Rebt

For my Theoretical Orientation paper I chose to discuss Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy. Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy was founded by Albert Ellis, PhD, in 1955. A very early form of cognitive behavior therapy Dr. Albert Ellis presented it as an action styled approach to managing cognitive, behavioral, and emotional disturbances. The core of REBT says that it is how someone thinks about an event that leads to their emotional and behavioral problems. REBT teaches these individuals how to examine and challenge their unhealthy thinking process from a present minded point of view. which in turn creates unhealthy emotions and self-defeating/self-sabotaging behaviors. REBT is a practical approach to assist individuals in coping with and overcoming adversity as well as achieving goals. REBT places a good deal of its focus on the present. REBT addresses attitudes, unhealthy emotions (e.g., unhealthy anger, depression, anxiety, guilt, etc.) and maladaptive behaviors (e.g., procrastination, addictive behaviors, aggression, unhealthy eating, sleep disturbance, etc.) that can negatively impact life satisfaction. REBT practitioners work closely with individuals, seeking to help identify their individual set of beliefs (attitudes, expectations and personal rules) that frequently lead to emotional distress. REBT then provides a variety of methods to help people reformulate their dysfunctional beliefs into more sensible, realistic and helpful ones by employing the powerful REBT technique called “disputing.” Ultimately, REBT helps individuals to develop a philosophy and approach to living that can increase their effectiveness and satisfaction at work, in living successfully with others, in parenting and educational settings, in making our community and environment healthier, and in enhancing their own emotional health and personal welfare. Therapists who use REBT say it gives people with a way to work on their emotional and behavioral problems by focusing on, and changing, the way they think. According to Ellis' famous A-B-C model, it is not the Activating Events (A's, or trigger situations) that cause people to drink or use drugs (the C's, or Consequences), but their Beliefs (B's) about the events that actually cause addictive behaviors. previously called rational therapy and rational emotive therapy, is a comprehensive, active-directive, philosophically and empirically based psychotherapy which focuses on resolving emotional and behavioral problems and disturbances and enabling people to lead happier and more fulfilling lives.[1] REBT was created and developed by the American psychotherapist and psychologist Albert Ellis who was inspired by many of the teachings of Asian, Greek, Roman and modern philosophers.[2][3] REBT is one form of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) and was first expounded by Ellis in the mid-1950s; development continued until his death in 2007. What is REBT' Who developed it' When' How does it work' How has it been used' Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) offers a distinct treatment option for people who are having difficulty with AA or the 12-step approach. REBT was founded by Albert Ellis, PhD, in 1955, and provides people with a way to work on their emotional and behavioral problems, primarily by focusing on the way they think about the situations in their lives. According to Ellis' famous A-B-C model, it is not the Activating Events (A's, or trigger situations) that cause people to drink or use drugs (the C's, or Consequences), but their Beliefs (B's) about the events that actually cause addictive behaviors. Counselors and therapists who have learned REBT, including many who are strong believers in 12-step programs, use a wide variety of cognitive, emotive, and behavioral techniques to help their clients examine their beliefs and to learn how to better control their thinking, emotions, and behaviors. While Ellis, an avowed atheist, has written that some people may not be helped by AA partly because they insist on interpreting its steps in an absolutistic fashion, he has also argued that working on many of the 12 steps can be useful.[ 1] And there is no reason that REBT cannot be used very effectively with people for whom spirituality is a central aspect of their lives. Whether spiritual or not, REBT posits that people can take more responsibility for their emotional and behavioral lives and provides techniques and tools for them to do so.