Thinking Rationally About Yourself

And Other People, And Meeting People,
And Making Friends, and Relationships, Love and Sex

According to Cognitive Emotive Therapy, human interactions progress through the following steps.

Event
seeing something - for example, seeing an attractive person, which triggers
an …

Assumption
e.g. "someone that attractive would not be interested in me", which triggers...

Emotions
feelings of reticence, fear, hostility, anxiety, etc., which cause …

Actions
closed body language, avoidance, no gazing, no introduction, etc., which cause a …

Reaction
of another person to...

Your Action
feelings of disinterest or fear, which lead to…

NO CONNECTION BETWEEN THESE INDIVIDUALS IS MADE.

The "ASSUMPTIONS" (also called automatic thoughts or preconscious thoughts) are vitally important. It is through them that we decide (preconsciously) what to feel and what to communicate. But what if your AUTOMATIC ASSUMPTIONS ARE COUNTERPRODUCTIVE or just plain WRONG?

We learned theses assumptions in childhood and have reinforced them ever since because they are familiar. But what if conditions have changed and they no longer serve our needs?

For example: To a six year old, "don't talk to strangers" is a good rule. To a 36 year old, it is not a good rule. I call that "thinking with a blunt instrument." How you think (and feel) about social situations, including yourself in social situations and your own social life, are all skills. The terrible truth is that you learned your ways of thinking, feeling and communicating through the random events of childhood. Once learned, these habits tend to continue even if they fail to get you what you want. The Meet Fun People Workshops are an effort to systematically relearn those skills, this time as rational adults.

To understand more about what created all this stuff, go to the Origins Of The Problem.