REBTOZ

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...

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...

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...

This video is another look at setting up the Have a Go Spaghettio! Success Helper classroom. It offers classroom strategies that help to acquaint children with the think, feel, do connection a la Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy. Give it a try banana pie! The Success Helper Well Being Framework has been adopted by many schools in Australia. It embodies the thinking and ideas of Dr. Albert Ellis who created Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy. His ABC Theory of Emotional Disturbance is a counselling paradigm used universally to help people navigate their way through life. Ellis' therapeutic approach to wellbeing, mental health promotion/education is influenced by Stoic philosophy, Alfred Korzybski's General Semantics theory, Bertrand Russell's ideas and many more who teach that thinking, feeling, and behaving are all interconnected. The Success Helper Well Being Framework teaches children that they have the potential to manage their extreme and often self-defeating emotions...

This video is about the theoretical underpinnings of the early childhood Have a Go Spaghettio! Success Helper approach to psychological wellbeing.  Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT), is significantly influenced by philosophical and psychological perspectives. The Stoic philosophers, particularly Epictetus, emphasized the role of beliefs about events in causing emotional distress informed the creation of REBT. Albert Ellis was influenced by existential philosophers like Heidegger and Tillich, who focused on human freedom and responsibility. Karen Horney's concept of the "tyranny of the shoulds," and Adler's work also influences Ellis' REBT theory. General semanticists, such as Korzybski, also influenced REBT, highlighting the impact of language on thought and emotions.

The Have a Go Spaghettio! Success Helper approach to Social Emotional Learning is informed by Dr. Albert Ellis' ABC Theory of Emotional Disturbance and Alfred Korzybski's General Semantics Theory amongst others. Dr. Ellis created Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) and said the future of psychotherapy in the school system. The Have a Go Spaghettio! chart represents the competencies and capabilities that help us achieve our goals, develop confidence and respect for self and others. The goal is to introduce the early childhood learner to their thinking nature and to help them underrated that thinking, feeling and behaving are linked to each other. For instance the Red Success Helper, 'I'm worthwhile crocodile!' represents REBT's unconditional self acceptance, the idea that a persons worth is not tethered to how others view them i.e., that they are not what others might deem them to be e.g., dumb, smart etc. Self approval is important and learning to need t...

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...

A lot of meaning in so few words and that was the unique capability of Seuss, to condense a lot into a little. But what does this mean?  Our ‘me-ness,’ what or who we believe we are is as varied and unique as a fingerprint or an intricate snowflake. Our children I believe do as Seuss did; cram a lot into a little. They process the messages they receive and make logical deductions about what these messages mean. They determine how worthy they are as people according to the sense they make of their experience. They are constructing their reality of who they are, parsing out what makes sense to them from the stuff that is non-sense. What happens when the non-sense makes sense and the sense is nonsense? And what are they missing out when condensing so much information into a one-word meaning - good, bad, smart, ugly etc? Who or what is the ‘me’ beyond the one word label we assign our person hood? Seuss again says: “I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fanta...