiatrists began treating soldiers for what is now called post-traumatic stress disorder. But explicit trigger warnings are believed to have originated much more recently, on message boards in the early days of the Internet. Trigger warnings became particularly prevalent in self-help and feminist forums, where they allowed readers who had suffered from traumatic events like sexual assault to avoid graphic content that might trigger flashbacks or panic attacks. Search-engine trends indicate that the phrase broke into mainstream use online around 2011, spiked in 2014, and reached an all-time high in 2015. The use of trigger warnings on campus appears to have followed a similar trajectory; seemingly overnight, students at universities across the country have begun demanding that their professors issue warnings before covering material that might evoke a negative emotional response.

In 2013, a task force composed of administrators, students, recent alumni, and one faculty member at Oberlin College, in Ohio, released an online resource guide for faculty (subsequently retracted in the face of faculty pushback) that included a list of topics warranting trigger warnings. These topics included classism and privilege, among many others. The task force recommended that materials that might trigger negative reactions among students be avoided altogether unless they “contribute directly” to course goals, and suggested that works that were “too important to avoid” be made optional.

It’s hard to imagine how novels illustrating classism and privilege could provoke or reactivate the kind of terror that is typically implicated in PTSD. Rather, trigger warnings are sometimes demanded for a long list of ideas and attitudes that some students find politically offensive, in the name of preventing other students from being harmed. This is an example of what psychologists call “motivated reasoning”—we spontaneously generate arguments for conclusions we want to support. Once you find something hateful, it is easy to argue that exposure to the hateful thing could traumatize some other people. You believe that you know how others will react, and that their reaction could be devastating. Preventing that devastation becomes a moral obligation for the whole community. Books for which students have called publicly for trigger warnings within the past couple of years include Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (at Rutgers, for “suicidal inclinations”) and Ovid’s Metamorphoses (at Columbia, for sexual assault).

Jeannie Suk’s New Yorker essay described the difficulties of teaching rape law in the age of trigger warnings. Some students, she wrote, have pressured their professors to avoid teaching the subject in order to protect themselves and their classmates from potential distress. Suk compares this to trying to teach “a medical student who is training to be a surgeon but who fears that he’ll become distressed if he sees or handles blood.”

However, there is a deeper problem with trigger warnings. According to the most-basic tenets of psychology, the very idea of helping people with anxiety disorders avoid the things they fear is misguided. A person who is trapped in an elevator during a power outage may panic and think she is going to die. That frightening experience can change neural connections in her amygdala, leading to an elevator phobia. If you want this woman to retain her fear for life, you should help her avoid elevators.

But if you want to help her return to normalcy, you should take your cues from Ivan Pavlov and guide her through a process known as exposure therapy. [Dusty note: Exposure therapy is how you conquer approach anxiety]You might start by asking the woman to merely look at an elevator from a distance—standing in a building lobby, perhaps—until her apprehension begins to subside. If nothing bad happens while she’s standing in the lobby—if the fear is not “reinforced”—then she will begin to learn a new association: elevators are not dangerous. (This reduction in fear during exposure is called habituation.) Then, on subsequent days, you might ask her to get closer, and on later days to push the call button, and eventually to step in and go up one floor. This is how the amygdala can get rewired again to associate a previously feared situation with safety or normalcy.

Students who call for trigger warnings may be correct that some of their peers are harboring memories of trauma that could be reactivated by course readings. But they are wrong to try to prevent such reactivations. Students with PTSD should of course get treatment, but they should not try to avoid normal life, with its many opportunities for habituation. Classroom discussions are safe places to be exposed to incidental reminders of trauma (such as the word violate). A discussion of violence is unlikely to be followed by actual violence, so it is a good way to help students change the associations that are causing them discomfort. And they’d better get their habituation done in college, because the world beyond college will be far less willing to accommodate requests for trigger warnings and opt-outs.

The expansive use of trigger warnings may also foster unhealthy mental habits in the vastly larger group of students who do not suffer from PTSD or other anxiety disorders. People acquire their fears not just from their own past experiences, but from social learning as well. If everyone around you acts as though something is dangerous—elevators, certain neighborhoods, novels depicting racism—then you are at risk of acquiring that fear too. The psychiatrist Sarah Roff pointed this out last year in an online article for The Chronicle of Higher Education. “One of my biggest concerns about trigger warnings,” Roff wrote, “is that they will apply not just to those who have experienced trauma, but to all students, creating an atmosphere in which they are encouraged to believe that there is something dangerous or damaging about discussing difficult aspects of our history.”

