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EspañolRATIONAL EMOTIVE BEHAVIOR THERAPY
'Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy' ('REBT') is a comprehensive, active-directive, philosophically and empirically based psychotherapy which focuses on resolving cognitive, emotional, and behavioral problems in human beings. REBT was created and developed by the American psychotherapist and psychologist Albert Ellis. REBT is one of the first forms of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) and was first expounded by Ellis in mid-1950s. Fundamental to REBT is that disturbance and emotional suffering and upsetness results from our evaluations, our beliefs and philosophies about the negative events that happen to us in addition to the events per se. In other words, that human beings on the basis of their belief system disturb themselves, and even disturb themselves about their disturbances.
The REBT framework assumes that humans have both rational and irrational tendencies. Irrational beliefs prevent goal attainment, lead to inner conflict, more conflict with others and poor mental health. Rational beliefs lead to goal attainment, better mental functioning and more inner harmony. REBT claims that irrational and self-defeating thinking, emoting and behaving are correlated with emotional difficulties such as self-blame, clinical anger, hurt, unhealthy jealousy, unhealthy envy, guilt, shame, depression and anxiety. This is a view shared with some other well-known therapies, such as Re-evaluation Counselling and Person-centered counselling - as these both arose in the mid-50s, Ellis is thought to have had an influence on them. REBT is an educational and active-directive process in which the therapist teaches the client how to identify irrational and self-defeating tendencies which in nature are unrealistic, illogical and absolutist, and then to forcefully and activily dispute them, and replace them with more rational and self-helping ones. By using different methods and activities, the client, together with help from the therapist and in homework exercises, can gain a more rational, logical and constructive rational way of thinking, emoting and behaving. One of the main objectives in REBT is to show the client that whenever unpleasant activating events occur in people's lives, they have a choice of making themselves feel healthily and self-helpingly sorry, disappointed, frustrated, and annoyed, or making themselves feel unhealthily and self-defeatingly horrified, terrified, panicked, depressed, self-hating, and self-pitying (Ellis, 2003).
As Albert Ellis says; "When people keep challenging and questioning their self-disturbing core philosophies, after a while they tend to automatically, and even in advance, bring new, rational, self-helping attitudes to their life problems and thereby make themselves significantly less upsettable", (Ellis, 2003).
REBT posits that human beings are born gullible, teachable and conditionable with dual and innate potentials and tendencies towards both healthy/self-helping and unhealthy/self-defeating cognitive-affective processes; On one hand, self-constructive rational tendencies, and the other hand, self-sabotaging irrational tendencies. Rational thinking, emoting and behaving, mean realistically, logically and pragmatically evaluating oneself, others and life in realistic-logico and contructive self- and social-helping ways.
Albert Ellis sums up the cognitive-affective processes like this (Ellis, 2003):
"REBT assumes that human thinking, emotion, and action are not really separate or disparate processes but that they all significantly overlap and are rarely experienced in a pure state. Much of what we call emotion is nothing more nor less than a certain kind—a biased, prejudiced, or strongly evaluative kind—of thought. But emotions and behaviors significantly influence and affect thinking, just as thinking. Evaluating is a fundamental characteristic of human organisms and seems to work in a kind of closed circuit with a feedback mechanism: Because perception biases response and then response tends to subsequent perception. Also, prior perceptions appear to bias subsequent perceptions, and prior responses to bias subsequent responses. What we call feelings almost always have a pronounced evaluating or appraisal element."
