REBT therapy -Ellis

2. •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. In junior high school Ellis set his sights on
becoming the Great American Novelist.
He planned to study accounting in high
school and college, make enough money to
retire at 30, and write without the pressure of
financial need.
The Great Depression put an end to his
vision, but he made it through college in
1934 with a degree in business
administration from the City University of
New York

4. Ellis devoted most of his spare time to writing
short stories, plays, novels, comic poetry,
essays and nonfiction books.
By the time he was 28, he had finished almost
two dozen full-length manuscripts, but had not
been able to get them published.
He realized his future did not lie in writing
fiction, and turned exclusively to nonfiction, to
promoting what he called the "sex-family
revolution."

5. At the time Columbia awarded him a doctorate in 1947
Ellis had come to believe that psychoanalysis was the
deepest and most effective form of therapy.
He decided to undertake a training analysis, and
"become an outstanding psychoanalyst the next few
years."
The psychoanalytic institutes refused to take trainees
without M.D.s, but he found an analyst with the Karen
Horney group who agreed to work with him.
 Ellis completed a full analysis and began to practice
classical psychoanalysis under his teacher's direction.

6. By 1955 Ellis had given up psychoanalysis
entirely, and instead was concentrating on
changing people's behavior by confronting
them with their irrational beliefs and
persuading them to adopt rational ones.
This role was more to Ellis' taste, for he
could be more honestly himself.
"When I became rational-emotive," he said,
"my own personality processes really began
to vibrate.“

7. He published his first book on REBT, How to
Live with a Neurotic, in 1957.
Two years later he organized the Institute for
Rational Living, where he held workshops to
teach his principles to other therapists.
The Art and Science of Love, his first really
successful book, appeared in 1960, and he has
now published 54 books and over 600 articles
on REBT, sex and marriage.
Albert Ellis died of heart and kidney failure July
24, 2007

8. 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

9. REBT is a philosophically-based, humanistic approach
that emphasizes individuals’ capacity for creating their
own self-enhancing and self-defeating emotions.
Ellis borrowed from philosophy. Epictetus, the Stoic
philosopher said, “People are not influenced by things
but their view of things.”
REBT holds that an individual’s belief system affects
whether s/he attains maximum pleasure and self-
actualization. Happiness is the goal of all human beings.
REBT is a theory of how people (who want happiness)
can inadvertently create personality and emotional
disturbance.

10. 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

11. According to REBC theory humans are
happiest when they set up important
life goals and purposes and actively strive to
achieve these.
This involves pursuing our valued goals while
demonstrating what Alfred Adler
called social interest – a commitment both to
helping others achieve their
valued goals and to making the world a socially
and environmentally better
place in which to live

12. REBC theory argues that as humans we are
basically hedonistic in the sense
that we seek to stay alive and to achieve a
reasonable degree of happiness.
Here hedonism does not mean ‘the pleasures
of the flesh’ but involves the concept of
personal meaning; a person can be said to be
acting hedonistically when she is happy acting
in a way that is personally meaningful for
her

13. REBC theory makes an important distinction
between short- and long range
hedonism. We are likely to be at our happiest
when we succeed in
achieving both our short-term and our long-
term goals

14. REB counsellors encourage their clients to
demonstrate enlightened self-interest (or healthy
self-care), which involves putting themselves first
most of the time while putting others, and particularly
significant
others, a close second.
Enlightened self-interest also sometimes involves
putting the desires of others before our own,
particularly when the welfare and happiness of these
others are of great importance to them and our. The
Basic Principles of Rational Emotive Behavioural
Counselling desires are not primary.

15. REBC theory agrees with the ideas of
George Kelly (1955) that we are also
scientists and are able to appreciate that our
philosophies are basically hypotheses about
ourselves, other people, and the world,
which need to be tested.

16. humanistic-existential approach to human
problems and their solutions
This view conceptualises humans as holistic,
indivisible, goal directed
organisms who have importance in the world
just because we are human and alive

17. Rational emotive behavioural theory
hypothesises that as humans we have a
biologically based tendency to think
irrationally as well as a similar tendency to
think rationally.

18. 1.Ego disturbance relates to the demands
that we make about ourselves/others and
the consequent negative ratings that we
make when we/others fail to live up to our
self-imposed demands
Eg.I may be angry at you because you are
acting in a way which I perceive as a threat
to my ‘self-esteem’.

19. 2. Discomfort disturbance, on the other
hand, is more related to the domain of
human comfort and occurs when we make
dogmatic commands that comfort and
comfortable life conditions must exist.