The new climate is slowly being institutionalized, and is affecting what can be said in the classroom, even as a basis for discussion or debate.
In an article published last year by Inside Higher Ed, seven humanities professors wrote that the trigger-warning movement was “already having a chilling effect on [their] teaching and pedagogy.” They reported their colleagues’ receiving “phone calls from deans and other administrators investigating student complaints that they have included ‘triggering’ material in their courses, with or without warnings.” A trigger warning, they wrote, “serves as a guarantee that students will not experience unexpected discomfort and implies that if they do, a contract has been broken.” When students come to expect trigger warnings for any material that makes them uncomfortable, the easiest way for faculty to stay out of trouble is to avoid material that might upset the most sensitive student in the class.

We saw this in Montreal and Toronto where these SJWs were talking about how scared they are of Roosh's lecture and all the discussion of how to be safe while Roosh was in Canada. As if a guy who has a completely clean record is going to go on a rampage in Canada and rape and assault the women.

Another post coming...

[Dusty]

Steve Sailer wrote about the Atlantic article today.

Quote:

From The Atlantic, an article by psychologist Jonathan Haidt (whose book, The Righteous Mind, I reviewed for Taki’s in 2012) and Greg Lukianoff of FIRE. Their basic argument is that the current college mindset of mania about microaggressions and trigger warnings is therapy perfectly designed to worsen the mental health of college students by engraining in them self-destructive “habits of mind” that are the exact inverses of the effective habits of mind taught by Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which is often the most cost-effective form of psychological therapy. Of course, making young people unhappier and more dependent upon institutions is considered a feature, not a bug by people who hope to make a living out of preying upon the young.

http://www.unz.com/isteve/haidt-on-vindi...ctiveness/

[kbell]

I wonder how lousy they will be as employees. Law suit obsessed and a pain in the ass to work with.

[Dantes]

Having studies Ellis for a long time, his work is germane to this generation and will be for future generations. This book is a must read. The world lost a truly great man when he died a few years ago. I had the pleasure of seeing him in person some years back, when he would demonstrate REBT at his Institute in Manhattan with volunteers from the audience. For me this was akin to seeing Freud.

Ellis also ran daygame in NYC as a young man to get over his approach anxiety of talking to women.

[Dusty]

(08-17-2015 05:48 AM)Dantes Wrote:  

Ellis also ran daygame in NYC as a young man to get over his approach anxiety of talking to women.

Yes, and he says he got really good at it and banged a lot of women. Of course, as he got famous he could rely on guru game.

[Huey]

I like A Guide to Rational Living. It's the first book I read that introduced me to CBT / REBT. The philosophy behind it--that the view of you take of things determines how you feel subsequently--is simple but profound. I also recommend When Panic Attacks by David Burns. Like Ellis, Burns also used CBT to get over his fear of approaching women. According to him, he approached over 100 girls on his college campus. I'll re-read When Panic Attacks to see what I can contribute to this thread since CBT and REBT differ in some of the ideas and techniques they use to help patients.


Huey

[Dusty]

(08-16-2015 08:16 PM)kbell Wrote:  

I wonder how lousy they will be as employees. Law suit obsessed and a pain in the ass to work with.

I wonder how wide spread it is. I know some Berkeley students, and they're good kids. Hard working, smart, friendly, and emotionally stable. They're definitely not into the micro aggression and trigger warning bullshit.

I think the SJW types are a small but noisy minority ( wait is 'minority' triggering??).

[Dusty]

Continuing with the Atlantic article:

Quote:

Magnification, Labeling, and Microaggressions

Burns defines magnification as “exaggerat[ing] the importance of things,” and Leahy, Holland, and McGinn define labeling as “assign[ing] global negative traits to yourself and others.” The recent collegiate trend of uncovering allegedly racist, sexist, classist, or otherwise discriminatory microaggressions doesn’t incidentally teach students to focus on small or accidental slights. Its purpose is to get students to focus on them and then relabel the people who have made such remarks as aggressors. [Dusty: This should sound familiar with the Battle of Montreal/Toronto. Roosh was labeled a "rapist" and a "misogynist" and then being labeled as such a demon, they could unleash their hatred and rage and feel justified. How these SJWs reacted was way out of proportion to what Roosh really does - writing entertaining articles challenging feminist dogma].

