REBTOZ

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Jonno is not a giraffe!

Teaching children that they cannot be any word used to describe them will help them develop a healthy habit of thinking and believing that is intuitive, automatic. This Success Helper or Brain Friend way of thinking is the goal of the Have a Go Spaghettio! approach to social and emotional wellbeing, called ‘I’m worthwhile crocodile’ thinking. What does this mean? Unconditional self-acceptance is understanding that there is no law that says our worth is decided by others appraisal of us or how well or badly we do at tasks. We can e.g., act dumb/smart but we cannot be so. It is a Brain Bully belief when we decide that we ‘are’ our dumbness or smartness because it’s not true, there’s no evidence to support this hypothesis! The Have a Go Spaghettio! approach to social and emotional wellbeing teaches young learners about Brain Friend believing which is rational and supported by the evidence. It is as ridiculous to accept that we can be a giraffe as it is to believe we are or can be dum...

Have a Go Spaghettio! Have you been semantically disturbed lately?

A semantic disturbance arises when a person’s constructed virtual representation of reality or mind map doesn’t approximate how things are, the territory, the ‘real’ world. Bear in mind that Einstein and others said that reality itself is a persistent illusion, something concocted based on the organism’s assessment of how they believe things are. A poor assessment, one that doesn’t consider the facts available, is a mis conception or misunderstanding. What we believe or tell ourselves about something is semantically inaccurate and therefore a semantic disturbance exists. This is characterised by feelings of upset to varying degrees, or ‘upsetness’ as Dr Albert Ellis says. Alfred Korzybski ’s General Semantics theory tells us the map is not the territory it represents or the word is not the thing it describes. The ‘self’ under construction in the minds of our young Have a Go Spaghettio! audience can be a helpful, healthy Success Helper type or one that is self-defeating, where Brain ...

Shouldhood and Unsanity

‘Shouldhood' causes upset or increases the intensity of what, Albert Ellis calls, our ‘upsetness.’ The degree of ‘upsetness’ caused by our tendency to think in ‘shoulds’ is what Ellis also calls ‘shithood:’ ‘shouldhood’ leads to ‘shithood ‘ psychologically speaking. Sometimes we might ‘should’ and stop and rethink our ‘shoulding’ reminding ourselves that to demand we should get something we can’t get is futile. So, we recalibrate, shift our thinking to a more logical, rational posture. However, if we indulge in ‘should’ thinking on a more permanent basis, where we continue to demand that things should, absolutely be as we demand they should be, then ‘shithood’ is where we end up until we understand how thinking effects how we feel and behave. The world is no good, others are no good and/or you are no good equals ‘SHITHOOD!” ‘Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so.’ Shakespeare (Hamlet) The Have a Go S...

Have a Go Spaghettio! Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy and General Semantics

Have a Go Spaghettio! teaches children that something about them, 'good' or 'bad' doesn't define them in a global sense. Yet, they/we learn to abstract something, be it a competency or quality, from the many that constitute the 'self' under construction, and decide it 'is' us, we are it! Hence, children can start to think of themselves as good/bad, cute, dumb, ugly etc. Emotional and behavioural upset experienced by the young child, according to Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy theory, on which Have a Go Spaghettio! is based, is linked to irrational, Brain Bully/Success Stopper thinking. The belief we can be dumb/smart etc. is what General Semantics calls a 'semantic disturbance,' where the persons upset is caused by mis interpretations, mis perceptions. Brain Friend thinking is taught via the Have a Go Spaghettio! approach to social and emotional well-being which says the person cannot 'be' a w...

The Word is Not The Person - General Semantics, REBT, reality and Have a...

How we perceive the world, others and ourselves is our own constructed version of the reality we experience. Reality then is our version of how we perceive it to be. It’s a persistent illusion according to Albert Einstein and Douglas Adams says everything in the universe we perceive is specific to us. Dr Seuss says there is ‘no one alive who is youer than you,’ we are unique it is said, but what kind of ‘you’ are we constructing, what is our virtual take on the reality we experience and are we constructing a healthy view of the unique ‘self’ possessed by each of us. Have a Go Spaghettio! ‘s goal is to help children understand that as constructivists they are building an internal, virtual representation of reality and it can be either a rational, Brain Friend, Success Helper version of reality or otherwise. This video explores the idea that we can't ‘be’ any word ascribed us by others or ourselves, as General Semantics theory says if we do we will experience emotional and behav...

Have a Go Spaghettio! Teaching children about Brain Bully Thinking and w...

This Have a Go Spaghettio! video is a review, reminder that irrational BB thinking is unhelpful thinking and this can be taught explicitly in the teaching and learning context. Albert Ellis, creator of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy, says the future of psychotherapy is in the school system. With the Have a Go approach, it has arrived in early childhood learning. Irrational thinking is that which stops us getting the results we desire or prefer. It dismisses or is ignorant of the reality that sometimes we may not get what we strongly desire to have; people to like us, to do well at tasks, reach our goals. This needn’t be catastrophic unless we believe it to be. The BB belief we are not OK if others think otherwise is an irrational perspective on the worth we apportion to our ‘self,’ i.e., we are worthwhile because we exist not because someone else says we are! Some children will be constructing BB beliefs that undermine their confidence and sense of agency impacting their psychologi...