We’ve recently seen the first crewed flight returning to the moon since the 1970s. Artemis II has been one of the most spectacular and inspiring endeavours the human race has undertaken in quite some time, all the more so for what’s been happening down here at the same time.
NASA’s latest trip to the moon has given us many things: new science, new craters, the first woman and person of colour to travel so far from Earth. But it has also given us something else, something that captured the whole world’s imagination: perspective. Those spectacular shots of the Earth rising and setting behind the great grey and cratered moon, or of planet Earth hanging alone and crystalline in the darkness of space. Combined, these views have shown us exactly how small it all looks compared to the vastness of space, and how fragile and precious it all really is.
A sense of perspective, achieving it and maintaining it, is a key concept when it comes to managing our emotions too. In Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT, the type of CBT we teach here at CCBT) includes the concept of ‘awfulizing’, a word used by Albert Ellis, who formulated REBT, to mean erroneously seeing something as being ‘the worst thing in the world, end of the world bad’. A more common word might be catastrophising, immediately telling ourselves that a situation or event is the worst it could be, nothing more terrible can be imagined. How often have you found yourself saying or thinking ‘this is absolutely awful, terrible and the worst!’?
And have you also noticed that the more you describe something as being the worst situation or outcome in the world, the more it begins to feel that way? Whether it’s the prospect of failing that exam coming up, or things going wrong during that important presentation, how we describe that situation to ourselves influences how we feel about it. The more we imagine it being the worst thing in the world, the more we begin to believe it is.
That’s where perspective comes in. REBT encourages clients to take an ‘anti-awfulizing’ approach to life’s challenges. Instead of immediately telling ourselves something couldn’t possibly be worse, we practice asking ourselves if that really is the case. Is this really the worst thing that can happen? What am I getting, emotionally and behaviourally by telling myself it is? Instead, can we take a more realistic assessment of the situation, and instead see that yes, it might be bad, but it’s certainly not the worst, and therefore not the end of the world, but rather something we can endure and overcome, or at least tolerate.
This isn’t some ‘worst things happen at sea so pull yourself together’ dismissal of life’s hardships though. REBT is clear that sometimes things can be very bad and very challenging, but by learning to place that ‘badness’ within some realistic perspective, our perception of the event becomes more objective, and our evaluation of our ability to see it through increases.
Few things really are ‘end of the world bad’, but in the moment it’s understandable they may feel that way. By taking a leaf out of the Artemis II crew’s book and stepping back, seeing the bigger picture and putting things in their true context and into a new perspective, we can begin to grow our resilience, and when our emotions may be beginning to go stratospheric, come back down to Earth.
Nick Jones
REBT/CBT Therapist.
Image credit: NASA. The Artemis II crew captures a faint view of a crescent Earth above the horizon on the Moon’s far side.
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