The term microaggression originated in the 1970s and referred to subtle, often unconscious racist affronts. The definition has expanded in recent years to include anything that can be perceived as discriminatory on virtually any basis. For example, in 2013, a student group at UCLA staged a sit-in during a class taught by Val Rust, an education professor. The group read a letter aloud expressing their concerns about the campus’s hostility toward students of color. Although Rust was not explicitly named, the group quite clearly criticized his teaching as microaggressive. In the course of correcting his students’ grammar and spelling, Rust had noted that a student had wrongly capitalized the first letter of the word indigenous. Lowercasing the capital I was an insult to the student and her ideology, the group claimed.

Even joking about microaggressions can be seen as an aggression, warranting punishment. Last fall, Omar Mahmood, a student at the University of Michigan, wrote a satirical column for a conservative student publication, The Michigan Review, poking fun at what he saw as a campus tendency to perceive microaggressions in just about anything. Mahmood was also employed at the campus newspaper, The Michigan Daily. The Daily’s editors said that the way Mahmood had “satirically mocked the experiences of fellow Daily contributors and minority communities on campus … created a conflict of interest.” The Daily terminated Mahmood after he described the incident to two Web sites, The College Fix and The Daily Caller. A group of women later vandalized Mahmood’s doorway with eggs, hot dogs, gum, and notes with messages such as “Everyone hates you, you violent prick.” When speech comes to be seen as a form of violence, vindictive protectiveness can justify a hostile, and perhaps even violent, response. [Dusty: Once again this is familiar. Roosh getting showered with beer and chased by a mob. The fraternity being vandalized when the fake Jackie Coakley rape hoax came out.]

In March, the student government at Ithaca College, in upstate New York, went so far as to propose the creation of an anonymous microaggression-reporting system. Student sponsors envisioned some form of disciplinary action against “oppressors” engaged in belittling speech. One of the sponsors of the program said that while “not … every instance will require trial or some kind of harsh punishment,” she wanted the program to be “record-keeping but with impact.”

Surely people make subtle or thinly veiled racist or sexist remarks on college campuses, and it is right for students to raise questions and initiate discussions about such cases. But the increased focus on microaggressions coupled with the endorsement of emotional reasoning is a formula for a constant state of outrage, even toward well-meaning speakers trying to engage in genuine discussion.

What are we doing to our students if we encourage them to develop extra-thin skin in the years just before they leave the cocoon of adult protection and enter the workforce? Would they not be better prepared to flourish if we taught them to question their own emotional reactions, and to give people the benefit of the doubt?

Quote:

Teaching Students to Catastrophize and Have Zero Tolerance

Burns defines catastrophizing as a kind of magnification that turns “commonplace negative events into nightmarish monsters.” Leahy, Holland, and McGinn define it as believing “that what has happened or will happen” is “so awful and unbearable that you won’t be able to stand it.” Requests for trigger warnings involve catastrophizing, but this way of thinking colors other areas of campus thought as well.

Catastrophizing rhetoric about physical danger is employed by campus administrators more commonly than you might think—sometimes, it seems, with cynical ends in mind. For instance, last year administrators at Bergen Community College, in New Jersey, suspended Francis Schmidt, a professor, after he posted a picture of his daughter on his Google+ account. The photo showed her in a yoga pose, wearing a T-shirt that read I will take what is mine with fire & blood, a quote from the HBO show Game of Thrones. Schmidt had filed a grievance against the school about two months earlier after being passed over for a sabbatical. The quote was interpreted as a threat by a campus administrator, who received a notification after Schmidt posted the picture; it had been sent, automatically, to a whole group of contacts. According to Schmidt, a Bergen security official present at a subsequent meeting between administrators and Schmidt thought the word fire could refer to AK-47s.

Then there is the eight-year legal saga at Valdosta State University, in Georgia, where a student was expelled for protesting the construction of a parking garage by posting an allegedly “threatening” collage on Facebook. The collage described the proposed structure as a “memorial” parking garage—a joke referring to a claim by the university president that the garage would be part of his legacy. The president interpreted the collage as a threat against his life.