At the core of REBT is the A-B-C theory of emotional functioning. The A stands for the activating event or the adversity a person faces, for instance by some type of challenging life situation. An example of an activating event might be a man being rejected by what he thinks is an attractive woman (A). The B then represents the evaluation (cognitive-affective-behavioral) of the activating event, contributing to an emotional and behavioral consequence, represented by the C. If the evaluation "B" of the adversity "A" is rooted in an irrational core belief that for instance, the man devoutly believes "Every attractive woman ABSOLUTELY MUST like me and treat me well, and it's awful and terrible when they don't", the consequence is likely to be an unhealthy, self-defeating consequence. Alternatively, if the evaluation of the event is rational, and is rooted in the belief "I strongly PREFER that attractive women treat me well, but there is no law in the universe that says that they must. It's not awful and horrible when they reject me, just very unfortunate and sad. Eventhough I want to be treated well by attractive women, I can stand and bear it when they don't, because I will survive it and find other ways of being reasonably happy" the consequence would in all probably be healthy, self-helping and self-constructive feelings and behaviors. Key to REBT thought is that both AxB (activating events and our beliefs about these events) contribute to disturbed and un-disturbed emotional and behavioral consequences. By attaining a more rational and self-constructive philosophy of ourselves, others and the world, we are more likely to behave and emote in a more life-serving and adaptive way.
Originator Albert Ellis points out, "People are born and reared with the ability to look at the data of their lives, particularly the negative things that happen to them against their goals and interests, and to make inaccurate inferences and attributions about these data."
From whence do our self-sabotaging irrational beliefs originate? REBT teaches that we learn some of them during our childhood, some from environmental factors, but largely that human beings have strong inborne biological tendencies (Ellis, 2003). REBT differs from psychoanalysis in that it places little emphasis on exploring the past, but instead focuses on changing the current evaluations and philosophical thinking about our lives, others and ourselves.
One of the main pillars of REBT is that irrational patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving are the cause of much human disturbance. REBT teaches that when we turn flexible preferences, desires and wishes into grandiose absolutistic jehovian demands and commands we disturb and upset ourselves. Albert Ellis has suggested three core beliefs that humans disturb themselves through (Ellis, 2003):
★ "I absolutely MUST be thoroughly competent, adequate, achieving, and lovable at all times, or else I am an incompetent worthless person." This belief usually leads to feelings of anxiety, panic, depression, despair, and worthlessness.
★ "Other significant people in my life, absolutely MUST treat me kindly and fairly at all times, or else I can’t stand it, and they are bad, rotten, and evil persons who should be severely blamed, damned, and vindictively punished for their horrible treatment of me." This leads to feelings of anger, rage, fury, and vindictiveness and lead to actions like fights, feuds, wars, genocide, and ultimately, an atomic holocaust.
★ "Things and conditions absolutely MUST be the way I want them to be and never be too difficult or frustrating. Otherwise, life is awful, terrible, horrible, catastrophic and unbearable." This leads to low-frustration tolerance, self-pity, anger, depression, and to behaviours such as procrastination, avoidance, and inaction.
REBT then holds that an irrational belief system consist of the following self-defeating components:
# Demands
# Awfulizing
# Low Frustration Tolerance
# People Rating (& Overgeneralizing)
A key tenet in the REBT framework is that the evaluative belief system, based on core philosophies, is very likely to create unrealistic, arbitrary, and crooked inferences and distortions in thinking. REBT therefore first teaches that when people in an unsensible and devoutly way overuse absolutistic, dogmatic and rigid "shoulds", "musts", and "oughts", they disturb and upset themselves. REBT holds that that most devoutly and piously held "isms" and dogmas often contribute to disturbances, and that these inflexible and self-defeating philosophies are better replaced with more flexible, self-constructive and self-helping attitudes.
Disturbed evaluations occur through overgeneralization, wherein one exaggerates and globalizes events or traits, usually unwanted events or traits or behaviors, out of context, while almost always ignoring the positive events or traits or behaviors. For example, awfulizing is mental magnification of the importance of an unwanted situation to a catastrophe, elevating the rating of something from bad to worse than it should be, to beyond totally bad, worse than bad to the intolerable and to a holocaust. The same exaggeration and overgeneralizing occurs with human rating, wherein humans come to be defined by their flaws or misdeeds: the person is bad based on bad behavior or bad traits. Frustration intolerance occurs when one perceive something to be too difficult, painful or tedious, and by doing so exaggerates these qualities beyond ones ability to cope with them.
