Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy summary.ppt

classnotes

1. Rational Emotive
Behavioral Therapy
Founded by Albert Ellis

2. Albert Ellis
Ellis was born in Pittsburgh in 1913 and raised in New
York City.
He made the best of a difficult childhood by using his
head and becoming, in his words, "a stubborn and
pronounced problem-solver."
•A serious kidney disorder turned his attention from
sports to books, and the strife in his family (his
parents were divorced when he was 12) led him to
work at understanding others.

3. PHILOSOPHICAL ASSUMPTIONS OF REBT
Humans are born with the potential for rational and irrational thinking
Humans are fallible and need to accept themselves as creatures who
will continue to make mistakes and leave at peace with themselves.
Humans have the tendency to sabotage their own growth towards self
actualization and blame it on others.
REBT is a philosophically-based, humanistic approach that emphasizes
individuals’ capacity for creating their own self-enhancing and self-
defeating emotions.
“People are not influenced by things but their view of things.”
REBT believes that humans are basically hedonistic in the sense that we
seek to stay alive and to achieve a reasonable degree of happiness
REBT—interrelation of thought, feeling, and behavior Human thinking
and emotion are not two different processes—our thinking, emoting, and
acting all interact together.
REBT is based on the concept that emotions and behaviors result from
cognitive processes

4. View of Maladjusted behavior
-humans learn irrational believes from significant others during childhood and
create superstitions themselves.
Our own repetition of self defeating beliefs and early indoctrinated irrational
thoughts keeps our dysfunctional attitudes alive.
REBT says that blame is the core of dysfunctional behavior and recovery can only
be reached if we stop blaming others and ourselves and instead accept ourselves.
Living by self imposed demands of should and must keeps humans disturbed and
stressed
Because we create our own problems we have the power to control our
emotional destiny.
REBT contends that people do not need to be loved accepted and loved even
though it may be desirable. It teaches people how to be undepressed even if not
accepted or loved.

5. Disturbances about Disturbances
According to Ellis, it is bad enough that individuals have irrational
beliefs, but they turn these beliefs into new activating events which
cause new irrational beliefs.
Ellis refers to this as disturbances about disturbances.
Masturbation/Should Statements: Albert Ellis’s phrase to characterize
the behavior of clients who are inflexible and absolutistic in their
thinking, maintaining that they must not fail or that they must have their
way.
Low frustration tolerance:Inability or difficulty in dealing with events or
situations that do not go as planned, for example, getting very angry
because someone does not do as you ask.
Awfulising–meaning more than 100 per cent bad, worse than it
absolutely should be; (b) low frustration tolerance –meaning that your
clients believe that they cannot envisage enduring situations or having
any happiness at all if what they demand must not exist actually exists
Depreciation –here your clients will depreciate themselves, other
people, and/or life conditions.

6. Disturbances about Disturbances
All-or-nothing Thinking: You see things in black and white
categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see
yourself as a total failure.
. Overgeneralization: You see a single negative event as a
never-ending pattern of defeat.
Mental Filter: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on
it exclusively so that your vision of all reality become darkened,
like the drop of ink that discolors the entire beaker of water.
. Disqualifying The Positive: You reject positive experiences by
insisting they "don't count" for some reason or another. In this
way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by
your everyday experiences.

7. Disturbances about Disturbances
Magnification (Catastrophizing) Or Minimization: You
exaggerate the importance of things (such as someone else's
achievement) or you inappropriately shrink things until they
appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow's
imperfections). This is also called the "binocular trick.“
Emotional Reasoning: You assume that your negative
emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: "I feel it,
therefore it must be true."

8. THE A-B-C MODEL
A –ACTIVATING EVENT
B –BELIEF SYSTEM
C –CONSEQUENCES

9. A-B-C Premise
Ellis believes that it is not the activating event (A) that causes
positive or negative emotional and behavioral consequences
(C), but rather it is that they interpret these events
unrealistically and therefore have irrational belief system (B)
that helps cause the consequences (C). The “real” cause of
upsets is themselves and not what happens to them.
REBT seeks to help people understand that it is not past or
present events that “cause” emotional disturbances It is the
individual’s belief system about the event, self, others and the
world that cause such disturbances—what Ellis called irrational
beliefs

10. GOALS of Therapy
A general goal of REBT is to help clients minimize emotional
disturbances, decrease self-defeating behaviors, and
become happier (Reduce irrational beliefs)
If individuals can think rationally and have fewer irrational
beliefs, Ellis believes they will live happier lives.
REBT teaches clients how to deal with negative feelings
such as sorrow, regret, frustration, depression, and anxiety.
Virtually all client problems are viewed from the perspective
of the contribution of their irrational beliefs.

11. Counselor/client Relationship
Rational-emotive therapists do not believe a warm relationship
between counselee and counselor is a necessary or a sufficient
condition for effective personality change.
REBT therapists fully accept clients as fallible humans without
necessarily giving personal warmth.
To keep clients from becoming unduly dependent, REBT therapists
deliberately use hardheaded methods of convincing clients that they
had damned well better resort to more self-discipline.

12. ASSESSMENT
REBT therapists try to assess which thoughts
and behaviors create problems for their clients.
They may listen for themes that repeat
themselves.
Identifying activating events (A), rational and
irrational beliefs (B), and emotional and
behavioral consequences (C) is the most basic
form of assessment in REBT.
This assessment continues in each session and
is not limited to the first few sessions.

13. A (activating Event)
Therapists often divide activating events
into two parts:
1)what happened and
2)what the patient perceived happened.
Typically, therapists focus only on a few
activating events at a time.
Sometimes previous consequences (C)
become activating events.

14. C (Consequences):
Sometimes it is difficult for therapists to
distinguish between consequences and beliefs.
Consequences tend to be feelings such as “I feel
so stressed out.”
Feelings cannot be disputed, but beliefs that
bring about feelings can.
Changing beliefs (B) can alter consequences
(C).

15. B (Beliefs):
Irrational or self-defeating beliefs, rather
than self-helping beliefs, are the focus of
therapy.
Changing irrational beliefs can change
consequences.

16. D (Disputing)
Disputing irrational beliefs is the major
therapeutic technique in REBT.

17. Disputing is often done in three parts.
1. Detecting –the client and therapist
detect the irrational beliefs that underlie
activating events.

18. 2). Discriminating –the therapist and client
discriminate irrational from rational beliefs.

19. 3). Accepting 1 and 2, knowing that insight
does not automatically change people,
and working hard to effect change.

20. E (Effect):
Developing an effective philosophy in
which irrational beliefs have been replaced
by rational beliefs is the product of
successful REBT.

21. INSIGHT
Three types of insight develop form REBT that
can lead to behavioral change.
1. Acknowledging that disturbances largely come
from irrational beliefs not from the past.
2. Learning how one has reindoctrinated oneself
with irrational beliefs from the past.
3. Accepting 1 and 2, knowing that insight does not
automatically change people, and working hard to
effect change.

22. Cognitive Techniques
Coping self-statements
Cost-benefit analysis
Psychoeducational methods
Teaching others
Problem solving

23. Emotive Techniques Used
Imagery
Role-playing
Shame-attacking exercises
Forceful self-dialogue

24. Behavioral Techniques Used
Activity Homework
Reinforcements & penalities
Skill Training