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' 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...