[ 2] Indeed, the majority of clients who use REBT are religious, and find REBT very helpful in their attempt to fulfill their goals and to live a life in line with their values, often including ethical, spiritual, and religious values. Because it is based on REBT, it is worth digressing to give some description of Rational Recovery (often referred to as RR but more accurately RRSN, Rational Recovery Self-Help Network). Founder Jack Trimpey discusses its self-help tenets in an accompanying essay. RRSN was founded by Mr. Trimpey in 1985; currently there are over 500 groups operating nationwide. Each group meets once or twice a week for approximately 90 minutes and is led by a coordinator; most groups also have a professional advisor, often a psychologist or alcohol counselor, who is available for professional advice and referrals. Because RR is a new organization, a specific meeting format has not been agreed upon. Some groups focus on Ellis' ABC model and Trimpey's Addictive Voice Recognition Training (see Mr. Trimpey's essay), while others are less structured and spend more time on sharing and discussing various problems that members bring up. Though RR is also an abstinence-based program; it represents a significant alternative to AA for several reasons: 1) like REBT, it urges people to help themselves without relying on a higher power, although as noted, the majority of people in RR groups are religious; 2) labeling of any kind is discouraged on the grounds that it encourages people to overgeneralize; thus, RR members do not have to acknowledge that they are alcoholics; 3) RR asserts that people can be "recovered," i.e. they do not need to think of themselves as "recovering" for the rest of their lives. 4) meetings focus on helping people learn to use REBT to better control their thinking, emotions, and behaviors. Crosstalk is encouraged, so meetings sometimes resemble group therapy meetings; however, since RR is a lay-led, self-help network, participants are urged to focus on recent events and to deal with significant psychological problems, such as sexual abuse, in a professional setting. Participants review their successes and failures, and discuss how to effectively handle upcoming potential trigger situations such as business trips or parties. Many of the relapse prevention techniques used are similar to those developed by Marlett and others. Trimpey[ 3] has argued that people often develop dysfunctional dependency on groups; hence he has written that many people need only attend for about a year, and then should focus on enhancing their lives through non-recovery activities. However, most coordinators, advisors, and participants assert that it takes more than a year. Although Ellis and Trimpey talk about "RR versus AA, almost all of the people working in RR respect the value of AA for many people, are not interested in attacking AA, and are primarily working to provide an alternative to people who desire one. Research (e.g., Miller[ 4]) suggests that more people get better when options are available to them, and it would certainly be surprising if only one self-help technique were to be shown to be the answer for such complex problems as alcoholism and substance abuse. Those of us who are involved in RR are primarily interested in providing an option to people who are looking for ways to help themselves overcome their problems with alcohol and drugs, and recent research by Galanter, Egelko and Edwards[ 5] suggests that RR is providing that help. Rational emotive behavior therapy From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Redirected from Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy) Jump to: navigation, search For other uses, see Rational. This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2011) Rational emotive behavior therapy Intervention MeSH D011617 Psychology • History • Subfields Basic science • Abnormal • Biological • Cognitive • Comparative • Cultural • Differential • Developmental • Evolutionary • Experimental • Mathematical • Personality • Positive • Social Applied science • Applied behavior analysis • Clinical • Community • Consumer • Educational • Health • Industrial and organizational • Legal • Military • Occupational health • Political • Religion • School • Sport Lists • Disciplines • Organizations • Outline • Psychologists • Psychotherapies • Publications • Research methods • Theories • Timeline • Topics Portal • v • t • e Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), previously called rational therapy and rational emotive therapy, is a comprehensive, active-directive, philosophically and empirically based psychotherapy which focuses on resolving emotional and behavioral problems and disturbances and enabling people to lead happier and more fulfilling lives.[1] REBT was created and developed by the American psychotherapist and psychologist Albert Ellis who was inspired by many of the teachings of Asian, Greek, Roman and modern philosophers.[2][3] REBT is one form of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) and was first expounded by Ellis in the mid-1950s; development continued until his death in 2007.[4][5][6] Contents [hide] • 1 History • 2 Theoretical assumptions • 3 Psychological dysfunction • 4 Mental wellness • 5 REBT Intervention • 6 Limitations and critique • 7 Applications and interfaces • 8 References • 9 Further reading • 10 External links o 10.1 General o 10.2 REBT Applications [edit] History Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) is both a psychotherapeutic system of theory and practices and a school of thought established by Albert Ellis. Originally called rational therapy, its appellation was revised to rational emotive therapy in 1959, then to its current appellation in 1992. REBT was one of the first of the cognitive behavior therapies, as it was predicated in articles Ellis first published in 1956,[7] nearly a decade before Aaron Beck first set forth his cognitive therapy.