1. Her friend asked Lacy for the answers on the final exam in math class. She didn’t give them because she knew that if she got caught, she would fail the class. Her friend yelled at her in front of mutual friends at lunch.

1. She felt hurt, used, betrayed, persecuted, and disrespected.

2. Her belief system tells her that her “friend” shouldn’t have done that to her, it was not fair and she must feel bad about it. Furthermore, she must be punished for her desire to cheat.

3. Lacy now is concerned that her other friends will side with the “friend” who asked her to cheat. She might lose all her friends just for doing the right thing. With no friends at school she might just want to go on independent study for the rest of her senior year.

4. Challenging the irrational belief involves asking questions about the validity of Lacy’s assumptions like: Are you sure your other friends will side with the cheater? Have you asked them what they would have done? Is it your job to make sure that the cheater gets what she has “coming to her”?  Do you have control over what other people say and do? What do you have control over?

The result: Lacy has developed this plan

1. Jose can’t deal with his girlfriend’s clingy behavior. She is jealous of other girls even talking or looking

at him. She thinks she must be with him every waking moment of every day. After two years he finally decides he has to break up with her. The next morning, he learns that during the night she took an overdose of sleeping pills and died.

1. He felt guilty, selfish, ashamed, deep sorrow and profound regret.

2. His belief system tells him that her death is all his fault. He should have seen it coming. He should have gotten her some help. It should have been him that died.

3. Jose now has thoughts of taking his own life because he “can’t live with the guilt”. He knows that he will never be happy again. These kinds of things can’t happen!

4. You must help Jose challenge his irrational beliefs with questions like:

The result might be:

1. At a party your friend encourages you to have a few drinks, and you do. When you get home, you are confronted by your mom and get grounded for a month.

1. You feel angry, mistreated, not trusted, screwed over by your friend and pissed off at the punishment you received.

2. Your belief system says: it’s not your fault that you got drunk and drove home, your mom has no right to ground you…you’re an adult, If you are grounded you will miss out on prom and your entire junior year will be ruined. Everybody will hate you for wrecking the dance for everyone in your group.

3. The only thing to do is go to live the rest of the school year with your dad who lives in Florida…there are hot babes there anyway.

4. Questions to ask yourself about your irrational beliefs: The result could be:

1. Eddy wants to join the marines right now because he is “sick and tired of people telling him what to do”

1. He feels that his parents want to control his life. They still treat him like a kid even though he will be 17 in a couple of months or so. He really needs to be out on his own so he can come and go as he pleases. He wants his own money to party whenever he feels like it. Also school is a real drag now that he got kicked off the wrestling team.

2. His belief system tells him that he should be able to do whatever he wants whenever he wants to. No one else has the right to interfere in his life. He doesn’t need anybody or anything from anyone else. To need others is weak.

3. He acts out by:

4. Questions to challenge his Irrational beliefs: New result:

1. The principal announces that due to a few students vandalizing the school all student activities sports, drama, dances, everything will be suspended for the remainder of the school year

1. (feelings)

2. (beliefs)

3. (acting out)