Yes, I know this is an odd title for a post. However, S.U.E. is an acronym for a strategy to limit your overreaction to stressful events. It comes out of cognitive psychology and draws on the work of Dr. Martin Seligman. We all are aware of the tendency to overreact, catastrophize, and overgeneralize negatively about events in life. For some people, it results in dangerous behavior (see road rage) or other violent behavior. For others, it creates daily misery and felt stress. However, this does not have to be. You can have a life with fewer stress filled reactions depending on how you think or view situations that happen to you. We discuss this and many other aspects of stress in our recently published book (I Can't Take It Anymore: How to Manage Stress so It Doesn't Manage You; Paul G. Longobardi, Ph.D., and Janice B. Longobardi, R.N., P.H.N.) available at Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/dp/1542458056. For additional information about the book and the authors, you can go to the book website at http://www.manageyourhealthandstress.com/
Here is the excerpt from the book about the S.U.E. strategy:
Now, let us offer you a quick way to change limiting beliefs, which, in almost all cases, are not true anyway. Limiting beliefs are those negative beliefs that you hold about yourself, e.g. “I’m not good enough;” “I’m not smart enough;” “I’m not lovable or likeable enough;” and all variants of these thoughts. So, if you had to go into court and convince a judge/jury that you are incompetent and a failure based on some incident, how would you do it? You couldn’t. But you need a quick way to implement change. It is the S.U.E. strategy. No, we are not advocating taking legal action against people. S.U.E. is an acronym that stands for three specific words that are extremely important in helping you to quickly control your reaction to set backs and frustrations, interrupt your limiting thoughts, and change your feelings. Doing so will lead you to take more effective action in any challenging situation.
The letters S.U.E. stand for:
S – Stands for Specific – contrasted with general. If you are criticized, or if you have a setback, or a customer hangs up in your ear, make a specific response about only that event. You can say that it was annoying that the person hung up in your ear, but that's all. You’ve had a number of other successful experiences. The person who becomes more depressed and demoralized believes that in contrast to a specific event, what just happened is general. It isn’t just one situation or event, but rather all situations and events that go wrong. In other words, what has happened to you is far more general. You might say “People generally hang up in my ear and don't treat me well;” or “I’m not really a good employee, parent, person, etc.” If you think more generally, then that's very demoralizing and depressing. You are on your way to becoming demoralized and devastated, and starting to think that you don't have any skills and talents. If you think this way, you may stop making calls or doing whatever resulted in your overgeneralized thought about the situation. So, keep your reaction specific to the situation or event.
The U – stands for Unstable – contrasted with stable. If you view the situation that happened as unstable, you are in effect saying that it happens from time to time, but it’s not a regular part of your life. Let us give you an example we frequently give patients about something going wrong for us. If the annoying event is that the car breaks down, we can say to ourselves, “This is annoying,” or “This is inconveniencing, but this doesn't happen very often, and the car generally works. I can call up the automobile club and I can get some help.” That's an unstable view, which is what you want. You are saying that bad things don’t happen to you all the time. In contrast, a more stable view (and more upsetting) is if we say to ourselves, “Everything bad happens to me and always does;” “Everything goes wrong for me all the time; “Nothing works right for me; or “God has singled me out for all the bad stuff in this world, including this car that just broke down at this moment.” Fill in the blank for yourself. Perhaps a prospect just hung up on you, and the business call did not work out. If you answer, and/or talk to yourself, with a more stable view of the event (versus unstable), then you're on your way to a much more negative mindset and you will have more ongoing upset. So, keep your reactions to situations and events unstable, and you will suffer less emotional upset.
Finally, the E – stands for External – contrasted with internal. With an external perspective, if the same negative event happens, we view it as more outside ourselves and not a permanent, negative characteristic or trait. Now, please understand we are NOT saying to go around and blame everybody else for everything that happens in your life. DO take responsibility for your thoughts. However, what we are saying is not to blame yourself incessantly, which people are very good at doing a lot of the time. Rather, we are saying to treat the event, such as a car breakdown, criticism you got from someone, or the prospect that hung up in your ear, as external to you. It's the car (not you); things break down. It's the prospect (not you); maybe they're having a bad day, and it has little, if anything, to do with you. Again, this is in contrast to the explanation of: Because the car broke down, that just goes to show what an incompetent person you are (internal view). After all, shouldn’t you be able to anticipate and fix everything ahead of time, and never have anything break down or go wrong? Of course not. We are being facetious. This is a very internal explanation. You can choose to explain your sales challenge as proof that you must not be very good at sales, because this prospect that you just called hung up in your ear, and that means you’re not very good at any of these activities. However, this is an internal characterization of yourself. Internal characterizations will create more difficulties because you will blame yourself more often and overgeneralize about your negative aspects. You will feel worse at that moment and increase the likelihood that you will overreact to the next negative event, setback, or obstacle that you experience. So, limit your self-blaming (internal response).
That's the excerpt. Now go ahead and S.U.E. your stressors out of your life. Best wishes for every success in your journey.
Dr. Paul Longobardi
For information on these and other topics please see my website at www.successandmindset.com