Preview

Irrational Beliefs

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
589 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Irrational Beliefs
Report on some of your own irrational beliefs that have gotten you off course and lowered your self-esteem. Offer rational beliefs that you can take on to dispute your stinkin' thinkin'. How will changing your irrational beliefs help you to achieve your academic goals?
Our upsets are caused not so much by our problems as by what we think about our problems. When our thinking is full of irrational beliefs, what Ellis calls "stinkin' thinkin'", we feel awful even when the circumstances don't warrant it, and how we think about the issue in our lives is the real issue. I have a few irrational beliefs myself. These include my fear of public speaking, my fear of how people perceive me, and my personal appearance.
In high school I enrolled in a speech class that was required for my diploma. My problem wasn’t remembering what to say but being able to speak in front of a classroom full of people. I shouldn’t have had a problem with it at all, considering the classroom was full of people I’ve known my whole life, people I’ve grown up with. I got up in front of the class ready to go, I managed to spit out two sentences then my mind went blank. I was embarrassed, scared of what they would think about me if I were to mess up. Would they call me names? Would they think I wasn’t prepared? Would they think I was dumb, powerless, uncreative, and weak? The only thing I could think to do was run to the nearest exit, so out I went. My teacher had followed me but at that point I had tears in my eyes, I was shaking with sweaty palms. She managed to calm me down, she gave me the rational beliefs that I needed, and she believed in me exactly how I should have believed in myself.
It all tied into how I am obsessive over what others think of me, my clothes, my hair, and my shoes. I have the irrational belief that everyone needs to look at me and think that I have everything together. In reality my life is usually a mess but I have those materialist things to hide behind. My weight has

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Daniel Gilbert’s article “Immune to Reality” reveals how humans tend to make up excuses for their behavior in defence to the psychological immune system. Gilbert looks at the mechanisms we use to fend off unhappiness and spells out the details of what he calls the psychological immune system. Like the physical immune system defends us from illness, the psychological immune system defends us from unhappiness. Gilbert says, "Ignorance of our psychological immune system causes us to predict incorrectly the circumstance under which we will face". In other words, every day people are shocked because when they have thought a situation would make them happy, but that results to the opposite.…

    • 318 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In Daniel Gilbert’s essay, “Immune to Reality,” he explores how each person’s psychological immune system plays a major role in allowing him or her to cope with traumatic situations that come up in daily life. The psychological immune system is the mind’s cognitive mechanisms that work subconsciously to make the existing state of affairs more bearable. It does this by allowing the brain to make excuses for negative events, which, in turn, help the troubled individual feel better. Gilbert’s conclusions challenge the way people think and are causing some people to reshape the way they approach situations…

    • 388 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    By being honest with myself about my weaknesses and working on it day by day. Public speaking has been a fear of mine since elementary school. I was chosen to do a school play and soon as I stepped foot on the stage my mind went blank. I forgot every word because of the large audience that’s watched my every move. Since then I can say my stage freight has improved because I work with the pubic everyday in retail. I also have a c…

    • 973 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    I would always leave the class to go visit my speech teacher, and my peers had taken interest on why I needed help. One of the simple words I had trouble pronouncing was “the,” the t-h sound messed me up. Some students started teasing me, mocking me, because I couldn’t pronounce such a simple word. I never let these students get to me, I just thought I need to be smarter than them. From this moment on, I told myself I would try my best in school, for myself, not for my parents, my classmates, but for…

    • 632 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    As individuals are all different, they can respond to the same situation differently. In the same way, individuals can view and cope with their mental well-being and mental health differently. Someone with a negative view of their own situation may feel that they are to blame or not accept the consequences of their actions, they may find it difficult to deal with their own mental health and well-being. A positive individual may cope better with factors affecting their mental health and well-being. They may deal with their mental state in a more pragmatic way.…

    • 876 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The fear of going to school, and facing my classmates gave me panic attacks. To skip school, I made phony excuses such as pretending to have stomach aches. I stopped paying attention in my classes, and as a result, my grades dropped. Every time, my teacher picked on me to read in the class, I stuttered, and everyone laughed at me. Up to this day, I have glossophobia also known as speech anxiety. At the end of my grade school, I failed, and was not able to advance to fifth grade. My parents were disappointed in me. They had high hopes for me, and I shattered their…

