The Mental and Emotional Tool Kit for Teachers and Parents

By Ray Mathis

Parenting and teaching can be tough. It's easy to generate more emotion than is helpful and make mistakes, especially with the most troubled and troublesome young people. This book was written by a health education teacher who became certified in cognitive behavioral therapy to better understand and help students, and ended up helping himself in the process. He can help you do all three things.

The vast majority of things that go wrong in peoples live happen because they generate more emotion than is necessary or helpful, and more than they know what to do with. This emotion predisposes people of all ages to react to life instead of respond to it in the best possible ways. It predisposes them to behave in all manner of unhealthy, self-defeating ways, often making their own lives, and the lives of others around them worse instead of better. That's true in and outside classrooms, and regardless of whether someone is a student or teacher, a child or a parent All of this can directly or indirectly negatively impact a young person's readiness, willingness and ability to learn, and a teacher's ability to teach him or her.

The flipside of all this is that people have to be in the right mental and emotional place to make the best possible behavioral or lifestyle choices; to access and act on helpful advice and information they've been given, to consider consequences before acting, to learn from their own and others experiences, to act in accordance with their own morals and values, to function at levels they are capable of, to problem solve, to resolve conflicts, and to have the satisfying relationships they want.

That's why truly effective emotional management is such an important life skill. Yet we do little if anything to teach people this important skill as they go through our schools. We have too many people who enter adulthood deficient in this important ability, and who struggle in many ways their entire lives because of it. Little is done to train up teachers in this important skill before they go back into classrooms where that ability will often be tested by many children and teens who bring all manner of psycho-social challenges with them to the classroom.

Ray Mathis started looking for answers early in his life, partly because he had more emotion than he wanted to have as a child, and health problems, and watched his father smoke and drink himself to an earlier demise than was necessary, and his mother do the same by overeating. It's why he became a health education teacher. However, that training still didn't give him the important answers he was looking for, not only for himself, but for so many of his students.

Then one day, in a passing conversation in a hallway of his school, a colleague told him, "Look Ray, it's your choice how you want to feel". After he calmed down, his colleague told him about Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT) which was developed by Dr. Albert Ellis. He started taking courses in it shortly after that and knew immediately he'd found the answers he was looking for, not only for his students but himself as well.

He spent the rest of his career developing a new approach to health education he now calls "A Mental and Emotional Tool Kit for Life". It consists of ten easy to learn and easy to teach "tools", most of which come from REBT., and all of which help people manage better what goes on inside their own heads in response to their life events. As he taught these skills to his students five times a day, he realized that it was making him a healthier person, and a better teacher, parent and spouse.

Since retiring from the classroom in 2007, he has been speaking at state and national conventions, schools and universities, advocating for adding these "tools" to the education our young people receive, and to teacher preparation programs in colleges and universities.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ray Mathis
• Release date: Apr 18, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301150649

Ray Mathis

I taught health education at the high school level for 33 years. In order to do that job better, I became certified in Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT). I used that training to develop a whole new approach to health education called "The ABC System of Cognitive, Emotional and Behavioral Self-management and Self-improvement". I now call that approach "The Mental and Emotional Tool Kit for Life". Since retiring from the classroom in 2007, I have been speaking at state and national convention in my field, to high school and college students about the "tool kit" approach. I have also presented to student teachers at many college campuses. I teach a number of graduate classes for teachers based on the "tool kit" approach through the International Renewal Institute - St. Xavier University consortium. I run "Tool Time" groups for some of the most troubled and troublesome students at a local high school near my home in northern Illinois. I advocate for adding these "tools" to the education all our young people now receive in school all across the country. I also advocate that the "tools" be added to teacher preparation programs in colleges and universities. I am available to do presentations and workshops on the "Mental and Emotional Tool Kit for Life" for schools, colleges, groups and businesses.

