The little man is busy learning. Learning how to mimic mamma or baba, learning how to engage in a conversation with the limited ammunition of English words, learning how to sound the difficult consonant sounds of Bengali and, amongst others, learning his ABCs. A for.., B for... continue to echo through his busy mind. With him, Mamma is also learning her ABCs at another level.
Mamma's ABC s are that of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy or REBT. Besides the Freudian therapy that helps in digging into one's subconscious and the unconscious, REBT is an opportunity to find a pattern in the chaos of the mind's life.
Let me put forth the ABCs with an anecdote.
Several months ago, i was travelling back home from a friend's place with my mom and my little man. Suddenly, the car broke down in the middle of traffic. What followed was a chaos. Finding a fitting mechanic in the late evening hours in the city appeared to be a difficult task. In the mean time, the mind was wandering and found the self to be the cause of the problem at hand. The heart felt that it must be the negativity of the self that has caused the incident of the car trouble. Let's say that this is the activating event A.
If i look at it now, i would find B, the irrational belief that the self is the cause of the car trouble and that the self is not good enough at anything. The car broke down due to some mechanical problem, and not because of the negativity settled in the self. The incident does not reflect upon the goodness of the self either.
As a result of the activating event, A, what happened that night was that the self reached a breaking down point. There was guilt and tremendous sadness. This consequence is, say, C.
The questioning of the irrational belief, B, is, say, D. How do i question B? i put forth some rational questions- Can a car possibly break down because of a feeling? Does the car bear a living heart that can be affected hence? What proves the lack of worth of the self?
What emerges from the process of A-B-C-D is what we call E, the new experience or the new philosophy. In this particular case, it is
1. the realisation that the car is a mechanical entity and can be subject to mechanical failures.
2. the negativity in the self has no such supernatural powers as to affect the functioning of a car.
3. the worth of the self can't be measured by the functioning of a car, or a lack thereof.
So, that's mamma's A-B-C-D-E.
It is a theoretical exercise undoubtedly. The number of times i can do it when am in the moment of the activating event, is still insignificant. But what i try to remember more is that it is an exercise that can be mastered with practice.
My little man struggles with his M and N , while i struggle with my Mind. We both are at the learning phase of bricks of growth.
Image from Strictly stress management and Counselling Tutor
Mamma's ABC s are that of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy or REBT. Besides the Freudian therapy that helps in digging into one's subconscious and the unconscious, REBT is an opportunity to find a pattern in the chaos of the mind's life.
Let me put forth the ABCs with an anecdote.
Several months ago, i was travelling back home from a friend's place with my mom and my little man. Suddenly, the car broke down in the middle of traffic. What followed was a chaos. Finding a fitting mechanic in the late evening hours in the city appeared to be a difficult task. In the mean time, the mind was wandering and found the self to be the cause of the problem at hand. The heart felt that it must be the negativity of the self that has caused the incident of the car trouble. Let's say that this is the activating event A.
If i look at it now, i would find B, the irrational belief that the self is the cause of the car trouble and that the self is not good enough at anything. The car broke down due to some mechanical problem, and not because of the negativity settled in the self. The incident does not reflect upon the goodness of the self either.
As a result of the activating event, A, what happened that night was that the self reached a breaking down point. There was guilt and tremendous sadness. This consequence is, say, C.
The questioning of the irrational belief, B, is, say, D. How do i question B? i put forth some rational questions- Can a car possibly break down because of a feeling? Does the car bear a living heart that can be affected hence? What proves the lack of worth of the self?
What emerges from the process of A-B-C-D is what we call E, the new experience or the new philosophy. In this particular case, it is
1. the realisation that the car is a mechanical entity and can be subject to mechanical failures.
2. the negativity in the self has no such supernatural powers as to affect the functioning of a car.
3. the worth of the self can't be measured by the functioning of a car, or a lack thereof.
So, that's mamma's A-B-C-D-E.
It is a theoretical exercise undoubtedly. The number of times i can do it when am in the moment of the activating event, is still insignificant. But what i try to remember more is that it is an exercise that can be mastered with practice.
My little man struggles with his M and N , while i struggle with my Mind. We both are at the learning phase of bricks of growth.
Image from Strictly stress management and Counselling Tutor
