Stop Your Musterbation!

Ok, so I'm writing this research paper on Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET) created by Albert Ellis in the 70's. It's based on Cognitive Therapy, and focuses on how our thoughts, emotions and behaviors are largely determined by our beliefs.

Anyway, Ellis proposed that people have this irrational belief that they "must" or "should" be a certain way or do certain things. As a result, we create these completely unrealistic expectations of ourselves and believe we are inadequate when we don't meet them.

He referred to this as our "musterbatory agenda"

God, for a 1970's therapist, this guy is cool as hell.

Conversation had with Jimmy after explaining the term:

Jimmy: Haha, musterbation, nice.
Me: loving it
Jimmy: Man 1: "you're never going to live up to my potential in this damn job!" Man 2: "Dude, I hate it when you musterbate in my face like that!"
Me: "Stop musterbating all over me, damnit!"
Jimmy: Sometimes I musterbate when I'm alone...please don't tell Kelsey.
Me: Don't worry, I do too. In fact, I do it in public sometimes.
Jimmy: She just woke up and I told her I was having a conversation with you about musterbating. She said, "with mustard?"
Me: Tell her she musterbates too.
Me: We all do it
Me: Come join the dark side...
Jimmy: Aaaah! Epidemic!

Musterbation is my new favorite word....and I get to write a whole 12 page paper about it.

Rock on.