    • 613 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Few people are fearless speakers. As students, we generally feel the rumble of butterflies in our stomachs, but the most we have to lose is a good grade.…

    • 1592 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    I couldn’t communicate very well with people because I would doubt myself wondering if I said the right thing. I would stutter, and it made me scared of public speaking. I didn’t really knew how to write a properly, or how to use punctuations and grammar. so I asked my teachers to help me to write better and learn more vocabulary, I would get tested on vocabulary, and ask for help when I needed them…

    • 281 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    On a daily basis, since around middle school I have had issues with my confidence. Nobody knows this because for one, I do not enjoy talking about it, and two, I put forth a lot of effort into hiding it. This is not to say that I am completely down on myself all the time, but my confidence issues have definitely held me back from a lot of accomplishments. One of the main reasons I have this issue has to do with my weight. Growing up, I was never a stocky or overweight kid. I have always been skinny or slender. It seemed like everywhere I went, whether it be a family event or at school, someone always had something to say about my weight or how skinny I looked. I was also often compared to my…

    • 522 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    I agree with you Jessica on having unrealistic images of yourself and the difference between looking a certain way and feeling a certain way. Cultural identity is a big deal to teenage girls because it projects her identity based on a certain groups that she associates with (Matlin, 2012, p. 124). In high school I was in the group of misfits, that happen to be mainly boys, and we had friends in other groups but we did not fit in anywhere else. Even though I projected an image of not caring about what others thought of me, I still felt I was fat and when I looked in the mirror, I saw myself as fat. I look back now and I was at an ideal weight then but currently I still think and feel I am obese. I am reminded by the doctor during every checkup…

    • 478 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    While everyone else was asking why X+Z divided by 4 equals 2, I was staring blankly at my paper praying I would not be called on. I could always be found at a desk in the very last row of the classroom, usually behind someone larger than I, that way I could “hide” and slim the chances of being asked to answer a question. In high school I failed almost every project that involved speaking in front of the class; in college I dropped any course that involved public speaking. I only felt comfortable learning in lecture style courses, that was because I only knew how to learn by listening memorizing…

    • 1359 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The hot humid air surrounding me made me break out in sweat just by sitting in the same seat for 80 straight minutes. My butt started to ache as I continuously shifted my weight from time to time waiting for the bell to finally ring indicating that class was over. The professor had been lecturing for the past hour or so and my fingers were starting to cramp from taking notes. My notes are scribbles because I am falling asleep waiting for him to finish the lecture. The words coming out of his mouth sounded like gibberish to my ears and I was unable to comprehend any of the information he said;this will continue for the next three classes I have in a role. I do not want to imagine how I will look like when school. I questioned myself if this…

    • 1729 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    why speeches are bad

    • 313 Words
    • 1 Page

    Then there’s the speaking side of your public speech, the part where you spend the night before printing cue cards, rehearsing it around the house, you then get to your big day you feel prepared you’ve rehearsed you have even brought your cue cards to school. Then there’s your big moment and you forget everything you have rehearsed, you just had last year’s public speaking champion speak before you. The butterflies in your stomach are going mad. You start reading your speech, you start stuttering so much that you keep your head down and start reading off your cue cards which are really just your speech cut up into several pieces. You finish your speech and wait for your feedback and all you get is C.…

    • 313 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Throughout my life, I have had many challenges. One in particular has prevented me from thriving, this is public speaking. To overcome this I have put myself out of my comfort zone over and over again. This began when was around 6 years old. I did not speak English yet after coming from El Salvador. This was a really big obstacle for me and eventually it started to turn into a fear. I was afraid to go up to the classroom, raise my hand, and even talk to my classmates. The fear just stuck with me throughout school. In the 8th grade I was put into a drama class. We were told we would be in a play at the end of the semester. At first all I could think of is everything that could go wrong. At least by then my English fluent. When the day came,…

    • 350 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Prepare some backup: It isn’t uncommon to forget what you were going to say. What separates a good speech from a disaster is how well you can catch yourself. It’s good to have a backup plan for the times when your mind suddenly blanks. That way, if you’re caught without something to say, you can maneuver yourself out of that situation gracefully instead of gibbering and shaking in a nervous sweat. In serious situations, you can bail yourself out with a polite way of excusing yourself…

    • 378 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays