From Inner Critic to Inner Coach: REBT Hacks for Radical Self‑Acceptance

[Music] [Applause]

Hello, I am Dr. Steve Johnson. I just happened to be the current president of the Albert Ellis Institute. I'm full professor of clinical counseling, graduate clinical counseling, and then also the director of an addictions counseling program.

Before I ever got into psychology, became a psychotherapist, my work was in philosophy. I have a doctorate in philosophy, and so this idea of the self was always a huge interest of mine. In fact, the very first paper I published as a graduate student was on the nature of the self. And so I've continued this over more years, and I want to confess. And so it's a really important topic. And so today, I want to look at how we can help our clients, and you know, even ourselves, I guess, to embrace unconditional self-acceptance. And of course, to do that, we need to kind of know what unconditional self-acceptance is. I won't bore you with a bunch of philosophy on that, but I will look at a couple or two or three different theories within psychotherapy that tend to be rather dominant views of what the self is and how maybe that impacts their the way that they do therapy.

So I'm going to pull, I'm technologically challenged, but I'm going to try to pull up a screen here of the PowerPoint that I've developed. And so let me, um, do, um, try to do this. Okay.

So, um, this, you know, just says who I am, what I do. So let's move, let's move to the next. Just to say that, um, this has, this is copyrighted because I do copyright things for the Albert Ellis Institute. So I do ask that that's not be reproduced in any form or format whatsoever unless you get written permission from, uh, from me. So the email address is really simple there: steve.johnson@albertellis.org. I'm pretty good about emailing people back if I don't get way too many.

And I do want to say I'm really thankful to Wendy Dryden, an old friend, who, you know, didn't, uh, create a presentation on this particular topic for the Advanced Practicum in REBT for the Albert Ellis Institute. This, uh, this presentation is going to be considerably different than what Wendy did, although some of the ideas, especially the very beginning, are, you know, I am indebted to Wendy and his work in that. And anything I've added, don't hold Wendy responsible. You know, don't hold Wendy responsible for, uh, for that.

So, schedule of today is, um, I want to look at, um, types of acceptance that we talk about with REBT. What is unconditional self-acceptance? Since I'll not be looking at all forms of acceptance in detail, just kind of mention them, say what they are, and move on because I want to focus in on unconditional self-acceptance, since that is the bedrock of REBT. And how unconditional self-acceptance differs from kind of conditional self-acceptance. We'll pull out the identifying characteristics of both of those. And then, more importantly for therapy, what are the consequences of embracing unconditional self-acceptance, as well as the consequences of embracing conditional self-acceptance? And then I want to look at unconditional self-acceptance's relationship to unconditional other acceptance. Some has been written within REBT. There are some differences of opinion there, but I know as a philosopher, I don't find the differences of opinion to really be worth going into because functionally, they make no difference when it comes to their REBT in practice with clients. It's more of a conceptual issue that really doesn't impact the actual treatment.

And then the other part, I want to look at three approaches to the self in psychotherapy. One that's quite, uh, prominent is, uh, the self as a schema. Another one is the self as context. And then one as the undefined, uh, undefined self. And then I'm going to look at the interventions to help clients, or at least intended to help clients, build unconditional self-acceptance. And, you know, while we have those interventions to help clients build USA, we do encounter difficulties, and clients have reasons for being a little bit avoidant or, you know, kind of cautious about, uh, building unconditional self-acceptance. And I think that's great that they, they are. I mean, you know, well, they shouldn't just take it because we say it. So we'll look at how to respond to those kinds of, uh, misgivings about embracing unconditional self-acceptance.

So, um, what is acceptance? What does it mean within REBT? Because this is going to be something that when this idea is addressed in REBT therapy, you need to spend some time explaining what it is and what it isn't to a client. Because the word "acceptance" has many different connotations, not only in ordinary language but also in different therapies. And in whatever the individual, whatever attribution they give to acceptance, what meaning they give to that. So this is what it is within REBT. Keep in mind, we're defining acceptance within REBT, and this definition is specific to REBT. So we would call this a stipulative definition. That means we are stipulating that when we use this word "acceptance" within REBT, we mean this: one, acknowledging that a situation, a person, event, or a more general term, state of affairs in time or across time, exists. We are acknowledging the existence of these entities. That these entities are also being evaluated in some ways. So, we're acknowledging the existence of it. We acknowledge that they are being evaluated. And that acceptance may or may not involve any kind of attempt to change those. Simply because I accept you, a person, doesn't mean that I'm not going to try to change them, or I'm going to refrain from changing them, right? There is no logical connection between those two or even a practical connection. So acceptance doesn't mean that we're going to engage in attempts to change situations, persons, events, or any state of affairs. However, what we will say is that acceptance of those entities may actually end up helping an individual change those entities. Why? Because if we accept the the existence of them, then we are, without unduly disturbing ourselves, then without the disturbance, then we may actually be more proficient in changing that reality. There's no guarantee on that. But, um, if we are not emotionally disturbed about it, then we will be more efficient in addressing and making, uh, making changes. By the way, that's why we always try in REBT to look at the emotional solution before we move into a practical solution. And the emotional solution involves unconditional acceptance. Because if we don't have this, then we're going to sabotage, or we increase the likelihood that we'll sabotage, the attainment of our goals, which may involve changing one of those realities.

As already mentioned, the topics of acceptance. So that's acceptance in general. So within REBT, we talk about unconditional self-acceptance, unconditional other acceptance, and that should say unconditional life acceptance. Those are the ones that you may have heard if you took a primary or studied REBT a number of years ago, right? And this is why I think it's important to kind of keep up to date on the model because REBT, like any model, is dynamic. It's going to constantly be changing as we get more research or we fine-tune the implications of the model. And in more recent years, we've talked about also unconditional acceptance of frustration and the unconditional acceptance of psychological processes. What do we mean by unconditional acceptance of psychological processes? Well, part of our psychological processes would be our beliefs. So we unconditionally accept the fact, for example, that we are demanding right now, or that we're awfulizing, or that we're having frustration intolerance, or that we're globally rating ourselves, others, life, the world. Okay. So these are the different types of unconditional acceptance that we talk about within REBT. Today, I'm going to zero in on just one of those, and that is unconditional self-acceptance.

And what is that? When we say unconditional self-acceptance, or USA, and I'll slip between those two appellations, is awareness and the acknowledgement that the self is unrateable because any criterion that you would use, or anybody would use, to rate the self is just totally arbitrary. We are very, and that's because of the second factor here, that we are very, very complex. There's a lot that goes into the creation and to the makeup of a human being. And so any criterion that we want to rate that human being globally is just arbitrary. You know, we could, for example, somebody might rate themselves as wonderful because they make a good piece of toast, whereas others may rate themselves, you know, as a horrible human being because they had an argument with their loved one, right, spouse, whatever. So it's arbitrary. You know, complex. We are extremely complex. It's best if we accept that and not take an overly simplistic view of the self.

The next one is tremendously, tremendously important, and that is that the self is constantly changing, constantly in flux. Those of you who remember way back when, you may have taken an intro philosophy class, remember in early Greek philosophy, there was this huge debate. We, in fact, we call it the Parmenidean and Heraclitean problem, as whether reality is static and never changing, which was Parmenides' position, or it's constantly in flux, constantly changing, that was Heraclitus. Okay. Well, we kind of side with Heraclitus that the self, whatever that is, is constantly, constantly changing and developing. And often we treat it, and when we globally rate it, we kind of are treating it as fixed, right, and not acknowledging the development that it could be different.

Also, the self is fallible. Albert was really, uh, gung-ho on this point. He says, we're all screwed up, and that, you know, we all make mistakes. We all have oversights, and we fail at things. That's just the nature of the beast of what it means to be human. And also that we're unique. And this is really important because the word "unique" is an absolute term. It is not subject to comparative rating. You cannot be more unique than another human being. I know people talk that way, but it doesn't make any sense. Unique means one of a type, one of a kind. Now, you can't be more one of a kind than another one of a kind. So, and then we put these all together: that we're unrateable, complex, constantly changing, fallible, screwed-up humans, and that we're unique. And we mean these unconditionally, not, I mean, unconditionally, not conditionally.

Okay. So, let's move on. How does unconditional self-acceptance then compare to conditional self-acceptance? Well, conditional self-acceptance would involve rating the self, whereas in unconditional, you just say you can't rate the self. It would be too utterly arbitrary and irrational. And, um, conditional self-acceptance may, it doesn't have to lack that the notion that the self is as complex that really it is. That may, uh, be they may oversimplify. They may have a straw man argument about the nature of the self. So they also may see it as static rather than, uh, rather than dynamic. We hear this all the time. I, you know, I'm American, and I hear in the United States people just rating other people and not accepting them, and even themselves, because we, they, we take a snapshot of the self as it is now, and then we want to generalize that across time. Makes no sense. And then they may hold that the self is can either be fully perfect or fully imperfect, you know, just black and white in terms of the conceptualization of the self. And then not acknowledge the uniqueness that somehow the self is identical in nature to another self. You know, this slips in sometimes when we as therapists are treating people. If we conceptualize their problem as we had the same problem, and we're not able to differentiate the uniqueness of them and the uniqueness of us, so that we are more cautious about generalizing, um, ourselves in understanding the other person and vice versa.

So, what are the consequences? Because this is the important part. There are particular consequences of, you know, unconditionally accepting the self, which is really great. But there are definite consequences of conditional self-acceptance. Because, um, if we do that, the, um, consequence of conditional self-acceptance is that we will accept the self based upon the existence of some other condition. So, for example, I'm only acceptable if I achieve one of my desired goals, or if I have the right emotion, or if I exhibit the behavior that I think I ought to behave. That's a conditional acceptance, not unconditional. Another way to look at this is that, um, that conditionally accepting the self may actually contribute to really dysfunctional emotions, as we're using those terms within REBT. And remember, the dysfunctional emotions within REBT are those emotions that tend to sabotage us in the attainment of life goals in the multiple domains of life, right? And so some of those dysfunctional emotions, as stimulated within REBT, based upon those consequences, are like anxiety, depression, hurt, rage, guilt, shame, etc. All of these involve a lack of unconditional self-acceptance, right? More or less. We may have it, you know, may not have it fully. Or, um, conditionally accepting the self may contribute also to really dysfunctional behaviors. We see this. And if you remember back to the primary on the second day, there's a workshop called Conceptualization of Emotion. And in the conceptualization of emotion, we, in the theory, say that for each emotion, there are very specific, there's a specific inference, there are specific beliefs peculiar to that emotion. And each emotion has an action potential. And so those action potentials we see in terms of functional or dysfunctional behaviors. Well, conditional self-acceptance may contribute to really dysfunctional behaviors that we see with certain emotions, like procrastination or avoidance that we tend to see with anxiety, or isolation that we see with anxiety or depression, withdrawing typically with depression, or attacking with anger, self-harming with anger toward the self, for depression, whatever. So we see that there are some major, major deleterious consequences of conditional self-acceptance, or can be, or can be.

Okay. So the consequences of unconditional self-acceptance is the individual is more likely, you know, contingent on the presence of other beliefs. It's not the only belief here that has, you know, good consequences. And it's, and because if we have unconditional self-acceptance, but we embrace the other dysfunctional beliefs, we're going to have some negative consequences. But let's, contingent on the presence of those particular other dysfunctional beliefs, we would say that an individual who embraces unconditional life, unconditional self-acceptance, will tend to have and experience functional emotions and behaviors. What does that mean? It doesn't mean that they feel good. It means that they help us navigate through life in all the different domains of life, okay? That means that when we unconditionally accept the self, that the emotions and behaviors that we have tend to support rather than sabotage our attainment of our desired life goals, and, and as I said, these can be in multiple domains of life: personal domain, social, professional, educational, spiritual, whatever those domains are. Okay. So that is, you know, tremendously excellent consequence of unconditional self-acceptance, right? So, um, and so it contributes to functional emotions and functional behaviors. Well, if you think about it, when people come in for therapy, they often want, um, one, to have hope. That's probably bottom line. And what helps get hope is in therapy when they begin to see some change, change in being more effective in living life, diminishing pain, and increasing effectiveness, and increasing effectiveness in reaching desired goals. We're never going to be perfect at that, but we're moving in a trajectory.

Let's take a minute because this one in the literature can get really confusing, and I've even seen on Facebook in REBT groups people debating this. And I have to, frankly, I would say as a philosopher, I have zero interest in this in the sense, in this sense. There are those theorists, REBT theorists, that say that unconditional self-acceptance has primacy over the unconditional acceptance of others, right? Or at least what they're trying to say is that mentally and emotionally healthy individuals do give supremacy to their goals and interests rather than unconditional other acceptance. Well, for me, that's an empirical issue. Whatever the research shows, then that's what it is. Opinion is not going to solve this, right? But people, I know people like to debate this. But really, if it's an empirical issue, empirical results are going to dissolve that. If we're going to be logical about it, however, from a logical standpoint, what we say in REBT is that to be a fully healthy, or, you know, as best we can, healthy human being, that we have unconditional acceptance of the self and unconditional acceptance of the other. By the way, there are those theorists who believe that unconditional other acceptance has primacy over, uh, unconditional self-acceptance. Smaller number, but there are those, and sometimes they're attached to their religious beliefs or something. But even if we say that there is, uh, if primacy is given to the self over others, since both USA and UOA are necessary for mental health, they're necessary conditions, then you need both. So it doesn't matter which one you're going to give logical primacy to, because both are necessary conditions and neither is a sufficient condition. So you need both. So it's probably in our best interest to develop both. And it would just be a logical debate, or maybe even an empirical debate, which one has primacy there.

Okay. So, um, interesting, uh, philosophical question, but not one that I think, um, pans out too much in treatment. If both of those are important to live as a healthy, healthy human being, or as effective as we can in goal attainment. Now, let's spend a little bit of time on, and I'm going to try to leave considerable time at the end so that we can discuss some of this, because usually when we get off on the self, people have lots of opinions and comments. So I want to do, I do want to give some time to that. As I look at the literature and I look primarily at second and third wave behavioral models, behaviorism, that three kinds of approaches to self seems to bubble up. One is self as schema, which is typical for cognitive behavioral CBT, at least. And then self as context, which is one sense of self within acceptance and commitment theory or therapy, or ACT. Remember, there are three senses of self within ACT. I'm not going to get into all of those today, although it is a fascinating, fascinating logical distinction that they make. But self as context is one of those that is an approach that is really important in psychotherapy. And then the self as defined by the client, which is the REBT approach. Some people, theorists in REBT, do talk about self as schemas, not uncommon. And more and more, we see some REBT therapists talk about self as context. I'm fine, I'm, but we also have self as defined by the client, which I think has some very interesting benefits that we will, that I hope that I'm able to elucidate a little bit. I'll do my best here.

Okay. So let's look at self as schema. In CBT, the self-esteem, by the way, the word "schema" was introduced into psychology by Piaget in 1926, and the meaning of schema in psychology has changed over time, and different theories conceptualize what a schema is differently. Schema often is a view of an interconnection or web. Julian at Harvard wrote a book a number of years ago called The Web of Belief. We might look at the web of belief about the self. You know, we have multiple beliefs about the self as a self-schema. Now, some people would add to that schema some emotions in addition to mere beliefs. They might include inferences in there, and they might even include action potential. But at least schema is understood as a web of beliefs about the self. And in CBT, the self as a schema is constituted by core beliefs or beliefs about the self. So when you hear core beliefs in CBT, those are beliefs about the self. They're not about other entities, they're about the self. And Judith Beck, in her wonderful book on an intro book on cognitive therapy, divides them into three major categories: a helpless core belief, so we attribute helplessness to the self, or unlovable core beliefs, or worthless core beliefs. Now, that's CBT. That's what it is, and that's their stipulative definition, and it's fine. A theory can have whatever stipulative definitions they want. But if you've read CBT, and if this is in your mind, what I do want you to to caution you is that REBT and CBT differ on this somewhat. And again, I'm not making any judgment about this, I'm just stating fact. From an REBT perspective of beliefs, the CBT core beliefs are made up of what we would call inferences and what we would call beliefs. What does that mean? Go back to like the primary when you learned about the cognitions and when they talked about beliefs, they distinguish inferences from beliefs. Both are cognitions, but the nature of those are different. What's an inference? An inference is a cognition that attributes meaning to some kind of state of affairs. So we have an experience and we attribute meaning to it, or we interpret it in a particular way. Then that would be an inference. Beliefs are not about meaning in REBT. They're not interpretations of the nature of reality. They are evaluative in nature, right? So if you look at the dysfunctional beliefs within REBT, you know, the demandiness, the awfulizing, the frustration intolerance, and the global negative rating of self, others, life, world, frustration, and in psychological processes, those are all evaluative in nature. So, for example, in CBT, they would say that the core beliefs include "I am trapped," "I am different," "I am uncared for." Well, in REBT, those are not beliefs, those are inferences because those are interpretations of your state. But they also include, CBT would also include in those core beliefs, "I am a failure," "I'm a loser," "I am evil." Those would be what REBT would see as beliefs, right? Those tend to be global negative ratings of the self. So that's important to keep in mind that there is that difference. That some people would view self as schema, and then they could treat, and CBT has all kinds of techniques for treating the self as a schema to a more adaptive and helpful schema.

Self as context, as we see in ACT. And David Hayes, who I really like, describes self as context, and I just kind of quoted this one, that self as context is the locus, it's the place from which a person's experience unfolds. So they give it kind of geographical location or ecological location. It has no form, it doesn't have verbal content, but it can be thought of as the place from which observations are made. Okay, we're going to get to this later when I look at a possible treatment for and to help an individual to engage in unconditional self-acceptance. About self as context, there are many different names that exist within ACT or even outside ACT because in philosophy, we often will see self as context. But most of the time, it's called self as context, that is their title. Sometimes, you know, it's an observing self, which, you know, Freud talked about, William James talked about. The core you, there are all kinds of ways to talk about it. I'm just going to use ACT's appellation of self as context. Others say it's perspective-taking, or just philosophical approaches, just pure awareness, or a transcendent sense of self, not a transcendental self. That there's this self that's an actual entity that exists within the world, but as transcendent. And we'll talk about that a little bit later without getting into much philosophy. So this sense of self in ACT differs from CBT's view of self as schema, that's constituted by core beliefs. Okay, these are two different ways to look at the self. REBT's approach is not like these two approaches. But remember, I said there are REBT therapists and theorists who may gravitate toward self as schema or self as context, and they can do a fine job of REBT with that. But typically, in REBT, we do the following, and that is we let the self be defined by the client. We, when, we don't generally promote a theory of self, although individual practitioners might. But when we're talking to the client, we want to look at what's the client's view of the self. And most of them are not going to give us a philosophy of the self. They're just going to tell us what, how they see the self. And then we're going to try to help the client identify the beliefs that they have about that self, whatever they take that self to be. Because then we're going to help them navigate through whether those beliefs about the self they're finding helpful or they're not finding terribly helpful. Those beliefs about that self. So however they defined it, we're going to zero in on the beliefs that they hold about whatever they take to be the self, and then look at the functionality or dysfunctionality of holding those beliefs. And if the client wants, we'll try to move them or replace the dysfunctional beliefs about the self with more functional ones. Again, what would that mean? Those that don't cause tremendously distorted and painful emotions and help the attainment of an individual to attain their desired life goals, right, in all of those domains that we mentioned.

Okay. So this one, I think, is tremendously important. What I like about this is, we are not imposing upon an individual what their view of the self necessarily should be. What we're doing is saying, whatever view you have, and whatever beliefs you hold about that, we want to help you to determine whether those are helping you or not helping you. And if you want to change them, we're more than happy, happy to help you through our techniques to, uh, have you develop a more, you know, a view of self that is more functional for you.

Okay. So I want to look at some interventions here to help clients build unconditional self-acceptance. And, by the way, there are several things that I want to say about this, and that is that the interventions that we may use within REBT that help build unconditional self-acceptance, many of them are perfectly consistent with other models, whether they're CBT, ACT, or DBT. And in this lecture, I'm not going to be covering DBT. But our interventions that we use to try to help that client develop unconditional self-acceptance tend to be consistent with these modes. The approach may be somewhat different, but often it's kind of looking in the same goal with certain kinds of similar recognitions.

One technique that we will use is the bread and butter of REBT, and that is cognitive restructuring, right? Changing dysfunctional beliefs. And it's actually not changing dysfunctional beliefs, but replacing dysfunctional beliefs with more functional ones. With respect to unconditional self-acceptance, what we're going to try to do is replace global negative self-rating, global negative self-rating, with unconditional self-acceptance. So in many ways, the bedrock of REBT would be to replace the global negative self-rating. Why? Not only will it help decrease anxiety, depression, and, and, uh, dysfunctional behaviors, but what if a client has, you know, a condition that is more chronic in nature? Let's say personality disorders, or let's say maybe a difficult case of PTSD where there may be symptomatic for quite, quite some time. If we can get them to do a better job, and no judgment there, but be more effective in unconditionally accepting themselves, then they'd be more resilient in the face of those negative symptomatology. So there are major benefits to us doing the cognitive restructuring so that we help them embrace USA and limit the incidents. We're never going to fully get rid of global negative self-rating.

The other thing that we want to do is to help clients, help move them toward unconditional self-acceptance. It's for them to begin to differentiate the self and the roles of the self. Right now, we say that the self is unrateable, but we can do some rating or evaluation of our performance within our roles that we have as a self. Okay? But to do that, we have to differentiate the self and the roles of the self. And I'll be talking about an intervention that I developed years and years ago with my, uh, good friend and colleague, Dr. James, the late Dr. James McMahon, who, we're both, we're both, um, pretty similar in that he got his, uh, PhD in philosophy and then one in psychology. So we always had these wonderful nerd collaborations on philosophical issues, but we always tried to get it down to practicality. And so one of these things that we did, one intervention that we developed, we have found very helpful with a number of individuals. So I'll share that, and you can see whether you think that might be helpful with you when you're working with clients.

The other one is, uh, really would be pretty similar to what you would find within ACT, because ACT does an excellent job of looking at metaphors. And so we will, uh, we've developed something that is like a metaphor that will help to exclude the rating of the self, a metaphor about the self that will help exclude the rating of the self. So that you may find that to be a helpful intervention.

The other intervention is helping the client view their cognitions, emotions, and behaviors, which are the Cs within REBT, right? The consequences. Helping them see those as components of the self, but distinct from the self. So that we don't boil the self down to just the cognitions. And if we have poor cognitions, that we globally rate the self. Or we don't boil the self down to our emotions, or to our behaviors. Right? In that way, we would differ from existentialism a little bit. But still, I think Jean-Paul Sartre's view of self is pretty close to is pretty close to ours. So the, but what we're trying to do in this intervention is to view cognitions, emotions, behaviors as components of the self, but distinct from the self. So we don't beat up on the self with, uh, unfortunate cognitions, emotions, and behaviors.

And then the, um, another intervention is to look, and this is going to be pretty close to ACT, and certainly how Albert Ellis talked about it, was the transcendent self. The self that is beyond, behind all thinking, all feeling, all action, all perception, all meaning-making. That it is the locus from which all of what in philosophy we call those mental acts, proceed. Okay. So these, well, let's go through these interventions. By the way, as I'm going through this, and I know I can get excited and go really fast, just message me or, you know, use that chat feature. Because when I open it up for discussion, I'm going to look through questions and answers, at least I'm going to look through those questions and sort through, as best I can, some that we need to elaborate on. Right? Because I'm, I'm fully aware that, you know, I'm finite and infallible, and so I may have missed a good number of points as we go through this.

Okay. So let's jump into it. Let's look at cognitive restructuring. This is bread and butter for REBT. This is a traditional technique for helping the client embrace USA. It is not the only one. A lot of people think that in REBT, we would only do cognitive restructuring, that it's all about beliefs. Well, no, it's not all about the beliefs, right? And by the way, in REBT, we're very interested in inferences, the meaning that you attribute to states of affairs. We're interested in the beliefs, and we're interested in behaviors. We're interested in all of that. And we want to change not only beliefs but inferences, etc., because we get more complete, more complete change. However, in terms of the relationship of events to inferences, beliefs, and emotions, and behaviors, this is the way REBT will tend to look at it. We would say that the proximate cause, the closest cause to emotions, behaviors, and physiological responses are our beliefs. A more distant cause would be the inference. Why? Because one could hold one inference, but have different beliefs and end up with different emotions, behaviors, and physiological responses. But the inference would be important. And then an even more distant cause, a contributory cause, would be the event itself. I mean, we would have nothing, none of this, if it weren't for some event. It doesn't have to be an external, because an activated event can be internal. It could be an emotion or a thought that we have. But, so we see all of these as factors or causes. The most distant cause being the event, the more approximate cause than the event would be the inference about that event, and then a closer one would be the beliefs that you have about that event. But all are important. So it's not correct to say that REBT is only interested in changing the beliefs. Not true.

