An Anxious Adolescent - part 1

This is a transcript of a series of 3 counselling sessions I had with a year 10 student. I used Albert Ellis' ABC Theory of Emotional Disturbance to help him. I am a Rational Emotive Behaviour Counsellor.

This student feels anxious over something that has happened. He asked another student if he had a problem (are you OK? Can I help?). This was misinterpreted (what do you mean I have a problem?) and he responded aggressively. The student was taken aback and then began to mull over the response he received. He asked a trusted teacher if the esteem in which other teachers held him was now diminished. The teacher said not in any way but the student remained preoccupied and went to see the counsellor outlining what had happened and how best to deal with the situation.

In the counsellors office

Student: I am concerned about how a student responded to me. I am caring and I didn’t intend to offend him when I asked him how he felt and if I could help. I am worried that he thinks I intended to offend him. I want to be a nurse one day; everyone knows I like to help.

Counsellor: So you asked him if he had a problem and he didn’t appreciate the questions. He felt annoyed. Is that right?

Student: Yes and I don’t understand why he felt that way. Anyone who knows me would say that I am caring and I am genuine when I ask how someone is.

Counsellor: You are caring and considerate of others generally and you are known for this. One individual has interpreted your intentions in a negative way and you feel upset and worried about this.

Student: Yes I do. I asked Mr S. if the other teachers would think less of me because I have offended someone. I am worried about this.

Counsellor: Using the Emotional Thermometer how would you rate the intensity of how you feel? How strong is your worry?

Student: It is around 9/10.

Counsellor: That’s strong. How often do you feel like this and for how long?

Student: Most of the time I feel anxious about things.

Counsellor: How does this affect your day-to-day life? Does it help you achieve your goals or get in the way?

Student: I can’t focus on what I have to do.

Counsellor: That would be stronger than concern or worry. Do you know what

anxiety is?

Student: Yes I do.

Counsellor: From what you tell me you feel anxious a lot of the time because you want everyone to like you and you think it would be terrible if anyone thought badly of you. You really care about what others think of you.  Do you think you care too much? Do you need other people to approve of you for you to feel OK?

Student: How did you know that?

Counsellor: The belief that ‘I am OK only if others think I am’ is an unhealthy belief because it stops you from working towards your goals. You feel nervous and worried a lot of the time (unhealthy negative feelings) because you think it would be terrible if anyone knew you made mistakes or didn’t seem to approve of you.

Student: This stops me from being successful because I can’t concentrate on my work because I feel very worried a lot of the time! I worry too much about what others think of me but I can’t seem to stop doing this.

Counsellor: You have the tendency to believe that everyone must like you because you are a likeable and caring person and others should recognise this. Is this fair to say?

Student: Yeah. I just can’t handle it. What can I do?

Counsellor: We will look at your belief that you need everyone’s approval to be OK and why this is keeping you anxious. We will work on this next time we meet. In the meantime remind yourself that you don’t need other people’s approval to be OK. You can prefer it but you don’t need it.

When the Shit Hits the Fan - REBT, kids and self regulation

Shit and fans have been part of our vernacular for as long as I can remember. Pear and shaped ditto. These words together help describe colloquially situations that are unwelcome. Pain and arse also come to mind!

What to do when the proverbial hits the wotsit? The amount of the proverbial and size of the fan is significant; how big is the problem? The amount and size is relative to how we may perceive the situation or how we 'estimate' the severity of it! As Marcus Aurelius said: 

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” 

Is the problem of catastrophic proportions, pretty big or just a pain? Young children find it useful to learn about the catastrophe scale. This scale helps them see how problems can be arranged in terms of how big/significant they are to the young person. They learn to ask themselves 'is it as bad as..?' If not then this little shift in thinking will have a beneficial payoff i.e. 'this isn't as bad as I initially thought it was and now I feel less angry/sad..'

Learning how to regulate emotional and behavioural responses to situations requires some insight into how thinking is connected to feeling and behaving. Daily teaching of this will help the child develop a habit of stopping, establishing how she feels at a particular moment and then to ask 'what am I thinking/what am I telling myself about this problem? (what is my estimate of what's happening?). The child will become well practised in judging the badness of what is happening according to her own constructed catastrophe scale.

Of course in practising this yourself you are also teaching those around you. Your children are always watching you!

'Just be positive' (and other useless advice) - an REBT perspective

The 70's and 80's heralded the introduction of the 'warm fuzzies' movement. I recall a colleague saying thanks for the 'warm fuzzies' when congratulated on something he'd done. He and others would talk about giving and receiving warm fuzzies and how if you 'just be positive' things will work out in your favour. I'm all for people feeling OK and encouraging others but I would recoil at the mere mention of them (warm fuzzies).