Book preview

The

Mental and Emotional

Tool Kit

For

Teachers and Parents

Ray Mathis

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 Ray Mathis

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 Tool #3 Developing an Internal Locus of Control

Chapter 2 Tool #2 Unconditional Self Acceptance and Other Acceptance

Chapter 3 Tool #1 Understanding the role of emotion in everyday life

Chapter 4 Tool #4 Recognizing Irrational Thinking in Ourselves and Others

Chapter 5 Tool #5 Correcting Irrational Thinking

Chapter 6 Tool #6 A Step by step Approach to Life Events

Chapter 7 Tool #7 Asserting Yourself with I Messages

Chapter 8 Tool #8 To recognize when you and others have Mistaken Goals

Chapter 9 Tool #9 Evaluating Thoughts, Feelings and Actions

Chapter 10 Tool #10 Understanding why change is hard, and what it takes

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Introduction

I was a teacher in a classroom setting of 14 year olds for 33 years, and have continued to be one in other ways for the past seven. I taught a health education, a required class, so I got every student who walked through our doors in my classroom sooner or later.

I believe in teachers. I rarely if ever have met one whose heart was not in the right place, and who didn't have the best of intentions for students in their charge. The job does wear some teachers down because it's not an easy one in some ways, despite what our detractors claim. However, many teachers upset themselves about things students do more than is helpful or necessary, and more than is healthy for them. They often make mistakes with students because of that, especially the most troubled and troublesome ones we can least afford to make mistakes with. Most of us have even seen that happens as students ourselves. Some of us might even have been on the receiving end of those mistakes.

I also think the vast majority of parents start out with the best of intentions as well. However, parenting is another job that can get the best of you. It's easy to start generating more emotion than is helpful or necessary as parents as well, and to make mistakes with your children because of that. The older they get, the easier it seems to become to do that. It's often why some students are troubled and troublesome when they come to school. Some parents even end up wondering why they ever decided to have kids in the first place.

I hope to help you realize that the vast majority of mistakes that do get made by parents or teachers happen because they needlessly generate too much emotion, more often than not in the form of anger. And they do that in most cases because of misunderstandings they have about how their feelings actually come about, who's responsible for them, and who's to blame. I hope to clear that up in Chapter 1. Normally, it's Chapter 3, but I moved it up for a number of reasons. One was to demonstrate to you that I have something much different to offer you than the usual advice books of which there are so many. I hope that will encourage you to check out what else I may have to offer you in the rest of the book.

Parents and teachers also generate more emotion than is necessary or helpful, and make mistakes with their children and students because of how they choose to look at what kids do. Yes, I said choose to look at what they do. Most don't realize they have choices because most of the ways they do look at things come to them so automatically because of prior practice and rehearsal. However, we all have choices, all the time, as to how we want to think about, or look at anything, including what our children and students say and do. The way we make those choices never changes what happened, but the way we do can either make us feel better or worse, and make things our children and students say and do easier or harder to deal with. I intend to show you how to harness that process for your sake and your children's and students'.

It started dawning on me that when something gets broken in my own life or others, I instinctively seem to know just what tool to reach for in my head, and how to use it to fix whatever is broken, and build something better for myself, or help others do the same for themselves. There's an old saying that, Any job is easy if you use the right tool. That's how I came up with the concept of The Mental and Emotional Tool Kit. I have another book published on Smashwords.com by that exact name. This one is tailored for teachers and parents. It's for you, but I also want to teach you how important these same tools can be in your children's and students' lives, and suggest ways to pass these tools along to them, for their sake, and yours. The more they learn to self=manage, the easier the job of parenting and teaching gets for you.

Chapter 1

Tool #3: Developing an Internal Locus of Control

Why it’s important

I said in the introduction that parents and teachers make mistakes with their children and students, especially the most troubled and troublesome ones. More often than not they do that because they generate more emotion than is necessary or helpful, usually in the form of anger. The mistakes parents make are why often many children come to school troubled and troublesome.

One of the most important factors in determining how much emotion people generate be they parents, teachers or anyone else, is the type of locus of control they have. Locus of control means where they see their feelings coming from, and what they see as the cause of them.