So the traditional technique for helping the client embrace USA involves the client. We're going to collaboratively work with a client to identify any incidents of global self-negative self-rating, right? That's it. "I'm a loser," "I'm worthless," "I'm evil," as we pointed out as one of the core beliefs, even some of the core beliefs even identified by CBT. We want to know those. We want to help the client identify those. And then, what we do is challenge those. And we challenge those through the different debates or disputes, right? We can use pragmatic, like, "Is holding this belief helpful?" We can look at the, you know, the empirical, "Where's the evidence for this?" Now, by the way, we're not helping them try to find the evidence. We want to point out that there is no such evidence, it doesn't exist, right? And then the logical one is, "How does it logically follow because you want something a particular way that it must be that way?" Well, there is no logic to that. So we're not trying to help them find a logical reason, we're pointing out that no such relationship exists. So, we'll go through those debates. And of course, there are others: friendship, metaphor, all kinds of those things. And then what we want to do is, once they begin to see this is not helpful, these are not helpful for attaining life goals and eliminating really unhelpful negative emotions, then we will try to replace that global negative suffering with unconditional self-acceptance. That's a process. That doesn't happen quickly, and it doesn't happen overnight. And often, they will come to conditional self-acceptance before they ever embrace the totality of unconditional self-acceptance. And even when they embrace unconditional self-acceptance, which is true for you and you and I, is that we don't always do that. We slip, we make mistakes. That's just the way we are, right? And then continue with cognitive restructuring. We help them see that, you know, look, yeah, sure, you failed at doing this, but that doesn't make you a failure as a human, right? Because in logic, we would just say that's the composition fallacy. What's true of the part is not true of the whole. So you failed at this doesn't mean that you're a failure as a human being. Logically, it doesn't make any sense, right? You're just a fallible human being. And I think there are another ways that I may not be able to help solve some problem or forget a solution for somebody, but that doesn't make me worthless as a person. It just means that I have my limitations. I can't solve everything. I can't help everybody with their own problems. I can't always help myself with my problems because I have limitations. Okay. So embracing that view is a much more loving, accepting view of the self. And while there are times in which I act in ways that may violate my or another person's moral code, that doesn't make me evil. Now, remember, guilt typically involves a demand, right? That I should have lived up to my moral rule, or I shouldn't have violated it. And then for it to be guilt, then it, we globally rate the self because we didn't live up to that moral or ethical rule, or we violated it. And so with unconditional self-acceptance, we go, "Yeah, sure, I, that's a moral rule. I really value that rule. It's really, really important to me. I live my life in part for that. But, you know what? Sometimes I mess it up. Sometimes I do immoral or unethical things." Right? And when I have, when we talk about that with clients, and I go, and I have a word for someone who does immoral, unethical things at times, I call them a human, because that's what it means to be a human. Now, we're going to get to why not doing this can be problematical. Because as I said, I direct an addictions program, and I know that when someone violates their rule about not using a substance, they will have a tendency to beat up on themselves and feel really guilty because they say, "I should not have done that. I'm no good for having done it." But, you know what? It's so self-defeating to do that. Because if I'm, if I'm a person who is addicted to some kind of substance or behavior, then, and I beat myself up and I make myself feel really, really bad about doing that, then the thought often pops into my head, "But, you know, there's always one thing that makes me feel better." And often that will be taking that substance or engaging in that behavioral addiction or process addiction. So really, that lack of unconditional self-acceptance when one fails or slips or lapses or relapses can be a step to relapsing again, you know, because you're, or continuing to use the substance. So we break the cycle somewhat, not perfectly, when we embrace unconditional self-acceptance.

Next one. This is the one that I worked on with Dr. James McMahon. Now, this is real easy because you can just get a piece of paper and do this with your clients. Right? So in this, we have a circle or something, and we put the word "self" in there. And we say about that, "Let's not rate that. Let's leave that as, you know, unique and unrateable." Right? But, you know what? They're going to rate something. So what we can try to do is help them rate their behavior within a role. So what I will do is I'll have it, you know, as you see the heading there, "Roles." Then we'll just go through and identify the roles that they have as a self. So if I, my role would be, right? My role at the Albert Ellis Institute. I'm a husband. I'm a son to my mother and my deceased father. And I'm a father to my two daughters. I'm a subscriber to the New York Times. I'm a, you know, a U.S. citizen. I have all kinds of roles that I engage in. Now, notice the lines there. And it's not because I'm old and shaky. The lines are not lined up. Is that, and I'll get to this in a minute, we're going to have them write down the role worlds that are most important to them will be closer, will be on the lines that are closer to the self. Right? So for me, so for me, I guess one of my top roles is being a father to my two daughters, right? If I make a mistake in that role, I'm going to have a greater likelihood of globally rating myself. So see the bottom line that goes very close to the self, because that's such a valued role for me. Then I would write "father." Whereas the line that's in the middle, that's farthest away, probably the subscriber to the New York Times, because let me mess up there, I'm only out, you know, whatever the cost of the newspaper is. You don't have to leave it out on the lawn and it gets soaked by the sprinkler system. I'm not feeling terribly guilty. I'm not going to beat myself up as much about that as I would if I make a big blunder with my daughters. Okay. So we see how this is.

Now, let's talk about what do we do with this? So we've already said it. We're going to identify the different roles of the client. We're going to have them prioritize the roles in terms of the importance to them and write those on the lines. The top priority on the lines closer to the self. And then we're going to have a discussion about a recent event or situation. And we often do this in REBT. And I think it's really important to do this. If we don't get an example, then the discussion is too vague. It's hard for them to generate the beliefs. It's hard for them to generate the emotion, and therapy can often not go very well. But if we have a concrete situation, then we often get clarity in the belief, the dysfunction, even clarity in the action potential, or even the behavior that was associated with it. So we want them to identify, as best they can, a recent incident or situation in which the client, within their role, they were going to identify that role, right? And then they took some action or behaved in a particular way. And we name that action or that behavior within that role. Okay. We're not done yet. Let's continue a little bit more here. And then we're going to have the client assess whether that particular action or behavior either helped them or impeded their attainment of a desired goal within that role, within that role. So we keep it all within the role. And so, what was your goal within that role that either was helped or impeded?

Next, we see that for those roles that are most important to the client, the client is most likely to evaluate their value or their worth as a self. And so knowing that, we can help them be more cautious about those desired, desired roles, important roles to them, that they're going to be more likely to be illogical about them in terms of engaging in global negative self-rating. Okay. And then what we want to do is to help the client also identify the value that the client is trying to achieve within the role, right? Because sometimes there are multiple values within that role. And so we need to see which value they move toward, which goal did they move toward, or whether there was some kind of role, you know, there was a value conflict or goal conflict in that role. So they could better evaluate the self. Right? What are we doing? We're complexifying their behavior and having a solid, more empirical basis for assessing the helpfulness or unhelpfulness of their behavior within that role. But it's always within the role, never about the self. Okay. Just making that distinction can be quite helpful.