Many of these self-defeating beliefs are both innately biological and indoctrinated in early and during life, and may grow stronger as a person continually revisits and self-propagandizes them. By using emotive, cognitive and behavioral methods the client learns to dispute and replace the absolutist and dogmatic musts with more flexible preferences, which are likely to cause healthier and more constructive emotions and behavior. The Rational Emotive Behavior therapist strongly believes in the rigorous application of the rules of logic, straight thinking, and scientific method to everyday life (Ellis, 2003).
REBT points out that irrational beliefs will often be obvious in how people talk to themselves. The therapist asking, "What are you telling yourself about...?" will often reveal both crooked inferences, and, on closer examination, demands and irrational evaluations. The therapist is most interested in finding core beliefs and deep rooted philosophical evaluations. These are usually the causes of automatic negative inferences and higher level evaluative thoughts.
As would be expected, REBT argues that mental wellness results from a surfeit of rational ways of thinking, emoting and behaving. When a undesired and stressful activating event occurs, and the individual is interpreting the situation rationally (emotional, cognitive and behavioral), then the resulting emotional and behavioral consequence is likely to be more healthy and self-helping. This does not mean a relatively undisturbed person never experiences negative feelings, but REBT does hope to keep debilitating unhealthy affect and behavior to a minimum. To do this REBT promotes a scientific, flexible, un-dogmatic, self-helping and efficient belief system.
REBT acknowledges that people in addition to disturbing themselves, also are innately constructivists. Because they largely upset themselves with their beliefs, they can be helped to examine, to question, to think about these beliefs and thereby to develop a more workable, more self-helping set of constructs.
REBT teaches that:
★ Unconditional self-acceptance, other-acceptance and life-acceptance are of prime importance in achieving mental wellness.
★ People and the world are fallible, and that people better accept themselves, life's hassles and unfairness and others "as is".
★ People better consider themselves valuable just as a result of being alive and kicking; and are better off not to measure their "self" or their "being" and give themselves any global rating, because all humans are a continuing process, far too complex to rate, and all humans do both good and bad deeds and have both good and bad attributes and traits.
REBT holds that ideas and feelings about self-worth are largely definitional and are not empirically confirmable or falsifiable (Ellis, 2003).
As Albert Ellis says: "Humans, unlike just about all the other animals on earth, create fairly sophisticated languages which not only enable them to think about their feeling, and their actions, and the results they get from doing and not doing certain things, but they also are able to think about their thinking and even think about thinking about their thinking." (Ellis, 2003) This is quite essential to the REBT thought. Ellis, also points out that "because of their self-consciousness and their ability to think about their thinking, they can very easily disturb themselves about their disturbances and can also disturb themselves about their ineffective attempts to overcome their emotional disturbances" (Ellis, 2003). In REBT terminology, this is referred to as secondary disturbances.
One of the most popular methods in REBT is forceful disputing. Recalling the A-B-C theory of personality, successful REBT adds steps D & E. The D stands for disputing: the therapist helps the client to challenge the irrational belief (B). REBT teaching suggests that the therapist ask the client if there is any evidence for the belief, or what would be the worst possible outcome if the client were to give up that belief. These disputing processes incorporate cognitive-philosophic, emotive-evocative-dramatic, and behavioral methods necessary to successfully challenge the irrational beliefs. In therapy the therapist may point out irrational beliefs, but he or she also teaches the client how to dispute them in day-to-day life outside of therapy and also gives the patient homework exercises. The result of disputing the self-defeating belief and replacing it with a rational one yields an effective new philosophy (E).