[8] Precursors of certain fundamental aspects of REBT have been identified in various ancient philosophical traditions, particularly Stoicism.[9] For example, Ellis' first major publication on rational therapy describes the philosophical basis of REBT as the principle that a person is rarely affected emotionally by outside things but rather by ‘his perceptions, attitudes, or internalized sentences about outside things and events.' He adds, This principle, which I have inducted from many psychotherapeutic sessions with scores of patients during the last several years, was originally discovered and stated by the ancient Stoic philosophers, especially Zeno of Citium (the founder of the school), Chrysippus [his most influential disciple], Panaetius of Rhodes (who introduced Stoicism into Rome), Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. The truths of Stoicism were perhaps best set forth by Epictetus, who in the first century A.D. wrote in the Enchiridion: “Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of them.” Shakespeare, many centuries later, rephrased this thought in Hamlet: “There’s nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.”[10] [edit] Theoretical assumptions One of the fundamental premises of REBT is that humans, in most cases, do not merely get upset by unfortunate adversities, but also by how they construct their views of reality through their language, evaluative beliefs, meanings and philosophies about the world, themselves and others.[11] This concept has been attributed as far back as the Greek Philosopher Epictetus, who is often cited as utilizing similar ideas in antiquity.[12] In REBT, clients usually learn and begin to apply this premise by learning the A-B-C-model of psychological disturbance and change. The A-B-C model states that it normally is not merely an A, adversity (or activating event) that contributes to disturbed and dysfunctional emotional and behavioral Cs, consequences, but also what people B, believe about the A, adversity. A, adversity can be either an external situation or a thought or other kind of internal event, and it can refer to an event in the past, present, or future.[13] The Bs, beliefs that are most important in the A-B-C model are explicit and implicit philosophical meanings and assumptions about events, personal desires, and preferences. The Bs, beliefs that are most significant are highly evaluative and consist of interrelated and integrated cognitive, emotional and behavioral aspects and dimensions. According to REBT, if a person's evaluative B, belief about the A, activating event is rigid, absolutistic and dysfunctional, the C, the emotional and behavioral consequence, is likely to be self-defeating and destructive. Alternatively, if a person's evaluative B, belief is preferential, flexible and constructive, the C, the emotional and behavioral consequence is likely to be self-helping and constructive. Through REBT, by understanding the role of their mediating, evaluative and philosophically based illogical, unrealistic and self-defeating meanings, interpretations and assumptions in upset, people often can learn to identify them, begin to D, dispute, refute, challenge and question them, distinguish them from healthy constructs, and subscribe to more constructive and self-helping constructs.[14] The REBT framework assumes that humans have both innate rational (meaning self- and social-helping and constructive) and irrational (meaning self- and social-defeating and un-helpful) tendencies and leanings. REBT claims that people to a large degree consciously and unconsciously construct emotional difficulties such as self-blame, self-pity, clinical anger, hurt, guilt, shame, depression and anxiety, and behaviors and behavior tendencies like procrastination, over-compulsiveness, avoidance, addiction and withdrawal by the means of their irrational and self-defeating thinking, emoting and behaving.[15] REBT is then applied as an educational process in which the therapist often active-directively teaches the client how to identify irrational and self-defeating beliefs and philosophies which in nature are rigid, extreme, unrealistic, illogical and absolutist, and then to forcefully and actively question and dispute them and replace them with more rational and self-helping ones. By using different cognitive, emotive and behavioral methods and activities, the client, together with help from the therapist and in homework exercises, can gain a more rational, self-helping and constructive rational way of thinking, emoting and behaving. One of the main objectives in REBT is to show the client that whenever unpleasant and unfortunate 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.