Most people have an external or outer locus of control. That includes the vast majority of parents and teachers. If we listen to the way people talk about their feelings, we routinely hear comments like

He (She, They, It, That) really makes me mad

She (He, They, It, That) really hurt my feelings

They (You, He, She, It, That) always make me feel so guilty

They’re (He, She, You) always putting pressure on me

He (She, It, That) makes me nervous

That’s (It's) so depressing

Parents and teachers often say,

These kids are driving me crazy

The implication is that what others say and do, and what happens, somehow makes them feel the way they do. Basically, their contention can be described in a formula like this:

EVENTS = FEELINGS

Figure 1.1 below shows how that relationship could be portrayed visually.

Figure 1.1

It is perfectly understandable that people would believe that events in their lives cause their feelings. There is usually very little time between something happening and experiencing a feeling that it's understandable that people would conclude the events of their lives, what others say and do, and what happens, makes them feel the way they do. Sometimes people even get angry about something someone else is saying before that person even finishes their sentence because they have heard it many times before, and know what's coming. That makes it hard for people to imagine that there could be any intervening variable. People understandably conclude that the event must cause their feeling. It’s also understandable because the vast majority of people around them openly blame what happens and what others say and do for how they feel. Why would we expect children to grow up looking at things any differently?

The Problems with an External LOC

The problem with having an external locus of control is that people make how they feel depend on other people and events in their lives that they have little or no control over. It seems like other people and the events of their lives can make them feel bad and there is nothing they can do to prevent it. They can start to feel like victims who are at the mercy of other people and the events of their lives. By setting things up in their mind this way, it also means other people or the events of their lives must change for the better in some way for them to feel better. The problem is, what if they never do? For example, if a teenager believes his father’s drinking is what makes him feel bad, what if his father never stops drinking? Does that mean he is doomed to feel bad forever? If teachers or parents think their students or children drive them crazy, then it means their students or children must change for the better so they can feel less crazy. Again, what if they never do?

At some point, people may start to believe others and the events of their lives are never going to change for the better, and therefore, they are never going to feel better. That's never a good place to end up. The end result of having an external locus of control is that people feel worse than they need to, for longer than necessary. More importantly, they miss many good opportunities to feel better.

When teachers and their students both have an external locus of control, it can end up reinforcing behavior that they don’t like, and that is not good for students to engage in. If students believe they make teachers angry, and teachers also believe they do, it can give students a false sense of power and control over their teachers. Power is something teenagers in particular are always seeking. It’s a common mistaken goal for them with teachers, parents and other adults. Some children and teenagers will risk and accept all kinds of punishments to get this false sense of power and control. The very same thing can happen with parents and their children or teenagers.

The formula for feelings

The good news is that it is really not what others say or do, or what happens that makes people feel the way they do. The formula for feelings is:

EVENT + THOUGHTS = FEELINGS

Anything that others say or do, or that happens, is technically just an event in peoples’ lives. People generate thoughts all the time in response to what happens, to the events of their lives. Doing so is a survival function. People are always trying to assess whether what happens is a threat or not, and how big a threat something might be. It is the thoughts people generate about what others say and do, or what happens, that really determine how people end up feeling. Thoughts cause feelings, not events. That is true regardless of whether someone is a parent or their child, a teacher or their student.

It’s like that algebraic formula everyone learns in math classes as they go through school.

a + b = c

Where a is a constant, and b is a variable. If a stays the same, and you change b, c changes. Likewise, if an event stays the same, and people change their thoughts about it, their feelings change. Sometimes they change for the better. Other times, they change for the worse.

An example of this is when people attend a funeral of a friend or loved one. There are times when people are crying profusely, times when they are laughing, and times when they are somewhere in between. The event doesn’t change. What does? What they are thinking at any given moment.

How people deal with a loss as time passes also can be explained by this formula. Some seem to get past such a loss quicker than others. That is often simply because they stop thinking about it as much as they did at first. Some are able to do that simply because they are so busy with their daily life, and there are not as many triggers for doing so during their day as there are for others. Others find ways to think about or look at what happened that brings them comfort. For example, it's common to hear people say things like, At least they didn’t suffer or They are in a better place now. Some may struggle though because they do have more triggers in their daily life to think about their loss, and still look at their loss the same way they did when it first happened. Taking any of these paths is understandable and part of being human. Some just make it easier to deal with things, and others harder. Some just cause people to generate more emotion, and others less.

