Cognitive disputing: If you are feeling anxious about a potential threat up ahead, you can ask yourself:

§        Why must I avoid this threat? (There is no evidence that what exists must not exist. And there is no evidence that what does not exist must exist!)

§        Where is the evidence that this will definitely happen? (There may not be any!  How many things, in your experience, definitely happen once predicted?  Certainly not the weather.  Marketing predictions?  No!  Political predictions?  No!  Medical prognoses?  Some but not all of the time!)

§        How does it help me to keep focusing on this possible threat? (It probably doesn’t, especially if I am exaggerating its likelihood or intensity!)

§        How does it follow logically from the fact that I’d prefer it if I wasn‘t facing this potential threat, that therefore I must be able to avoid it? (It never follows logically! There is no logical connection between preferences and musts).  

So if you keep questioning and challenging your irrational beliefs, you will eventually undermine them. This will be explored further during the Homework Assignments. 

Once you have been doing cognitive disputing, through the use of questions, for a little while, you will be able to move on to the next stage, which is when you arrive at a consciously held effective new philosophy. This will be discussed below. But first, I want to mention another form of “disputing” of your irrational beliefs: 

Behavioural disputing: To dispute an irrational belief (iB) behaviourally means to act against the belief.   Let’s say you believe that if you go on stage you will make a fool of yourself and everybody will laugh at you, shun you, or treat you as a “silly idiot”. These inferences (or personally meaningful hunches or guesses) may then trigger the rational belief (rB) that “I’d prefer to avoid that outcome”. This will then normally have the effect of encouraging you to move to the next step, which is to elevate your preference to the status of an absolute demand: “I must not be exposed to such an outcome. It would be awful if that happened. Therefore I will avoid this outcome by avoiding going on the stage”. To dispute that belief behaviourally, I might suggest that you try going on stage to demonstrate to yourself that you can stand the result; you won’t die; it won’t be awful, even if it is quite bad (say 20 to 30% bad); and that most people will not shun you for your less than perfect performance. 

However, this process of acting against your feelings is counter-intuitive, and therefore difficult to do. Difficult, but not impossible!  It is also against a lot of the Californian nonsense we have imbibed since the ‘sixties - such as “go with your feelings, man!” But your feelings are not a good guide to action, because they are produced by your thinking (or unconscious attitudes) which can be screwier than a corkscrew tree!  So the first and most important rule of behaviour change is this: If you really want to be able to produce behaviour change in yourself then you’d better be prepared to force yourself to behave differently than you feel.   That’s it. Full stop! 

But because humans “are crazy” (meaning they frequently but not always behave in self-sabotaging ways), they think they should always be able to avoid doing those things that seem to result in discomfort. But that is part of the problem, not part of the solution. Every time you refuse to go on stage (or in a lift, etc.) to avoid feeling uncomfortable, and ultimately anxiously over-aroused, you reinforce the belief that you “must” avoid that particular discomfort because it would be “awful” to be so ridiculed or threatened. To dispute these beliefs behaviourally, you just get up and go on the bloody stage (or into the lift, etc.) and to hell with the consequences. In the coaching trade the acronym for this kind of activity is: JFDI!  This is an embellished form of Just Do It!  Tell yourself this: “If I die, I die!”  If you go on the stage (or whatever) repeatedly, even though your knees are knocking and you feel flushed, and your breathing is difficult, you will - each time - be giving the lie to your irrational beliefs (iB’s) - such as “I can’t stand being on the stage”; or “I must be able to avoid such intense discomfort!” You will discover that it is not “awful” to perform badly in public. You certainly can stand it.  And where is this law of the universe which states that you, alone among all people, “must” never be exposed to such discomfort and difficulty? It doesn’t exist! 

Even if you perform badly, how could that make you a bad person, a loser, a fail-ure?  It couldn’t, because a bad person would always and only do bad performances, acts and deeds. And do you always and only do bad performances, acts and deeds? Of course not. So gradually, over a period of time, with repeated behavioural disputing, you would undermine your absolutistic irrational beliefs (iB’s), and replace them with more sensible, preferential, rational ones. Together, these rational beliefs (rB’s) will constitute an effective new philosophy, which is point E in the ABC(DE) model.