REBTOZ

A global rating of another's worth is when a quality or characteristic or behaviour is abstracted from all the competencies and traits possessed by an individual and is then used to assess a person's entire personhood. For example, deciding a person is 'bad' because they do something we don't approve of e.g., they didn't wave back! When discussing this with a teacher colleague, she notes that there are several fellow educators she works with who label some students in negative global rating terms, suggesting that ‘that’s the way they are’ and that they will not change. These observations concur with my own experience as a teacher and counsellor, where a ‘fixed mindset’ mentality affects how some teachers behave towards their students, projecting a conditional acceptance of the other attitude, defining student worth in a negative way. The word is not the thing. Alfred Korzybski Albert Ellis, who created Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy, spoke of uncondition...

Alfred Korzybski of General Semantics says that we ought to be more thoughtful about the language we use and to be mindful of the messages we are trying to convey. Too many and inappropriate words can confuse understanding and he suggests that we develop a scientist sensibility (Korzybski, 2000) for listening. He talks about creating a verbal pollution free zone by asking three questions that encourage specific answers. They are: 1. What do you mean? 2. How do you know? 3. What did you leave out? Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy, created by Dr. Albert Ellis, incorporates Alfred Korzybski's ideas in his approach to psychotherapy and can be applied in counselling practice when working with young students. Mary is an early childhood student who is not travelling OK. The teacher says she is self-critical and doesn't want to do things.  We talk about Brain Friend and Brain Bully thinking. BF makes OK feelings and behaviours and BB causes us to feel not OK and we don...