Every school has teachers who are really easy going, and others who students and sometimes even other teachers perceive as mean. Every teacher in a building has to deal with misbehavior in students. Why do some get so upset and others simply take it in stride? It all comes down to how they think or look at what students do.

Alex Molnar and Barbara Lindquist co-authored a book entitled Changing Problem Behavior in Schools. It's a book I would encourage every teacher, and parent to read. They summed this up well in their book::

There can be little dispute about what the student did. However, the teacher’s response will be based on the meaning that fact has for him or her. It is the meaning we attribute to an event that instructs us how to act in response (a stern reprimand or a wink and a smile).

Most people are already aware that there is a connection between the ways people think and how they end up feeling. They know from a lifetime of experience that when people think or look at things certain ways, they feel better or worse than when they think or look at thing others ways. If we give them a pair of thoughts, they can usually accurately predict which thought would cause someone to feel worse. For example, which of the following two thoughts would make someone angrier?

a) How dare they talk to me like that

b) Unfortunately, they can talk to me any way they want to

a) They can’t get away with something like that

b) Sometimes people do get away with thing

a) It’s really awful that they did something like that

b) I don’t like it, but it’s not that big a deal

a) I don’t like when people talk to me like that

b) I cannot stand when people talk to me like that

a) No one’s perfect. Everyone makes mistakes

b) He’s an idiot for doing that

If you are like the students I always had in class, you would probably have no trouble picking which thought would cause someone to get angrier. The connection is just not normally crystal clear to people. Part of the reason is that so many people around them have an external locus of control and talk as if events, and what other people say and do actually cause how they feel. This only clouds peoples’ perception of what is really going on. The purpose of this discussion is to bring that connection between thoughts and feelings into sharp focus.

Young people are taught all kinds of formulas that accurately depict the way the world and life works in math, science and even English classes throughout their school careers. Unfortunately, they are never really taught one of the most basic formulas of life, one that governs every moment of our lives:

EVENT + THOUGHTS = FEELINGS.

Students can go through twelve years of elementary and high school, and another four years of college, and perhaps even graduate school and a doctoral program without ever being formally taught this formula. I know I did. It's a formula that schools should be teaching young people as early as they can, and reminding them of throughout their school careers. This formula would make a perfect subject for a poster hanging on a classroom wall. I would urge any teacher to put such a poster up and explain it to their students. It wouldn’t cost anything to do that, and it may be one of the most important lessons they ever teach their students. And I would encourage parents to teach this formula to their children and teenagers just in case schools don’t.

Behavior is the tip of the iceberg

In Chapter 2, I'm going to suggest that behavior is just the tip of the iceberg. I will also suggest that for most people, there is a great deal of unexplored territory beneath the surface. Parents and teachers often have a limited awareness of what really goes on inside their own heads in response to what their children or students do. That’s usually because the thoughts they have are often so automatic from years of practice and rehearsal, much of it occurring before they even became teachers or parents. They typically have even less understanding of what goes on inside the heads of children or teenagers, especially the most troubled or troublesome ones. The troubled and troublesome children typically share that lack of understanding, about parents and teachers, and themselves. In chapter 2, the unexplored territory will be filled in partly with mistaken goals and a dysfunctional amount of emotion. People also often have imagined events that spring from some real event. However, the most important piece of the puzzle is thoughts and attitudes. We can also add Thoughts cause feelings, not events, and Attitude is the father of behavior. No one ever says or does something without thinking something first. See Figure 1.2.

Figure 1.2

So here’s how life really plays out. An event occurs. Sometimes that is followed by imagined events. However, it is the thoughts, attitudes and beliefs people generate in response to the real or imagined events, and about themselves, others and life that ultimately determine their feelings and behavior. Thoughts cause feelings, not events. Attitude is always the father of behavior. Sometimes those thoughts, attitudes and beliefs give rise to a dysfunctional amount of emotion and mistaken goals, which in turn give rise to irrational behavior that makes peoples lives worse in some way instead of better.