And the word 'just' invoked a level of discomfort; as if you could flick a switch and all would be well! Just think positive. Just believe in yourself. Just have faith in yourself. You are special etc. This as useful as responding to someones concerns relative to how 'this happened to me. I know exactly how you feel. Just think positive!'

Sometimes all you can do is listen and that's good enough. We can feel compelled to fill the wordless void by offering platitudes and assurances that may not be useful to the person who is in need of a 'friendly ear.'

Now I do believe that thinking positively is a useful thing to do. There's a difference however between thinking you're OK and believing you're OK. What's the difference? The former can be fanciful and warm fuzzyish (I told myself I'm OK when you ignore me but I still feel like shit!) the latter is more substantial (I know I'm OK even if you don't think so - disappointed not depressed!)

The need to be needed?

Self belief takes work. It's a journey from intellectual insight (I understand what this means) to emotional insight (I now act and feel according to my practised and established unconditional self acceptance belief).

This work will take the student or client to places of risk where failure and possible criticism and admonishment from others may ensue. You know you are on your way when your sense of self belief remains in tact even when you are under siege; you are healthily disappointed or upset but not depressed. You resolve to try again because now you know (believe) you are OK no matter what.

This is taught to students in schools through the Rational Emotive Behaviour Education in Schools program. Based on Albert Ellis' ABC Theory of Emotional Disturbance students are taught that their worth is never contingent on how others view them or how well or badly they perform at a task.

It takes work and practise to develop new habits of thinking i.e. You

• Gain insight into what you believe to be true or false
• Challenge the errant irrational belief you may hold - what evidence supports this belief?
• Deconstruct old thinking habits and build new ones - practise, try things that you may not have tried and experience success and failure
• Develop the psychological muscle that will keep you strong especially when challenged

When a person is truly self accepting she is more inclined to open herself up to new opportunities and experiences because she no longer surrenders her worth to the opinion of others or the mistakes she will inevitably make.

Forget warm fuzzies and invest in some self acceptance learning.

REBT and Mind Stretch - learning how to struggle

Mind stretch or mind stretching has entered the lexicon of learning and teaching in recent times. DECD (Department of Education and Child Development) identifies this personal capability as being crucial to achieving learning goals.

Joan Moran explains here Joan Moran: 7 Tips to Stretch Your Mind at Any Age what she believes to be the elements of mind stretch ability. Her yoga practise and life experience has taught her some essential insights into how to get the best out of her physical and psychological selves.

One essential personal capability Joan suggests we hone is learning how to tune into what we are saying to ourselves; our self talk.

What is self talk and why is it important to teach our children? Simply self talk is the dialogue you have with yourself in your head. The concept of 'mind' is harder to define. 'What's on your mind?' you may ask. 'What are you thinking?' 'What are you thinking or saying to yourself?' The 'mind the gap' pronouncement when alighting the train reminds us to be careful and so on.

To be mindful is to be aware and self talk is something to be aware of because what we say to ourselves determines the actions we choose and the emotions we experience. Or does it? Perhaps but that's not the whole story.

I think the kind of our self talk habits is a reflection of the deep philosophical beliefs we hold and it is they which drive our actions and feelings. In other words I think our self talk is the expression of deeper held convictions (personal philosophies about me, others and the world in general).

Stretching the mind incurs risk taking: taking a leap of faith from what you know to new understandings (linking new learning to old to make new and different meanings). The skill of the teacher is to determine where the learner is and provide learning experiences that will entice the learner to strive for new, unchartered realms of knowing and experience. What we talk to ourselves about reflects what we 'know' about ourselves from our experiences to date (what we have learned).

New learning then engenders some discomfort, disorder when things don't seem the same. We may feel agitated and anxious trying to work out where this new stuff fits in with the old. We may not like how we feel but we 'muck in' anyway or we can feel so overawed that we panic and recoil from the challenge because it is so strange and alien to us. The more we are coaxed to the edge of our thinking the scarier learning can be. Do we engage with curiosity and enthusiasm for the unknown? Or do we disengage and demur, yield to the scary and mysterious?

Just thinking!

So mind stretching will help us expand our knowledge and capabilities and we will gain some sense of academic and personal confidence on the way. After all if we don't take chances how are we ever to realise our potential? But what if the learner considers the gap between what she knows and what she doesn't to be more of a gigantic chasm than a gap and the leap into the new and unknown is perceived to be too scary to even contemplate. What can she do?

Perception is the key. How does she perceive herself as a learner? Does she have a strong sense of self worth and self efficacy? (the belief that she can achieve set goals as described by Albert Bandura) Can she hang tough in difficult situations where nothing seems to make sense?

The ability to stretch the mind and to take that leap of learning faith into the chaos and struggle of the unknown can be either embraced or rejected depending on the kind of psychological muscle one has developed and can draw on in tough times.