Now, here's one that is very close to one in ACT. And so what we do with this is, I mean, you all have been on a plane. And, you know, sometimes it's, I've been on going up on a plane where they just had to de-ice the wings, and it's, you know, there's ice coming down and snow coming down. But as soon as I get to a certain point beyond the clouds, then it's blue and calm and wonderful. Okay? Or, you know, same thing in a thunderstorm. I remember I had a flight right before COVID hit, was flying from where I live up to New York. And we had to keep our seatbelt on, and we were bouncing around, you know. And I mean, atheists were praying, it was so bad, you know, it was just unbelievable. And so what we do in this metaphor, and we do this, I do this with my clients, is to say, you know, the part below the clouds where we see the weather, you know, the rain, the wind, and all of that stuff. But let's let those represent our beliefs, our emotions, and our behaviors. Let those be there. Now, we can, we can look at the helpfulness of those. But treat the self as the part of the blue sky. And so, you know, look at your beliefs, examine your beliefs, challenge beliefs, emotions, behaviors, try to change some of those, you know. But when you get to the self, let it, let it be unrated. You know, just accept it. And so often, I will say, but my clients are kind of activated, I'll go, "Let's just take a minute here. We're going to come back and look at those beliefs and emotions and behaviors."

We're going to look and do cognitive restructuring. But I wonder what it'll be like for you if you recognize that is changeable. And then if we try to kind of conceptualize or visualize ourself moving to the realm of the self that is not to be rated. It's the blue sky. So often, even in therapy, I'll say, "Go to the blue," or they'll say, "Oh yeah, that's what I need to do. I need to go to the blue." Especially if in conditions like PTSD where there's huge sympathetic activation that makes it very hard for them to concentrate, they're triggered. Or in a, you know, really acute anxiety attack or a panic attack. You know, so that we can help them move toward toward the blue. If they're too physiologically aroused, we may need to do some grounding exercises prior to doing something like that. But with time, there may be able to engage in this. So it's a metaphor to help separate the self from the beliefs, emotions, behaviors, etc.

Okay. And the next one is another way to conceptualize it for emotions is to see that the self encompasses but doesn't it cannot be reduced to emotions, cognitions, and behaviors, right? So while the self has thoughts, cognitions, while the self has emotions, functional or just function dysfunctional behaviors, functional or dysfunctional, the self is the self is still the self. And so accept the self, right? And when the self has emotions, cognitions, and behaviors, let's do what we can to change those. But at the same time, accept the self that is holding. So you can think of the self as a container in this particular instance for those. But it cannot be reduced to, cannot be reduced to that, right? Not oversimplified. And we cannot evaluate this out. We could, but it wouldn't be helpful to evaluate the self on some part of or aspect of it, the emotions, cognitions, or behaviors.

Okay. And then there's the transcendent self. You know, this is the one that, I don't know if you've, you know, if you ever took a philosophy class and they made you take read the transcendent, the transcendence of the self by Jean-Paul Sartre. He's arguing against who's here without naming him and who's wrong thought that the self is this actual entity. It's a transcendental self. And and and Jean-Paul said in an example that was rather interesting. He said, "Think about it. When you are what looking at a tree and you're, you know, like it's the fall and it's the beautiful leaves, beautiful foliage, etc., and you're looking at the tree, you are not aware of the self looking at the tree. There's no awareness of the self at that point." In fact, if you did so, Jean-Paul said that it would be like a knife cutting through your experience. We don't want the self popping up in our mind while we're trying to enjoy the beauty of that tree. And so he said, "So when does the self come in?" He goes, "Well, let's say someone said, 'Hey Steve, what were you doing, you know, earlier today?'" And I went, "Oh, I was looking at the self. I was looking at the tree, rather." And so that's where the "I" comes up, right? And that's because I'm reflecting on the experience, and then the sense of self comes up. So that's what we mean by the transcendent self. It's not we're not having the awareness of it in the experience. We could shift our attention to it, but we're not having awareness. But it is that behind the self that is behind the scene of the tree. It is the locus from which the seeing of the tree happened. And it is the locus for our thoughts and our behaviors, our emotions, physiology, physiological response, all of these kinds of things. And so I often call this the, um, the Wizard of Oz notion of the self. You know, the Wizard of Oz was behind the curtain directing all the other stuff, right? And all the other behaviors and incidences, events, etc. And so what we want to say is this self from which all our experiences come, just doesn't, it's just there. So there's no need to evaluate that. It's just there. If you want to change something, change your beliefs, change your behaviors, change your emotions. You don't want to change the self that is doing the observing, right? What do I want? Why would I want to change the self that is observing beauty or observing things that may be potential threats and all of that? We, the gun itself is really, really, uh, really, really important. So once we see this and go, is, you know, that is real, that stuff is really deep. It is watching all that you do. Accept that because that's a valuable, valuable set of behaviors that that kind of self is engaged in, right?

Okay. So now let's move to some things to remember. And I promise I will leave time to go over this. Here's some really important things to remember, I think. And that is, please don't get caught up in trying to figure out the right way to teach the client about USA. There is no one right way. The best way is the one that works with a given client. So we're going to, this is an exp, these, we take an experimental approach, right? We try things out and see what works. And in fact, some people go, we'll say, we may have an intervention or between they'll go, "Well, I tried and it didn't work." And I went, "Um." They go, "So what do I do?" I mean, try something else. I mean, what else are you gonna do? I mean, we can't sit there and lament that, you know, that one didn't work. I mean, we may analyze whether we, you know, how well we performed that intervention, you know, but at some point, you go, "Okay, maybe that doesn't work. You move on to something else." So don't get caught up being about the right way. Try to find a good way or a good enough, a good enough way, right?

And the other thing is to remember that this, this takes time. The client is going to need to practice, practice, practice. Aberdell said they need to push their butt. They need to practice this so that it's learned. Why? Having embracing unconditional self-acceptance is a habit. It is no more than a habit of thought. And so habits need to be practiced. If we don't practice them, to, you know, Freud said before he saw his therapy is taking the unconscious and making it conscious. And I think that in our EBT, one of the things that we're trying to do is take that which we're conscious about and making it unconscious. So the, but I under, I'm talking about this is we're taking some behaviors that we have to think about, like accepting the self, and making them habits so they're kind of unconscious. We don't need to go, "Oh, you know, in this moment now, I need to unconditionally accept myself." That will be what we habitually do. We may not be perfect at it, and there may be triggers with the environment that impact or modify our ability to handle, you know, embrace unconditional self-acceptance. So it needs to be practiced. It's a habit.

