I guess it happened to you many times: Urgent stuff displace the important things. And most of the times, we hardly realize that.
In the migration process this fact is also true: every day life, our anxiety to reach dozens of goals in a short time or our concern not only for us but for those who accompany us on this trip, make us slowly lose sight of some aspects that could help us have a much better integration.
In our today’s post I want to teach you about Albert Ellis and how you can apply some of his concepts for a successful integration in Canada.
“The Known Paradigm Problem”
Many of us, and I include you, arrive to Canada in our mid twenties or thirties. This means at least two or three decades of experience living in our countries.
Thirty or more years of life in Iraq, India, Phillipines, Argentina, or whatever country you come from means you will bring with you, inevitably, a deeply rooted cultural background.
Of course, that cultural background is part of your DNA and your heritage. Canada wants you to bring it and they will respect it. You also want to keep it as part of your inheritance to your children.
However, this heavy cultural baggage implies also what I like to call “The Known Paradigm Problem”. They are a series of cultural concepts that will make us to certain stimuli act “as we know” or as we learned in our land. Only by having been raised there and having some cultural concepts “deep in our skin.”
For example, we can react with surprise when the motorist yield the pedestrian simply because in “our known paradigm” it is not that way (at least not that often!). Or we will react with some surprise (and some, I bet, even with some distaste) when we see two young boys or girls holding hands or kissing each other at a corner, also because in our culture we grew up with concepts that resist such behaviors. Our “known paradigm” make us react negatively to homosexuality in many cases.
We must learn how to prepare mentally for the challenges part of a paradigm shift. It is a fundamental part of our integration process into the new culture that we will be or we are already are part of.
Albert Ellis and Emotive Therapy
Before going into how Albert Ellis fits in all this, I suggest you first learn who was this person and what was his work.
Albert Ellis was an American psychologist, founder of a new therapy called Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT)
According to Albert Ellis and REBT, we all seek happiness. We want to get along with others, we want to be well educated and informed people and have a good job with a good pay. And, above all, we want to enjoy what is around us.
At the same time, we must be realistic and be clear that life is not always as we want it to be. Some things will stand in our way to happiness. Sometimes when we find “a picket” stopping our way to happiness we can react in different ways. Sometimes these ways are not healthy.
The ABC Model
According to Albert Ellis, our reaction to “the picket” (the block in our way to happiness) will depend on our beliefs, or to relate to what we talked before, our “known paradigm”
To better understand this, Ellis created a model called “ABC” to explain it:
- A: Is the “Activating Event“.
- B: It’s what you think about this situation. Our “Beliefs” according to our “known universe”
- C: The result or our emotional reaction to the event according to our belief. (“Consequence“)
Here’s an example:
- A (“Activating Event”): We are at the bus stop next to a lady. We decided to let her go in first but she does not like us to do that. She claims “equal treatment”
- B (“Beliefs”): We get angry thinking “In my country it is polite to let the ladies first! She has no right to treat me so bad!”
- C (“Consequence”): We get angry
How could we have faced this situation better?
- A (“Activating Event”): We are at the bus stop next to a lady. We decided to let her go in first but she does not like us to do that. She claims “equal treatment”
- B (“Beliefs”): We decided to accept it as part of our new culture and in the future, we will try to learn better about day to day relationships with the opposite sex.
- C (“Consequence”): We are somewhat disturbed, but nothing more.
You can read more about Albert Ellis and ABC at this link: “What is REBT?“
What does all this have to do with my immigration process?
A lot. This is not something that will govern only your first days in Canada, but will form part of your life for a long time.
The key to a successful integration into your new environment is to learn to face and assume your new universe. And at the same time, slowly stop taking our old beliefs as true (“your known paradigm”)
What was one way before, it won;t be like that anymore. It will be different and we must accept it and understand it as inevitable.
It’s essential that you arrive to Canada mentally prepared to face these “Activating Events” through new “Beliefs” that will lead to healthier “Consequences” .
IMHO, as immigrants we must focus our energies on more important things than get angry or frustrated with things we can not change and we have no control.
Thus, we can guide all our efforts to reach the road to happiness because that’s why we came here, right?
I would like to read your story of integration and ABC. Leave a comment below!
Sources: http://raymondphilippe.hubpages.com/hub/The-Ellis-ABC-Model, http://www.rebtnetwork.org/whatis.html, Wikipedia