Rational Emotive Behaviour Education (REBE) is the school wide application of Albert Ellis' ABC Theory of Emotional Disturbance. Helping children develop the personal capabilities to engage in 'mind stretch' activities is the work of teachers at Para Hills School P-7 and many others in South Australia. REBE teaches:

• We are constructivists
• We construct helpful (self and other) rational ways of thinking/believing or unhelpful irrational ones
• We can challenge and change (deconstruct) old unhelpful ways of thinking and reconstruct more helpful ones
• We are always worthwhile
• We can achieve our goals with hard work and self belief

'State of mind' teaching and learning (REBE) and the ability to 'mind stretch' are inextricably linked.

The 'What If?' of Learner Engagement - intellectual stretch and Rational Emotive Behaviour Education

DECD (Department of Education and Child Development) hosted a day of professional learning for the Montague partnership of schools. There were about 400 people there at SFERA's (a conference centre in Modbury, South Australia)

The topic was on learning and teaching in general and how we as teachers can challenge and change personal philosophies on learning. How can we engage students more to enhance their capacity to see discomfort as something essential for building on existing knowledge and capabilities; to realise new meanings and understandings. Guest speakers used many interesting terms to put across similar ideas like:

• 'intellectual stretch' - raising intellectual demand of the task
• to bring students to the 'edge of their thinking'
• encourage self directed questioning
• Mind growth - develop the 'psychological muscle' to hang tough
• Metacognitive strategies to 'enhance the ability to solve complex, unfamiliar and non-routine tasks.'

Professor Martin Westwell spoke eloquently and very humorously about how a learning task can engage learners more with the 'what if?' type of question. He used the example of the alimentary canal. What is it? What does it do? and other 'what's the answer' questions. What if there's no answer at this point! The professor gave the example of a student who asked 'what if there was no bumhole?' You can imagine how this would have inspired noisy mirth but the question if acknowledged would generate excited speculation and the children would take intellectual flight in all directions! This link will expand on these and other ideas presented on the day. Leading learning in South Australia, DECD

Professor Martin Westwell

So what do students know? What will they learn? Intellectual stretch for me is cognitive, emotional and behavioural struggle. Dipping ones learning toe in the waters of uncertainty and discomfort and becoming immersed in a world of authentic and new learning- appreciating that engagement in learning involves struggle and adventure and builds the psychological muscle and memory for the future.

There are many schools which have adopted a whole school approach to helping students develop the personal capacities to better engage in learning. It is based on a counselling model and is a psychological muscle builder. It reflects strongly the ideas put forth in the literature and discussion of the day. It is Rational Emotive Behaviour Education and it helps children develop an A+B=C philosophy i.e. How I feel and behave at C is linked to how I think at B - the think feel do connection.

So how do we caringly throw children into the deep end of learning, where they will struggle to attach new concepts to old? When do we back off our tendency to 'over scaffold' learning and to travel the conservative road of safe routines and predictable learning content? When do we take away the stress inducing need for finding the right answer when there are questions which haven't been asked yet - what if?

What if?

These questions are raised for us to ponder? What if?

The ABC Theory of Emotional Disturbance and Grit

Us teachers are caring types and we do well at helping children feel safe and secure and happy when they are with us. This is a strength but can it also be a weakness? You can read my thoughts on this here (though it is more in regard to parenting)  Bonsai and Marshmallow Kids

Bubble Wrapped Kids

Gritty students hang in there when things are tough. They seem to believe that there is a way to solve the problem at hand and won't be beaten by 'it'. But is it 'it' that is conspiring against them what ever 'it' may be to make them give in? If we are talking about a challenging maths task can we say that 'it' is making them frustrated/angry/mad and stops them from trying? Gritty kids have forged a way of believing about things that will ensure they will remain in control in difficult situations as they dig deeper and become stronger. This psychological muscle will keep them in good stead as they negotiate the slings and arrows that will come their way as life's journey unfolds.

Beliefs Actions Feelings

For me this grit we are talking about, this ability to hang tough in tough situations is part of the think (believe), feel, do (action) cycle. The ABC Theory of Emotional Disturbance created by Albert Ellis is a very useful tool to help children and adults alike to develop true grit.

It isn't 'it' but our perception (estimation) of 'it' that is key. How do students estimate their worth, ability? Are they reasonable (rational) estimations or unreasonable (irrational) ones?

If a student thinks that something (it) is too hard and that she is dumb she is more likely to give in. The resilient (gritty) person will see failure in a different way. She does not equate failing at something with being a failure.

Gritty (resilient) students have a healthy estimation of themselves, others and life in general (Rational).

Albert Ellis'ABC Theory of Emotional Disturbance is a very useful grit building tool which is being used in dozens of schools in South Australia through Rational Emotive Behaviour Education.

REBT in the Classroom

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