And then there are multiple ways in which a client can misunderstand the concept of USA. And it's important for us to realize this because simply because, as you know, I recommended that we really talk to the client early in the therapy, very early in the therapy, about what I'm, what constitutes unconditional self-acceptance. It doesn't mean that they're going to remember all of that. I mean, I don't remember all of that at times, you know what I mean? When I get really aroused about something. And so we're going, and so they may begin to form some aberrant ways to look at USA or misunderstand the concept or drift into, um, you know, some habitual ways of looking at it that are not helpful. So we, it's helpful for us to be diligent and check in with their understanding about this every once in a while. I mean, it's not like a pop quiz that we give them, but it's something to check in with, especially if we see them to be coming engage in a behavior that seems to reflect conditional self-acceptance rather than unconditional self-acceptance.

Why might a client resist unconditional self-acceptance? This is related to the last point that I just covered. The client may think that acceptance means they're just giving up. Well, that's not what it means. It doesn't mean giving up. It means acknowledging the reality of something and acknowledging that there will be some evaluation. But we're not just passively giving up. There's a difference between giving up sometimes and tactically retreating for a moment, right? Acceptance does not mean avoidance. We accepted. Is not just, I mean, we could, someone could give up, but that's not acceptance. That's conditional acceptance and having frustration and tolerance about it, perhaps. But when we accept, we're not just giving up. So that needs to be clarified. Acceptance means that I won't be motivated to change for the better. We're going to get to that in just a few minutes. Acceptance means that I approve my weakness and failures. No, we're not saying it approve of those things. We're saying accept the reality of them because if you accept the reality of them rather than then beating this self up, you may be more adept at dealing with the weaknesses and failures and changing them. They may think that acceptance means that I'm just too weak to work for change. No, acceptance means that this may be a difficult, a difficult thing to do. It has nothing to do with you being too weak to work for change. But when you believe that you're too weak, that may make working for change more difficult. It may get in the way. They may think that acceptance means that I'm avoiding undeserved guilt. Well, you know, guilt, then we can help them through the conceptualization of emotion, realize what guilt is. There's a difference between being guilty of doing something and experiencing guilt as a result of doing that. Of course, we may be guilty of doing something, but you having remorse about it rather than guilt might be more helpful in the long run. What's the difference between remorse and guilt? The remorse says, "Yeah, I did it. I did something that wasn't great." But they don't beat up on the self. They don't globally negate the self. They accept the self. And so, and sometimes we need to distinguish this. And partly is, I think in English, it's a problem because there's the word guilty and guilt. And so many people erroneously think that if they are guilty of something, that they absolutely must experience guilt, even though it may be severely deleterious to them. They may think that acceptance means that they will never achieve their valued goals, that they need to beat themselves up to reach a valued goal. Well, no, in fact, accepting the reality of the challenge, etc., and in it, maybe you mess things up every once in a while, we'll help you, may help you achieve your valued goals. So these are erroneous beliefs that clients may have. They're common. You know, it's not horrible that they have them. They just have them, right?

And then let's how can we take something like unconditional self-acceptance and mess it up? Unconditional self-acceptance is wonderful. We've already seen the wonderful consequences of it, the benefits of it. But we can make a bad thing, we can mess up a good thing, like if we hold irrational or dysfunctional beliefs about unconditional self-acceptance. Like, "I must unconditionally accept myself at all the time." Oh, really? How is that helpful for you? That's putting a lot of pressure on yourself, right? That is, you know, being conditionally accepting about being having unconditional self-acceptance. That's just killed the, the wonderful nature of the unconditional self-acceptance. Or it would be awful if I failed to unconditionally accept myself. No, it wouldn't be awful. It might just be problematical. It might get in the way for a while, but you can change that. Or "I can't stand the thought that I might not unconditionally accept myself." Right? So frustration intolerance about about that. Demanding perfection about your unconditional acceptance. Or "If I don't unconditionally accept myself, then I'm the worst form of failure as a human being." No, if, so all we have as human beings are the worst form of human being, right? Because all of us fail to unconditionally accept ourselves at times. So you see, we can, if we add these irrational beliefs about unconditional self-acceptance, then we cause, we can cause some problems. So we want to check on this. This is like a, this is a meta-disturbance about unconditional self-acceptance.

So what are the difficulties in embracing this? One is that often we have these values. And you know, logotherapy is really good with this, and some about clarifying those values. And those are really important. We want clients to hold their personal values and live out those values as best they can. But being demanding about the attainment of those values rather than embrace those values as kind of directives for desirable behavior won't be helpful. You know, if you demand that you attain your value, like, "I must always, you know, attain social justice. I must act out of social justice." If I do that and I beat the stuff up, then I decrease the ability to act out for social justice, right? So see those values as regulative ideals rather than demands.

What about they focus exclusively or repeatedly on one act or one behavior or even one series of behaviors? So what I often get with clients is, though not only did I fail this time, but I have failed several times. So I'm going, "Okay, so that's one series of behaviors." And we're taking that series of behaviors and we're using it to define the self, rather than seeing this self as a dynamic process that is never fully completed or attained, you know, which if we embrace, would really maximize the possibility that we have hope that we're not condemned to living out some sense of self.

The other thing that's really important, and that is to realize that there are factors outside the self that impact the attainment of desired goals. You know, Aristotle often is misquoted. Many people say that Aristotle believed that virtue is in right desire. So that we need to desire what is good. That's not what Aristotle said. Because if he did, then we would be able to say, you know, "Oh, we have virtue if our desire is right. We lack virtue if our desire is for that which is not good." Aristotle said that virtue consists in right desire and good fortune. That means external events. Sometimes external events make it very difficult for you to reach your desired goals, even if those goals are grounded in really, really great values. So let's realize that we do not control the universe. We don't control every factor within our own personal environment.

And then if we continue with these difficulties, is if we fail to realize that often we have competing values that we desire the attainment of one, but when, but they're also the attainment of that may conflict with attaining another, another value. So for example, one of my values might be truth-telling, but another value might be being sensitive to another human being. So sometimes if I, you know, really act out of truth-telling, it may come across as insensitive to another human being, right? And so I've got that conflict of that competing values. You know, that's why we have ethics, right? Ethics is to try to help us do that. Otherwise, if this was simple, there would be no need for ethics. Or if we irrationally believe that we need to punish this self or put the self down to motivate the self, you know, what, I don't know where that is written, but so many people believe in that, that you need to whip the self into shape. Well, what about acting upon the desire to achieve your value goal rather than beat the self up, rather than punish yourself? Why don't you just do it because you would like to achieve it and recognize what gets in the way of you doing that, right? Kind of be nice to yourself or realistic about yourself rather than treat yourself as something that needs to be whipped. Or failing to consider the impact of being a fallible human being. Being a human means we make mistakes. We're responsible. We are really responsible to a large degree for our actions. But accepting that responsibility does not conflict with unconditional self-acceptance. I could say, "I am responsible for what I did here, and that deed was bad." But I can unconditionally accept myself. So there's no contradiction there.