[16] By attaining and ingraining a more rational and self-constructive philosophy of themselves, others and the world, people often are more likely to behave and emote in more life-serving and adaptive ways. Albert Ellis[16] posits three major insights of REBT: Insight 1 - People seeing and accepting the reality that their emotional disturbances at point C are only partially caused by the activating events or adversities at point A that precede C. Although A contributes to C, and although disturbed Cs (such as feelings of panic and depression) are much more likely to follow strong negative As (such as being assaulted or raped), than they are to follow weak As (such as being disliked by a stranger), the main or more direct cores of extreme and dysfunctional emotional disturbances (Cs) are people’s irrational beliefs — the "absolutistic" (inflexible) "musts" and their accompanying inferences and attributions that people strongly believe about the activating event. Insight 2 - No matter how, when, and why people acquire self-defeating or irrational beliefs (i.e. beliefs which are the main cause of their dysfunctional emotional-behavioral consequences), if they are disturbed in the present, they tend to keep holding these irrational beliefs and continue upsetting themselves with these thoughts. They do so not because they held them in the past, but because they still actively hold them in the present (often unconsciously), while continuing to reaffirm their beliefs and act as if they are still valid. In their minds and hearts, the troubled people still follow the core "musturbatory" philosophies they adopted or invented long ago, or ones they recently accepted or constructed. Insight 3 - No matter how well they have gained insights 1 and 2, insight alone rarely enables people to undo their emotional disturbances. They may feel better when they know, or think they know, how they became disturbed, because insights can feel useful and curative. But it is unlikely that people will actually get better and stay better unless they have and apply insight 3, which is that there is usually no way to get better and stay better except by continual work and practice in looking for and finding one’s core irrational beliefs; actively, energetically, and scientifically disputing them; replacing one’s absolute "musts" (rigid requirements about how things should be) with more flexible preferences; changing one's unhealthy feelings to healthy, self-helping emotions; and firmly acting against one’s dysfunctional fears and compulsions. Only by a combined cognitive, emotive, and behavioral, as well as a quite persistent and forceful attack on one's serious emotional problems, is one likely to significantly ameliorate or remove them, and keep them removed. Regarding cognitive-affective-behavioral processes in mental functioning and dysfunctioning, originator Albert Ellis explains:[16] "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 influences emotions and behaviors. Evaluating is a fundamental characteristic of human organisms and seems to work in a kind of closed circuit with a feedback mechanism: First, perception biases response, and then response tends to bias subsequent perception. Also, prior perceptions appear to bias subsequent perceptions, and prior responses appear to bias subsequent responses. What we call feelings almost always have a pronounced evaluating or appraisal element." REBT then generally proposes that many of these self-defeating cognitive, emotive and behavioral tendencies are both innately biological and indoctrinated early in and during life, and further grow stronger as a person continually revisits, clings and acts on them. Ellis alludes to similarities between REBT and the general semantics when explaining the role of irrational beliefs in self-defeating tendencies, citing Alfred Korzybski as a significant modern influence on this thinking.[17] REBT differs from other clinical approaches like psychoanalysis in that it places little emphasis on exploring the past, but instead focuses on changing the current evaluations and philosophical thinking-emoting and behaving in relation to themselves, others and the conditions under which people live. [edit] Psychological dysfunction One of the main pillars of REBT is that irrational and dysfunctional ways and patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving are contributing to much, though hardly all, human disturbance and emotional and behavioral self- and social defeatism. REBT generally teaches that when people turn flexible preferences, desires and wishes into grandiose, absolutistic and fatalistic dictates, this tends to contribute to disturbance and upsetness. Albert Ellis has suggested three core beliefs or philosophies that humans tend to disturb themselves through:[16] "I absolutely MUST, under practically all conditions and at all times, perform well (or outstandingly well) and win the approval (or complete love) of significant others. If I fail in these important—and sacred—respects, that is awful and I am a bad, incompetent, unworthy person, who will probably always fail and deserves to suffer." "Other people with whom I relate or associate, absolutely MUST, under practically all conditions and at all times, treat me nicely, considerately and fairly. Otherwise, it is terrible and they are rotten, bad, unworthy people who will always treat me badly and do not deserve a good life and should be severely punished for acting so abominably to me." "The conditions under which I live absolutely MUST, at practically all