REBT acknowledges that understanding and insight are not enough. In order to significantly change the client, they almost always have to pinpoint their irrational philosophies and work hard at changing them to more functional and self-helping attitudes. They can do this in a number of cognitive, emotive-evocative, and behavioral ways. Although REBT teaches that the therapist better demonstrate unconditional other-acceptance, the therapist is not necessarily encouraged to build a warm and caring relationship with the client. The therapist’s prime task is to aid the client in identifying and confronting irrational thinking, emotive and behavioral processes and replacing them with more rational ones.
REBT posits that the client has to work hard to get better, and this work may include homework assigned by the therapist. The assignments may include desensitization tasks, i.e. by having the client confronting the very thing he is making himself afraid of. By doing so, the client is actively acting against the belief with is causing the disturbance.
Often REBT focuses on specific problems and is used as a brief therapy, but in deeper problems longer therapy is promoted. Another factor contributing to the brevity of REBT is that the therapist helps the client learn how to get better through hard work, and to help himself get through future adversities. It holds that hard work, and hard work only, is the way to get, and stay, better and not only temporarily feel better. An ideal successful collaboration between the REBT therapist and a client results in changes to the client's philosophical way of evaluating himself, others and his life, which is likely to yield effective results: The client had better move toward unconditional self-acceptance, other-acceptance and life-acceptance.
★ Ellis, Albert (2001). ''Feeling better, getting better, staying better''. New York: Impact Publishers, 2001. ISBN 1-886230-35-8
★ Ellis, Albert (2003). Early theories and practices of rational emotive behavior theory and how they have been augmented and revised during the last three decades. ''Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy'', ''21''(3/4)
★ Froggatt, Wayne (2005). ''A Brief Introduction To Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy''. Third Edition, New Zealand Centre for Cognitive Behaviour Therapy
★ Albert Ellis (2001). ''Overcoming Destructive Beliefs, Feelings, and Behaviors: New Directions for Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy''. Prometheus Books
★ Albert Ellis & Windy Dryden, ''The Practice of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy 2.ed.''; Springer Publishing, 2007. ISBN 9780826122162
★ Windy Dryden & Michael Neenan, ''Getting Started with REBT''; Routledge, 2005. ISBN 9781583919392
★ Windy Dryden, ''Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy in a Nutshell (Counselling in a Nutshell)''; Sage Publications, 2005. ISBN 9781412907705
★ Windy Dryden, ''Fundamentals of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy: A Training Manual''; Wiley, 2002. ISBN 1-86156-347-7
★ Windy Dryden, ''Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy; Theoretical Developments''; Brunner-Routledge, 2003. ISBN 1-58391-272-X
★ Albert Ellis, ''Overcoming Destructive Beliefs, Feelings, and Behaviors: New Directions for Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy''; Prometheus Books, 2001. ISBN 1-57392-879-8
★ Albert Ellis, ''Feeling better, getting better, staying better''; Impact Publishers, 2001. ISBN 1-886230-35-8
★ Windy Dryden et al., ''A Practitioner's Guide to Rational-Emotive Therapy''; Oxford University Press, 1992. ISBN 0-19-507169-7
★ Albert Ellis et al., ''A Guide to Rational Living'' (3rd rev ed.); Wilshire Book Company, 1997. ISBN 0-87980-042-9
★ Stevan Lars Nielsen, Brad W. Johnson & Albert Ellis, ''Counseling and Psychotherapy With Religious Persons: A Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy Approach''; Lawrence Erlbaum, 2001. ISBN 0805828788.