It should be no surprise that students are exhibiting similar sensitivity. At the University of Central Florida in 2013, for example, Hyung-il Jung, an accounting instructor, was suspended after a student reported that Jung had made a threatening comment during a review session. Jung explained to the Orlando Sentinel that the material he was reviewing was difficult, and he’d noticed the pained look on students’ faces, so he made a joke. “It looks like you guys are being slowly suffocated by these questions,” he recalled saying. “Am I on a killing spree or what?”

After the student reported Jung’s comment, a group of nearly 20 others e-mailed the UCF administration explaining that the comment had clearly been made in jest. Nevertheless, UCF suspended Jung from all university duties and demanded that he obtain written certification from a mental-health professional that he was “not a threat to [himself] or to the university community” before he would be allowed to return to campus.

All of these actions teach a common lesson: smart people do, in fact, overreact to innocuous speech, make mountains out of molehills, and seek punishment for anyone whose words make anyone else feel uncomfortable.

[Dusty]

Quote:

What Can We Do Now?

Attempts to shield students from words, ideas, and people that might cause them emotional discomfort are bad for the students. They are bad for the workplace, which will be mired in unending litigation if student expectations of safety are carried forward. And they are bad for American democracy, which is already paralyzed by worsening partisanship. When the ideas, values, and speech of the other side are seen not just as wrong but as willfully aggressive toward innocent victims, it is hard to imagine the kind of mutual respect, negotiation, and compromise that are needed to make politics a positive-sum game.

Rather than trying to protect students from words and ideas that they will inevitably encounter, colleges should do all they can to equip students to thrive in a world full of words and ideas that they cannot control. One of the great truths taught by Buddhism (and Stoicism, Hinduism, and many other traditions) is that you can never achieve happiness by making the world conform to your desires. But you can master your desires and habits of thought. This, of course, is the goal of cognitive behavioral therapy. With this in mind, here are some steps that might help reverse the tide of bad thinking on campus.

The biggest single step in the right direction does not involve faculty or university administrators, but rather the federal government, which should release universities from their fear of unreasonable investigation and sanctions by the Department of Education. Congress should define peer-on-peer harassment according to the Supreme Court’s definition in the 1999 case Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education. The Davis standard holds that a single comment or thoughtless remark by a student does not equal harassment; harassment requires a pattern of objectively offensive behavior by one student that interferes with another student’s access to education. Establishing the Davis standard would help eliminate universities’ impulse to police their students’ speech so carefully.

Universities themselves should try to raise consciousness about the need to balance freedom of speech with the need to make all students feel welcome. Talking openly about such conflicting but important values is just the sort of challenging exercise that any diverse but tolerant community must learn to do. Restrictive speech codes should be abandoned.

Universities should also officially and strongly discourage trigger warnings. They should endorse the American Association of University Professors’ report on these warnings, which notes, “The presumption that students need to be protected rather than challenged in a classroom is at once infantilizing and anti-intellectual.” Professors should be free to use trigger warnings if they choose to do so, but by explicitly discouraging the practice, universities would help fortify the faculty against student requests for such warnings.

Finally, universities should rethink the skills and values they most want to impart to their incoming students. At present, many freshman-orientation programs try to raise student sensitivity to a nearly impossible level. Teaching students to avoid giving unintentional offense is a worthy goal, especially when the students come from many different cultural backgrounds. But students should also be taught how to live in a world full of potential offenses. Why not teach incoming students how to practice cognitive behavioral therapy? Given high and rising rates of mental illness, this simple step would be among the most humane and supportive things a university could do. The cost and time commitment could be kept low: a few group training sessions could be supplemented by Web sites or apps. But the outcome could pay dividends in many ways. For example, a shared vocabulary about reasoning, common distortions, and the appropriate use of evidence to draw conclusions would facilitate critical thinking and real debate. It would also tone down the perpetual state of outrage that seems to engulf some colleges these days, allowing students’ minds to open more widely to new ideas and new people. A greater commitment to formal, public debate on campus—and to the assembly of a more politically diverse faculty—would further serve that goal.

Thomas Jefferson, upon founding the University of Virginia, said:

This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.
We believe that this is still—and will always be—the best attitude for American universities. Faculty, administrators, students, and the federal government all have a role to play in restoring universities to their historic mission.