times, be favorable, safe, hassle-free, and quickly and easily enjoyable, and if they are not that way it's awful and horrible and I can't bear it. I can't ever enjoy myself at all. My life is impossible and hardly worth living." Holding this belief when faced with adversity tends to contribute to feelings of anxiety, panic, depression, despair, and worthlessness. Holding this belief when faced with adversity tends to contribute to feelings of anger, rage, fury, and vindictiveness. Holding this belief when faced with adversity tends to contribute to frustration and discomfort, intolerance, self-pity, anger, depression, and to behaviors such as procrastination, avoidance, and inaction. REBT commonly posits that at the core of irrational beliefs there often are explicit or implicit rigid demands and commands, and that extreme derivatives like awfulizing, frustration intolerance, people deprecation and over-generalizations are accompanied by these.[13] According to REBT the core dysfunctional philosophies in a person's evaluative emotional and behavioral belief system, are also very likely to contribute to unrealistic, arbitrary and crooked inferences and distortions in thinking. REBT therefore first teaches that when people in an insensible and devout way overuse absolutistic, dogmatic and rigid "shoulds", "musts", and "oughts", they tend to disturb and upset themselves. Further REBT generally posits that disturbed evaluations to a large degree occur through over-generalization, wherein people exaggerate and globalize events or traits, usually unwanted events or traits or behavior, out of context, while almost always ignoring the positive events or traits or behaviors. For example, awfulizing is partly mental magnification of the importance of an unwanted situation to a catastrophe or horror, 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 arbitrarily and axiomatically defined by their perceived flaws or misdeeds. Frustration intolerance then occurs when a person perceives something to be too difficult, painful or tedious, and by doing so exaggerates these qualities beyond one's ability to cope with them. Essential to REBT theory is also the concept of secondary disturbances which people sometimes construct on top of their primary disturbance. As Ellis emphasizes:[16] "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." [edit] Mental wellness As would be expected, REBT argues that mental wellness and mental health to a large degree results from an adequate amount of self-helping, flexible, logico-empirical ways of thinking, emoting and behaving.[15] When a perceived undesired and stressful activating event occurs, and the individual is interpreting, evaluating and reacting to the situation rationally and self-helpingly, then the resulting consequence is, according to REBT, likely to be more healthy, constructive and functional. This does not by any means mean that a relatively un-disturbed person never experiences negative feelings, but REBT does hope to keep debilitating and un-healthy emotions and subsequent self-defeating behavior to a minimum. To do this REBT generally promotes a flexible, un-dogmatic, self-helping and efficient belief system and constructive life philosophy about adversities and human desires and preferences. REBT clearly acknowledges that people, in addition to disturbing themselves, also are innately constructivists[disambiguation needed]. Because they largely upset themselves with their beliefs, emotions and behaviors, they can be helped to, in a multimodal[disambiguation needed] manner, dispute and question these and develop a more workable, more self-helping set of constructs. REBT generally teaches and promotes: • That the concepts and philosophies of life of unconditional self-acceptance, other-acceptance, and life-acceptance are effective philosophies of life in achieving mental wellness and mental health. • That human beings are inherently fallible and imperfect and that they had better accept their and other human being's totality and humanity, while at the same time not like some of their behaviors and characteristics. That they are better off not measuring their entire self or their "being" and give up the narrow, grandiose and ultimately destructive notion to give themselves any global rating or report card. This is partly because all humans are continually evolving and are far too complex to accurately rate; all humans do both self- and social-defeating and self- and social-helping deeds, and have both beneficial and un-beneficial attributes and traits at certain times and in certain conditions. REBT holds that ideas and feelings about self-worth are largely definitional and are not empirically confirmable or falsifiable. • That people had better accept life with its hassles and difficulties not always in accordance with their wants, while trying to change what they can change and live as elegantly as possible with what they cannot change. [edit] REBT Intervention As explained, REBT is a therapeutic system of both theory and practices; generally one of the goals of REBT is to help clients see the ways in which they have learned how they often needlessly upset themselves, teach them how to un-upset themselves and then how to empower themselves to lead happier and more fulfilling lives.[11] The emphasis in therapy is generally to establish a successful collaborative therapeutic working alliance based on the REBT educational model. Although REBT teaches that the therapist or counsellor had better demonstrate unconditional other-acceptance or unconditional positive regard, the therapist is not necessarily always encouraged to build a warm and caring relationship with the client. The tasks of the therapist or counsellor include understanding the client’s concerns from his point of reference and work as a facilitator, teacher and encourager. In traditional REBT, the client together with the therapist, in a structured active-directive manner, often work through a set of target problems and establish a set of therapeutic goals. In these target problems, situational dysfunctional emotions, behaviors and beliefs are assessed in regards to the client's values and goals. After working through these problems, the client learns to generalize insights to other relevant situations. In many cases after going through a client's different target problems, the therapist is interested in examining possible core beliefs and more deep rooted philosophical evaluations and schemas that might account for a wider array of problematic emotions and behaviors.[13] Although REBT much of the time is used as a brief therapy, in deeper and more complex problems, longer therapy is promoted. In therapy, the first step often is that the client acknowledges the problems, accepts emotional responsibility for these and has willingness and determination to change. This normally requires a considerable amount of insight, but as originator Albert Ellis[16] explains: "Humans, unlike just about all the other animals on earth, create fairly sophisticated languages which not only enable them to think about their feeling, 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." Through the therapeutic process, REBT employs a wide array of forceful and active, meaning multimodal[disambiguation needed] and disputing, methodologies. Central through these methods and techniques is the intent to help the client challenge, dispute and question their destructive and self-defeating cognitions, emotions and behaviors. The methods and techniques incorporate cognitive-philosophic, emotive-evocative-dramatic, and behavioral methods for disputation of the client's irrational and self-defeating constructs and helps the client come up with more rational and self-constructive ones. REBT seeks to acknowledge that understanding and insight are not enough; in order for clients to significantly change, they had better pinpoint their irrational and self-defeating constructs and work forcefully and actively at changing them to more functional and self-helping ones. REBT posits that the client must work hard to get better, and in therapy this normally includes a wide array of homework exercises in day-to-day life assigned by the therapist. The assignments[disambiguation needed] may for example include desensitization tasks, i.e., by having the client confront the very thing he or she is afraid of. By doing so, the client is actively acting against the belief that often is contributing significantly to the disturbance. Another factor contributing to the brevity of REBT is that the therapist seeks to empower the client to help himself through future adversities. REBT only promotes temporary solutions if more fundamental solutions are not found. An ideal successful collaboration between the REBT therapist and a client results in changes to the client's philosophical way of evaluating him- or herself, others, and his or her life, which will likely yield effective results. The client then moves toward unconditional self-acceptance, other-acceptance and life-acceptance while striving to live a more self-fulfilling and happier life. [edit] Limitations and critique REBT and CBT in general have a substantial and strong research base to verify and support both their psychotherapeutic efficiency and their theoretical underpinnings. A great quantity of scientific empirical studies has proven REBT to be an effective and efficient treatment for many kinds of psychopathology, conditions and problems.[16][18][19][20] A vast amount of outcome- and experimental studies support the effectiveness of REBT and CBT.[21][22] Recently, REBT randomized clinical trials have offered a positive view on the efficacy of REBT.[23] In general REBT is arguably one of the most investigated theories in the field of psychotherapy and a large amount of clinical experience and a substantial body of modern psychological research have validated and substantiated many of REBTs theoretical assumptions on personality and psychotherapy.[19][23][24] Some critiques have been given on some of the clinical research that has been done on REBT both from within and by others. For instance originator Albert Ellis has on occasions emphasized the difficulty and complexity of measuring psychotherapeutic effectiveness, since many studies only tend to measure whether clients merely feel better after.