Enough Demanding!

According to cognitive or rational therapy, we suffer from emotional disturbance basically because of the irrational assessments we make about ourselves, others, and the world. These assessments are absolutist demands, obligations, “I must” and I “must”.

What happens on an emotional level when we maintain absolutist demands?

When demanding of ourselves in an unrealistic or absolutist way, we generate feelings of anxiety, depression or guilt, since we are very concerned with fulfilling the expectations we define as obligation, which will end up stressing us and blocking us.

So, when we fail to meet these expectations, we feel like losers, useless and failures, which does not help to solve the problem and ends up blocking the person even more.

Perfectionism is largely responsible for this type of absolutism. Perfectionist people demand themselves to a level that is difficult to comply with and usually postpone what they have to do for fear of not doing a certain task perfectly. As they will never reach the perfect way, because nothing can be perfect, in the end they stop doing it, “confirming” their ideas of “I’m not good for anything”, “I’m a failure”.

On the other hand, when we demand that the world turn in the direction we would like, feelings of victimhood and depression arise. When things don’t go our way, we suffer from what is called low frustration tolerance, which is the tendency to exaggerate the unbearable of a situation, classifying it as terrible and catastrophic.

Finally, if we do not accept that others have the right to act freely as they wish, even if their actions cause us pain or do not please us, and we demand of them to be as we want, we will develop feelings of anger and passive-aggressive or violent, which will do nothing but worsen our relationships with others and result in the opposite effect.

If we are aggressive with others because they do not act as we want, in the end, the only thing we will manage is to become bitter without being able to exert any control over the way others act, even worsening our relationship with them.

So what should we do?

Stop demanding. And you might be asking yourself: but isn’t this conformism? No. It’s okay that we have desires, that we want to achieve goals, that we fight because things don’t go well, that we prefer that others always treat us well, etc.

So, accept this reality and stop demanding of yourself, the world and others. Think: “I would prefer to be thinner, but I am not, but I have many other qualities and things to offer others”, “I would love for my husband to remember our anniversary, but he is human and he also fails. Besides that, he has many other qualities”, “I would like to find a job in my field of study, but if I can’t, I can also be happy in another type of job”.