We're almost done. So let me just, I'm going to finish this by just saying, these are, if it's been a long time since you've taken some stuff that you know at the Ellis Institute or one of its affiliated training centers or elsewhere on unconditional self-acceptance and related topics like unconditional other acceptance, how to integrate meaning and values into unconditional self-acceptance, then, you know, just go to the website. By the way, we have a new website at the Albert Ellis Institute. It really looks nice. I used to say that our old website looked like it was designed in the 1940s if we had had the internet then. The other thing is watch for announcements on REBT Education and Learning or the REBT Group, which is another really fantastic Facebook group. I mean, join both. I mean, and you will get all kinds of announcements and programs, etc., and sometimes even free events that you can look at, you know, such as this one. And also, if you go to, I've created a YouTube channel. And if you subscribe to, I just called it our REBT Education and Training Channel. So if you go there and subscribe, then you will get as soon as I post the video on YouTube, you'll get it. Okay. And so, lots of different ways to do this.

So why don't I stop right there? Prepare yourself because you're going to see my face now. What kinds of questions do you have? So let me see. Some people have already. Someone said, "Can we receive the PowerPoint?" I don't share the PowerPoint because it's copyrighted and from the Ellis Institute and myself. So I don't do that. That's why I run these things so that you can watch these, this one particularly for free and take notes. I'm sorry that I have to do that, but sometimes people have not used them properly and caused some problems. Okay, so sorry about that, but take all the notes you want and I'll be doing another one sometime so you can get on there again and take some notes.

So how do you accept ourselves when other people think negative about us? What arguments can we use? Well, you don't need to argue with anybody else. So I mean, you just want to change, you just want to change the views that you have about yourself, the beliefs that you have about themselves. I mean, sure, it would be nice if others thought very highly of us, but they won't, and that's not the end of the world. It's, you know, there are some cookies and some good things that come from people thinking, you know, really good about us, but it's not a requirement. And unconditional accepting yourself is not necessarily going to come from others thinking well of you. You know, this is why we look call it unconditional self-acceptance rather than unconditional, unconditional, unconditional positive regard. Unconditional positive regard is really about, you know, I accept you because so that you can be acceptable to yourself. No, I accept you because that's unconditional self-acceptance. But it is my duty to work on unconditionally accepting myself regardless of what other thing. I mean, are we going to be perfect at that? No, of course not. We're not going to be perfect at anything.

Is there something like unconditional acceptance of the critical? Yeah, we can unconditionally accept the reality of the such of the situation, right? It's there. Now let's take a look at this. Let's take the example of anxiety, okay? So anxiety typically, the inference of anxiety is that there is a threat, a threat to my integrity or to, you know, my being itself, my or a threat to my comfort, right? So discomfort, anxiety, or ego anxiety. So it may mean that I have attributed to the meaning to some of the external event that it is a threat. So we could evaluate that as, "Yeah, that's something I really didn't like. I don't like that threat." So we're evaluating it. I accept the reality of it, though, and then I work on changing my beliefs about the inference. So let's say that my inference is that, you know, someone comes up to me and they call me, they say, "You know what? I think you're going to get fired from your job." Ah, I hear that as threat, right? That's my attribution to those words. And so that's the interpretation I get. And so there I see this as a threat. And then, but that, that is a step toward, that is a cause, a distant cause of my emotional response, but not the direct cause. Because I could have that inference that there is a threat, but then I could have different beliefs. One belief might be, "Oh my gosh, that's horrible." So then I might get really anxious. Or, "Oh my gosh, that means I am absolutely worthless. I'm too weak to deal with it." So another set of beliefs and maybe a different set of emotions. The first may have caused anxiety, the second one depression. Or "I can't believe that I'm going to, they're no good. I'm going to show them." So then I get angry. So the beliefs that I have about that threat are really what's going to cause my emotions directly. But I, of course, will evaluate the threat as not helpful, not helpful.

Can you describe the as what can you describe the unconditional self-acceptance is narcissistic and and psychopathic? Well, you know, if we have unconditional self-acceptance, and it is contingent on others seeing us as having that, then that's not real unconditional self-acceptance. So often the narcissist really believes that they need the admiration and they deserve the admiration of others, but that's contingent. That's contingent. So that's not true unconditional self-acceptance. Or if you have, you know, if you evaluate, you know, for good mental health, if you evaluate yourself as, you know, too high, that is not unconditional self-acceptance. That's rating the self as deserving of whatever you want, right? So neither narcissism nor psychopathology of a psychopath is engaging in what we mean by unconditional self-acceptance. Good questions. All of these are good questions.

Okay, anyone else? We have about five minutes left. Well, if there are no more questions, then I guess we can, we can call it a day. And I thank you guys so much. There's a lot of information. Like somebody may have questioned, "Oh, there are people are some people are just saying thank you." Well, I thank you very much for thanking me. And so, um, please stay tuned. Go on REBT Group or REBT Education and Learning on Facebook. And I go to the institute's website and look at what's being, what's being presented, you know, so you can get so many things at reasonable cost on REBT. So love to hear from you. And thank you guys so much. And I hope you do, you found it helpful at some level and that you get involved in some of the other. Please check out the YouTube thing. And if you subscribe, then you're going to get way ahead of the game, right, in terms of being able to and register because this event, for example, filled up very quickly. And then we had to do another one, and that one's already filled up. So I thank you guys for being so interested in being so devoted to this model and wanting to learn it and as best you can. So I really do appreciate, do really do appreciate all of you. Okay. And again, don't, I mean, if you're having trouble getting on some of these, don't forget to take a look at the, you know, the really great affiliated training centers that we have that are running programs. So take a look at them. They're listed on the Albert Ellis Institute website. And then just go check their programs out and and and connect with them. And then you can even get it in a language that is, you know, more proficient than my really fast New York talk. Okay. So, thank you all very much and have a wonderful, wonderful day. Bye.