Quote:

Common Cognitive Distortions

A partial list from Robert L. Leahy, Stephen J. F. Holland, and Lata K. McGinn’s Treatment Plans and Interventions for Depression and Anxiety Disorders (2012).

1. Mind reading. You assume that you know what people think without having sufficient evidence of their thoughts. “He thinks I’m a loser.”

2. Fortune-telling. You predict the future negatively: things will get worse, or there is danger ahead. “I’ll fail that exam,” or “I won’t get the job.”

3. Catastrophizing.You believe that what has happened or will happen will be so awful and unbearable that you won’t be able to stand it. “It would be terrible if I failed.”

4. Labeling. You assign global negative traits to yourself and others. “I’m undesirable,” or “He’s a rotten person.”

5. Discounting positives. You claim that the positive things you or others do are trivial. “That’s what wives are supposed to do—so it doesn’t count when she’s nice to me,” or “Those successes were easy, so they don’t matter.”

6. Negative filtering. You focus almost exclusively on the negatives and seldom notice the positives. “Look at all of the people who don’t like me.”

7. Overgeneralizing. You perceive a global pattern of negatives on the basis of a single incident. “This generally happens to me. I seem to fail at a lot of things.”

8. Dichotomous thinking. You view events or people in all-or-nothing terms. “I get rejected by everyone,” or “It was a complete waste of time.”

9. Blaming. You focus on the other person as the source of your negative feelings, and you refuse to take responsibility for changing yourself. “She’s to blame for the way I feel now,” or “My parents caused all my problems.”

10. What if? You keep asking a series of questions about “what if” something happens, and you fail to be satisfied with any of the answers. “Yeah, but what if I get anxious?,” or “What if I can’t catch my breath?”

11. Emotional reasoning. You let your feelings guide your interpretation of reality. “I feel depressed; therefore, my marriage is not working out.”

12. Inability to disconfirm. You reject any evidence or arguments that might contradict your negative thoughts. For example, when you have the thought I’m unlovable, you reject as irrelevant any evidence that people like you. Consequently, your thought cannot be refuted. “That’s not the real issue. There are deeper problems. There are other factors.”

[Beyond Borders]

I recently realized you can use peggo.co to convert YouTube videos to mp3 and download to your ipod or whatever.

For anyone who doesn't like reading much, isn't in a convenient location to order the paperback, or just needs some more Ellis in their life, their are some great talks available on YouTube.

[Neo]

Dusty, excellent thread. In fact I've read this thread over and over and over as a compliment to the book.

Right now I'm working on some REBT to deal with long term relationship issues that come up. Basically, I end up with girls I like and I want to date long-term but I act in ways that push them away. When I analyze my behavior it seems that once things begin to get serious I alter my behavior in a way that forces a break up. I really no longer want this to be the case. I am currently seeing a CBT therapist in my area to overcome this. Through game and self improvement, I've met some really wonderful women who I could see myself with long-term, but unfortunately psychologically I'm not prepared.

Anyway, thanks again for the thread. I had one question. Do you know of a list of Ellis's 'shame attacking' exercises that can be found online? I've found some YouTube videos, and some partial lists, but was wondering if there was a master list you've come across somewhere. Or if any members have some resources let me know. Thanks!

[Dusty]

(09-13-2015 05:38 PM)Neo Wrote:  

Dusty, excellent thread. In fact I've read this thread over and over and over as a compliment to the book.

Right now I'm working on some REBT to deal with long term relationship issues that come up. Basically, I end up with girls I like and I want to date long-term but I act in ways that push them away. When I analyze my behavior it seems that once things begin to get serious I alter my behavior in a way that forces a break up. I really no longer want this to be the case. I am currently seeing a CBT therapist in my area to overcome this. Through game and self improvement, I've met some really wonderful women who I could see myself with long-term, but unfortunately psychologically I'm not prepared.

Anyway, thanks again for the thread. I had one question. Do you know of a list of Ellis's 'shame attacking' exercises that can be found online? I've found some YouTube videos, and some partial lists, but was wondering if there was a master list you've come across somewhere. Or if any members have some resources let me know. Thanks!

Thanks, feel free to PM me if you want to talk about your situation privately.

I don't know of a list of shame attacking exercises - sorry about that.

Glad you like the thread and you read the Ellis book.