★ Windy Dryden, Raymond Di Giuseppe & Michael Neenan, ''A Primer on Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy'' (2nd ed.); Research Press, 2002. ISBN 978-0878224784
★ Albert Ellis & Catharine MacLaren, ''Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy: A Therapist's Guide'' (2nd ed.); Impact Publishers, 2005. ISBN 978-1886230613
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★ REBTresources.info - The Web Resource Site on REBT
The REBT framework assumes that humans have both rational and irrational tendencies. Irrational beliefs prevent goal attainment, lead to inner conflict, more conflict with others and poor mental health. Rational beliefs lead to goal attainment, better mental functioning and more inner harmony. REBT claims that irrational and self-defeating thinking, emoting and behaving are correlated with emotional difficulties such as self-blame, clinical anger, hurt, unhealthy jealousy, unhealthy envy, guilt, shame, depression and anxiety. This is a view shared with some other well-known therapies, such as Re-evaluation Counselling and Person-centered counselling - as these both arose in the mid-50s, Ellis is thought to have had an influence on them. REBT is an educational and active-directive process in which the therapist teaches the client how to identify irrational and self-defeating tendencies which in nature are unrealistic, illogical and absolutist, and then to forcefully and activily dispute them, and replace them with more rational and self-helping ones. By using different methods and activities, the client, together with help from the therapist and in homework exercises, can gain a more rational, logical and constructive rational way of thinking, emoting and behaving. One of the main objectives in REBT is to show the client that whenever unpleasant activating events occur in people's lives, they have a choice of making themselves feel healthily and self-helpingly sorry, disappointed, frustrated, and annoyed, or making themselves feel unhealthily and self-defeatingly horrified, terrified, panicked, depressed, self-hating, and self-pitying (Ellis, 2003).
As Albert Ellis says; "When people keep challenging and questioning their self-disturbing core philosophies, after a while they tend to automatically, and even in advance, bring new, rational, self-helping attitudes to their life problems and thereby make themselves significantly less upsettable", (Ellis, 2003).
| Contents |
| View of the Human Mind |
| Psychological Dysfunction |
| Mental Wellness |
| REBT Therapy |
| References |
| Further reading |
| See also |
| External links |
View of the Human Mind
REBT posits that human beings are born gullible, teachable and conditionable with dual and innate potentials and tendencies towards both healthy/self-helping and unhealthy/self-defeating cognitive-affective processes; On one hand, self-constructive rational tendencies, and the other hand, self-sabotaging irrational tendencies. Rational thinking, emoting and behaving, mean realistically, logically and pragmatically evaluating oneself, others and life in realistic-logico and contructive self- and social-helping ways.
Albert Ellis sums up the cognitive-affective processes like this (Ellis, 2003):
"REBT assumes that human thinking, emotion, and action are not really separate or disparate processes but that they all significantly overlap and are rarely experienced in a pure state. Much of what we call emotion is nothing more nor less than a certain kind—a biased, prejudiced, or strongly evaluative kind—of thought. But emotions and behaviors significantly influence and affect thinking, just as thinking. Evaluating is a fundamental characteristic of human organisms and seems to work in a kind of closed circuit with a feedback mechanism: Because perception biases response and then response tends to subsequent perception. Also, prior perceptions appear to bias subsequent perceptions, and prior responses to bias subsequent responses. What we call feelings almost always have a pronounced evaluating or appraisal element."
At the core of REBT is the A-B-C theory of emotional functioning. The A stands for the activating event or the adversity a person faces, for instance by some type of challenging life situation. An example of an activating event might be a man being rejected by what he thinks is an attractive woman (A). The B then represents the evaluation (cognitive-affective-behavioral) of the activating event, contributing to an emotional and behavioral consequence, represented by the C. If the evaluation "B" of the adversity "A" is rooted in an irrational core belief that for instance, the man devoutly believes "Every attractive woman ABSOLUTELY MUST like me and treat me well, and it's awful and terrible when they don't", the consequence is likely to be an unhealthy, self-defeating consequence. Alternatively, if the evaluation of the event is rational, and is rooted in the belief "I strongly PREFER that attractive women treat me well, but there is no law in the universe that says that they must. It's not awful and horrible when they reject me, just very unfortunate and sad. Eventhough I want to be treated well by attractive women, I can stand and bear it when they don't, because I will survive it and find other ways of being reasonably happy" the consequence would in all probably be healthy, self-helping and self-constructive feelings and behaviors. Key to REBT thought is that both AxB (activating events and our beliefs about these events) contribute to disturbed and un-disturbed emotional and behavioral consequences. By attaining a more rational and self-constructive philosophy of ourselves, others and the world, we are more likely to behave and emote in a more life-serving and adaptive way.
