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...

Professor Sam Vaknin is an authority on narcissistic personality disorder. His videos are informative and well communicated which helped my understanding of this condition. A narcissists  'feed' dries up when the supply of others adulation and affirmation withers and stops. A crisis ensues when the narcissist realises that incoming approval has diminished and their idealised self is under attack. The contrived and carefully constructed 'self' is no longer acknowledged and valued by external sources. They cease 'to be' because the sources feeding their self sees through the narcissists grandiose and phony veneer. The self they have concocted and which demands the positive regard and affirmation of those they have trained to adore them, is but an irrational virtual representation of the real world. There's a disparity between the narcissists version of reality and how things really are, projecting a world of fantasy replayed on a loop inside their heads, feedi...

It is my experience that no matter how competent, experienced, or well credentialed an educator might be if your face doesn't fit you may as well look elsewhere if you're a teacher dedicated to teaching students. I've heard of teachers targeted because of their teaching competency, their popularity with students and staff. I'm speaking of the jealous and vindictive narcissist other, who cannot accept nor appreciate those by whom they are threatened. A narcissist inclined person at a school I've heard of could not contemplate that a colleague could be so popular, vivacious, and highly respected amongst staff, students, and parents. They intentionally set out to undermine and besmirch the character of their target. How was this done? The narcissist protagonist surfed the internet to get background information on their quarry, downloaded pictures and passed them on to leadership. This information was used to bully and intimidate them. I'm told they were slut sh...

Rational Emotive Behaviour Education (REBE) is a powerful teaching tool to use in the classroom at any level. It is based on REBT (Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy). It’s been around a long time, and  started out as RET (Rational Emotive Therapy) in the 1960’s. Dr. Albert Ellis created the theory and his counselling paradigm, the ABC Theory of Emotional (and behavioural) Disturbance, provides us with a framework for our teaching and counselling practice. As with all effective teaching it helps to know what we are doing and why. So, step one in our learning journey would be to understand what the ABC Theory is. ABC easy as 1,2,3… It might appear easy, but there’s more to it than meets the eye. And therein lies the genius of Albert Ellis as he took all his reading, thinking and psychotherapy practice and put it into a little package, a formula for us to use in the classroom. Indeed, Albert Ellis said a long time ago that: ‘The future of psychotherapy is in the school system.’ ...

This is warts n’ all acceptance of all the things that make up the complexity of the ‘self’,  a term we use when referring to the ‘me’ we understand ourselves to be. We decide who we are, how our ‘selves’ are constituted, by processing and interpreting the information we glean from our environment. How do others esteem me? Do they like me? Does my self-assessment, my own estimation of my worth, depend on the assessments of others? Or do I accept that any clanger, rejection, or failure don’t or can’t in themselves define me in a global sense i.e., my total worth or value. If we tend to over rely on others estimation of us, we have reached a stage of ‘needing’ rather than ‘preferring’ that others view us well e.g., likeable, respected, esteemed, funny, smart. ‘I need you think I’m OK for me to be OK.’ A student once asked me if he was a good boy. I asked what he meant and he said I like it when people say I’m a good boy. I asked him how he knows when he is a good boy and he...

The narcissist has an approval need receptacle somewhere in their subconscious. It leaks like a sieve it seems, and the more its fed by admiring others, the need to be admired never diminishes, it just intensifies. No matter how much they are adored and revered, too much is never enough. They are constantly in ‘tell me how much you love me' mode .  If we were to suggest a rule that drives this kind of need it might be: ‘I need your approval for me to feel OK about myself.’ Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy, created by Albert Ellis, would suggest, that this kind of need is characterised by an attitude of demand , a belief that one must  get what one wants i.e., the approval of others because only then will one feel OK about themselves. This is what Ellis calls ‘musturbatory’ thinking, where the person believes they absolutely  must have the approval of others if they are to feel OK, to have and maintain positive self-worth. This need puts that person at considerab...