The ABC Theory of Emotions

Dr. Albert Ellis developed the ABC Theory of Emotions to explain how feelings come about. The A stands for Activating Event, what someone else said or did, or what happened. The A can also stand for Adversity. B stands for the Beliefs people have about the Activating Event, and themselves, others, and life that cause them to feel the way they do, and ultimately do what they do. Dr. Ellis referred to them as automatic irrational beliefs because they are typically so well rehearsed and practiced, and they make peoples lives worse instead of better.

A = Activating Event

B = Beliefs

C = Consequences (feel, do)

The C stands for Consequences. What people feel and do is a consequence of what they believe about the Activating Event, or themselves, others and life. Using these terms, the formula would be:

Activating Event + Beliefs = Consequences (feel, do)

Figure 1.3 below portrays the real relationship between events and feelings. Events can be real or imagined. However, it is the thoughts people generate about their real or imagined events that really determine how they end up feeling.

Figure 1.3

Imagined events are important because anxiety is a figment of imagination. It is about things that have not happened yet, and often never do or will. As I'll note again in Chapter 2, when people experience anxiety disorders, it is because they spend too much time in their imagination instead of dealing with the here and now.

Here is an example. A teenage girl and boy get into an argument. The real event is that they argue. The imagined events for the girl might be that he will break up with her and go out with another girl instead. However, it is still the thoughts she has in response to the real or imagined events that will determine how she feels. For example, if she thought, I’m so tired of it always having to be his way. I can’t stand arguing with him all the time, she might even be relieved at the prospect of a breakup. However, if she instead thought, I’ll just die if he breaks up with me. I need to be with him. I couldn’t stand seeing him with someone else, she will probably generate intense anxiety over a possible break up, and try to do anything to avoid it. The intense anxiety might even cause her to do things that are not in her best interest in the long run.

Here’s an example that is common for teachers. A student talks back to a teacher in class. Maybe it gets a laugh from some other students. The teacher starts to imagine:

!) Other students will think it’s okay to talk to me like that

2) I’m going to get more of it

3) I’ll lose control of my class

4) Other teacher will find out

5) They think I’m a bad teachers

6) I’ll get bad evaluations

7) I’ll lose my job

What imagining this does is cause the teacher to generate much more anxiety than is really called for by the misbehavior. That will make what the student did a bigger threat than it really is, or needs to be. That can literally plug a teacher into their fight or flight response, and it’s why teachers often get angry, and overreact to what the student did. However, here’s the catch. Doing this in our heads after a student talks back to us in front of a class is understandable, but students are only responsible for what they say or do, but not for what we imagine, and do with it in our own heads. It’s wrong to blame them for what we do in our own heads. They didn’t do that to us, we did.

Parents can do the same thing in their heads. For example, suppose a child misbehaves in public in front of other adults. A parent might start to imagine that other adults will think he or she is a bad parent, and start to think bad things about them. Suddenly, what the child does becomes a bigger threat to him or her than it really is. Sometimes other adults will even make some gesture suggesting that they disapprove. That would just confirm the parent's suspicion. Some would react with even more emotion toward their child. Others might snap at the disapproving adult with something like, Mind you own business.

Some important questions

Given that most people have an external locus of control, but that thoughts really cause feelings, and not events, there are four important questions that need to be asked and answered.

!) Who really upsets us?

2) Who is responsible for how we feel?

3) Whose problem is it if we feel bad?

4) Whose job is it to make us feel better?

Here is a scenario to help answer those questions. You walk into your classroom (or work) one morning and your day is off to a great start. Then a student (or colleague) unloads some nasty comments on you and walks away as fast as they appeared. If you're a teacher, you'd probably report the student to the office and they get called down and even get punished. However, you find yourself going over what happened in your mind many times during the day and end up being upset about what happened all day. Meanwhile, the student had a war story to tell his friends and spins what happened in a way that he gets kudos from them all day long.

Later that night, you find yourself replaying the incident in your mind, and getting upset about what happened all over again. Meanwhile, that student is enjoying himself immensely online with friends, perhaps even by relating what happened earlier in the day.

If you did get upset, and stayed upset all day long, that would be perfectly understandable. People do it all the time. However, who’s doing that