Originator Albert Ellis points out, "People are born and reared with the ability to look at the data of their lives, particularly the negative things that happen to them against their goals and interests, and to make inaccurate inferences and attributions about these data."
From whence do our self-sabotaging irrational beliefs originate? REBT teaches that we learn some of them during our childhood, some from environmental factors, but largely that human beings have strong inborne biological tendencies (Ellis, 2003). REBT differs from psychoanalysis in that it places little emphasis on exploring the past, but instead focuses on changing the current evaluations and philosophical thinking about our lives, others and ourselves.
Psychological Dysfunction
One of the main pillars of REBT is that irrational patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving are the cause of much human disturbance. REBT teaches that when we turn flexible preferences, desires and wishes into grandiose absolutistic jehovian demands and commands we disturb and upset ourselves. Albert Ellis has suggested three core beliefs that humans disturb themselves through (Ellis, 2003):
★ "I absolutely MUST be thoroughly competent, adequate, achieving, and lovable at all times, or else I am an incompetent worthless person." This belief usually leads to feelings of anxiety, panic, depression, despair, and worthlessness.
★ "Other significant people in my life, absolutely MUST treat me kindly and fairly at all times, or else I can’t stand it, and they are bad, rotten, and evil persons who should be severely blamed, damned, and vindictively punished for their horrible treatment of me." This leads to feelings of anger, rage, fury, and vindictiveness and lead to actions like fights, feuds, wars, genocide, and ultimately, an atomic holocaust.
★ "Things and conditions absolutely MUST be the way I want them to be and never be too difficult or frustrating. Otherwise, life is awful, terrible, horrible, catastrophic and unbearable." This leads to low-frustration tolerance, self-pity, anger, depression, and to behaviours such as procrastination, avoidance, and inaction.
REBT then holds that an irrational belief system consist of the following self-defeating components:
# Demands
# Awfulizing
# Low Frustration Tolerance
# People Rating (& Overgeneralizing)
A key tenet in the REBT framework is that the evaluative belief system, based on core philosophies, is very likely to create unrealistic, arbitrary, and crooked inferences and distortions in thinking. REBT therefore first teaches that when people in an unsensible and devoutly way overuse absolutistic, dogmatic and rigid "shoulds", "musts", and "oughts", they disturb and upset themselves. REBT holds that that most devoutly and piously held "isms" and dogmas often contribute to disturbances, and that these inflexible and self-defeating philosophies are better replaced with more flexible, self-constructive and self-helping attitudes.
Disturbed evaluations occur through overgeneralization, wherein one exaggerates and globalizes events or traits, usually unwanted events or traits or behaviors, out of context, while almost always ignoring the positive events or traits or behaviors. For example, awfulizing is mental magnification of the importance of an unwanted situation to a catastrophe, elevating the rating of something from bad to worse than it should be, to beyond totally bad, worse than bad to the intolerable and to a holocaust. The same exaggeration and overgeneralizing occurs with human rating, wherein humans come to be defined by their flaws or misdeeds: the person is bad based on bad behavior or bad traits. Frustration intolerance occurs when one perceive something to be too difficult, painful or tedious, and by doing so exaggerates these qualities beyond ones ability to cope with them.
Many of these self-defeating beliefs are both innately biological and indoctrinated in early and during life, and may grow stronger as a person continually revisits and self-propagandizes them. By using emotive, cognitive and behavioral methods the client learns to dispute and replace the absolutist and dogmatic musts with more flexible preferences, which are likely to cause healthier and more constructive emotions and behavior. The Rational Emotive Behavior therapist strongly believes in the rigorous application of the rules of logic, straight thinking, and scientific method to everyday life (Ellis, 2003).
REBT points out that irrational beliefs will often be obvious in how people talk to themselves. The therapist asking, "What are you telling yourself about...?" will often reveal both crooked inferences, and, on closer examination, demands and irrational evaluations. The therapist is most interested in finding core beliefs and deep rooted philosophical evaluations. These are usually the causes of automatic negative inferences and higher level evaluative thoughts.
Mental Wellness
As would be expected, REBT argues that mental wellness results from a surfeit of rational ways of thinking, emoting and behaving. When a undesired and stressful activating event occurs, and the individual is interpreting the situation rationally (emotional, cognitive and behavioral), then the resulting emotional and behavioral consequence is likely to be more healthy and self-helping. This does not mean a relatively undisturbed person never experiences negative feelings, but REBT does hope to keep debilitating unhealthy affect and behavior to a minimum. To do this REBT promotes a scientific, flexible, un-dogmatic, self-helping and efficient belief system.
REBT acknowledges that people in addition to disturbing themselves, also are innately constructivists. Because they largely upset themselves with their beliefs, they can be helped to examine, to question, to think about these beliefs and thereby to develop a more workable, more self-helping set of constructs.
REBT teaches that:
★ Unconditional self-acceptance, other-acceptance and life-acceptance are of prime importance in achieving mental wellness.
★ People and the world are fallible, and that people better accept themselves, life's hassles and unfairness and others "as is".
★ People better consider themselves valuable just as a result of being alive and kicking; and are better off not to measure their "self" or their "being" and give themselves any global rating, because all humans are a continuing process, far too complex to rate, and all humans do both good and bad deeds and have both good and bad attributes and traits.
REBT holds that ideas and feelings about self-worth are largely definitional and are not empirically confirmable or falsifiable (Ellis, 2003).
REBT Therapy
As Albert Ellis says: "Humans, unlike just about all the other animals on earth, create fairly sophisticated languages which not only enable them to think about their feeling, and their actions, and the results they get from doing and not doing certain things, but they also are able to think about their thinking and even think about thinking about their thinking." (Ellis, 2003) This is quite essential to the REBT thought. Ellis, also points out that "because of their self-consciousness and their ability to think about their thinking, they can very easily disturb themselves about their disturbances and can also disturb themselves about their ineffective attempts to overcome their emotional disturbances" (Ellis, 2003). In REBT terminology, this is referred to as secondary disturbances.
One of the most popular methods in REBT is forceful disputing. Recalling the A-B-C theory of personality, successful REBT adds steps D & E. The D stands for disputing: the therapist helps the client to challenge the irrational belief (B). REBT teaching suggests that the therapist ask the client if there is any evidence for the belief, or what would be the worst possible outcome if the client were to give up that belief. These disputing processes incorporate cognitive-philosophic, emotive-evocative-dramatic, and behavioral methods necessary to successfully challenge the irrational beliefs. In therapy the therapist may point out irrational beliefs, but he or she also teaches the client how to dispute them in day-to-day life outside of therapy and also gives the patient homework exercises. The result of disputing the self-defeating belief and replacing it with a rational one yields an effective new philosophy (E).
REBT acknowledges that understanding and insight are not enough. In order to significantly change the client, they almost always have to pinpoint their irrational philosophies and work hard at changing them to more functional and self-helping attitudes. They can do this in a number of cognitive, emotive-evocative, and behavioral ways. Although REBT teaches that the therapist better demonstrate unconditional other-acceptance, the therapist is not necessarily encouraged to build a warm and caring relationship with the client. The therapist’s prime task is to aid the client in identifying and confronting irrational thinking, emotive and behavioral processes and replacing them with more rational ones.
REBT posits that the client has to work hard to get better, and this work may include homework assigned by the therapist. The assignments may include desensitization tasks, i.e. by having the client confronting the very thing he is making himself afraid of. By doing so, the client is actively acting against the belief with is causing the disturbance.
Often REBT focuses on specific problems and is used as a brief therapy, but in deeper problems longer therapy is promoted. Another factor contributing to the brevity of REBT is that the therapist helps the client learn how to get better through hard work, and to help himself get through future adversities. It holds that hard work, and hard work only, is the way to get, and stay, better and not only temporarily feel better. An ideal successful collaboration between the REBT therapist and a client results in changes to the client's philosophical way of evaluating himself, others and his life, which is likely to yield effective results: The client had better move toward unconditional self-acceptance, other-acceptance and life-acceptance.
References
★ Ellis, Albert (2001). ''Feeling better, getting better, staying better''. New York: Impact Publishers, 2001. ISBN 1-886230-35-8
★ Ellis, Albert (2003). Early theories and practices of rational emotive behavior theory and how they have been augmented and revised during the last three decades. ''Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy'', ''21''(3/4)
★ Froggatt, Wayne (2005). ''A Brief Introduction To Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy''. Third Edition, New Zealand Centre for Cognitive Behaviour Therapy
★ Albert Ellis (2001). ''Overcoming Destructive Beliefs, Feelings, and Behaviors: New Directions for Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy''. Prometheus Books
Further reading
★ Albert Ellis & Windy Dryden, ''The Practice of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy 2.ed.''; Springer Publishing, 2007. ISBN 9780826122162
★ Windy Dryden & Michael Neenan, ''Getting Started with REBT''; Routledge, 2005. ISBN 9781583919392
★ Windy Dryden, ''Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy in a Nutshell (Counselling in a Nutshell)''; Sage Publications, 2005. ISBN 9781412907705
★ Windy Dryden, ''Fundamentals of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy: A Training Manual''; Wiley, 2002. ISBN 1-86156-347-7
★ Windy Dryden, ''Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy; Theoretical Developments''; Brunner-Routledge, 2003. ISBN 1-58391-272-X
★ Albert Ellis, ''Overcoming Destructive Beliefs, Feelings, and Behaviors: New Directions for Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy''; Prometheus Books, 2001. ISBN 1-57392-879-8
★ Albert Ellis, ''Feeling better, getting better, staying better''; Impact Publishers, 2001. ISBN 1-886230-35-8
★ Windy Dryden et al., ''A Practitioner's Guide to Rational-Emotive Therapy''; Oxford University Press, 1992. ISBN 0-19-507169-7
★ Albert Ellis et al., ''A Guide to Rational Living'' (3rd rev ed.); Wilshire Book Company, 1997. ISBN 0-87980-042-9
★ Stevan Lars Nielsen, Brad W. Johnson & Albert Ellis, ''Counseling and Psychotherapy With Religious Persons: A Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy Approach''; Lawrence Erlbaum, 2001. ISBN 0805828788.
★ Windy Dryden, Raymond Di Giuseppe & Michael Neenan, ''A Primer on Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy'' (2nd ed.); Research Press, 2002. ISBN 978-0878224784
★ Albert Ellis & Catharine MacLaren, ''Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy: A Therapist's Guide'' (2nd ed.); Impact Publishers, 2005. ISBN 978-1886230613
See also
★ Psychotherapy
★ Psychology
★ Philosophy
★ Cognitive Behavior Therapy
★ Nevrosis
★ Mental Health
★ Albert Ellis
★ Clinical Psychology
★ History of psychotherapy
★ Counselling psychology
External links
★ REBT Network
★ The Albert Ellis Institute
★ Journal of Rational-Emotive and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy
★ About Albert Ellis
★ The Internet Guide to Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
★ RATIONAL RADIO - Rational in an irrational world
★ The Albert Ellis Biography and Information Site
★ Association for Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy
★ Rational.org New Zealand
★ Personality Theories: Albert Ellis
★ 24-7 Help
★ Stressgroup.com
★ Centre for Stress Management
★ SMART recovery
★ ABC Coaching and Counselling Services
★ Advanced Studies of Psychotherapy and Applied Mental Health
★ Albert Ellis Friends
★ Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies
★ REBTresources.info - The Web Resource Site on REBT
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