20. Rational emotive behavioural theory states
that a person’s thoughts, emotions and
actions cannot be treated separately from
one another. Rather, they are best
conceptualised as being overlapping or
interacting psychological processes

21. Ellis (1989) has argued that in fact REBC is
a constructivist counselling
approach.
Thus, REBC theory holds that while people
may well be influenced by their culture and
family groups to have certain preferences,
they construct rigid demands about their
preferences

23. There are, in fact, two different types of A in
REBT
‘Situational A’ refers to an objective description
of what occurred in the situation in which the
person disturbed himself
The second is known as the ‘Critical A’ and
refers to the subjective aspect of the situation
about which the person disturbed himself. Most
frequently, a Critical A involves an inference
about what happened in the Situational A.

24. B stands for beliefs. These are evaluative
cognitions or constructed views of the world
which are either rigid or flexible and extreme
or nonextreme.
When these beliefs are rigid they are called
irrational beliefs and take the form of musts,
absolute shoulds, have to’s, got to’s and so
on.

25. (a) 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
(c) depreciation – here your clients
will depreciate themselves, other people, and/or
life conditions.

26. Can’t be empirically validated and/or is
inconsistent w/ confirmable reality
Illogical
Blocks goals
Dogmatic instead of flexible
Demand rather than preference
 (Ellis calls this musturbation)

27. REBT is focused on a particular type of cognitions,
appraisal/evaluative or “hot” cognitions (i.e., rational and
irrational beliefs), that are strongly involved in the
generation of our feelings.
In a broad sense, REBT admits that “B” can also include
descriptions (e.g., “It is a crowded auditorium”) and
inferences (e.g., “I will fail to speak in front of this
auditorium”) (e.g., “cold” cognitions; see David, 2003).
These can be represented in our cognitive system by
production rules (i.e., “if A then do C”) and thus, generate
mainly behaviors at “C”. The relations between “cold” and
“hot” cognitions” seem to be bidirectional.

28. 1. 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.
2. OVERGENERALIZATION: You see a single negative event
as a never-ending pattern of defeat.
3. 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.
4. 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.

29. 5. JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS: You make a negative
interpretation even though there are no definite facts that
convincingly support your conclusion.
a. Mind Reading: You arbitrarily conclude that someone is
reacting negatively to you, and you don't bother to check this out.
b. The Fortune Teller Error: You anticipate that things will
turn out badly, and you feel convinced that your prediction is an
already established fact.
6. MAGNIFICATION (CATASTROPHIZING) OR
MINIMIZATION:You exaggerate the importance of things (such
as your goof-up or 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.“
7. EMOTIONAL REASONING: You assume that your negative
emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: "I feel it,
therefore it must be true."

30. 8. SHOULD STATEMENTS: You try to motivate yourself with
shoulds and shouldn'ts, as if you had to be whipped and
punished before you could be expected to do anything. "Musts"
and "oughts" are also offenders. The emotional consequence is
guilt. When you direct your should statements toward others, you
feel anger, frustration, and resentment.
9. LABELING AND MISLABELING: This is an extreme form of
over-generalization. Instead of describing your error, you attach
a negative label to yourself: "I'm a loser." When someone else's
behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to
him: "He's a goddam louse." Mislabeling involves describing an
event with language that is highly colored and emotionally
loaded.
10. PERSONALIZATION: You see yourself as the cause of some
negative external event which in fact you were not primarily
responsible for.

31. "The Big Four"
(1) Demanding,
(2) Awfulizing,
(3) Low Frustration Tolerance, and
(4) People Rating,

32. In the ABC framework stands for emotional,
behavioural and thinking
consequences of your client’s beliefs about
A

33. Basic Must No. 1: Demands about Self The
first basic must concerns
your clients’ demands about themselves and
is often stated in these terms:
‘I must do well and be approved by
significant others and if I’m not, then
it is awful; I can’t stand it, and I am a
damnable person to some degree
when I am not loved or when I do not do
well.’ These beliefs often lead to
anxiety, depression, shame and guilt.

34. Basic Must No. 2: Demands about Others The second basic must
concerns your clients’ demands about other people, and is often
expressed as follows: ‘You must treat me well and justly, and
it’s awful and I can’t bear it when you don’t. You are
damnable when you don’t treat me well and you deserve to
be punished for doing what you must not do.’ Such beliefs are
often associated with feelings of unhealthy anger, rage, passive-
aggressiveness, and acts of violence.
Basic Must No. 3: Demands about the World/Life Conditions The
third basic must concerns your clients’ demands about the world
or life conditionsand often takes the following form: ‘Life
conditions under which I live absolutely must be the way I
want them to be and if they are not, it’s terrible, I can’t stand
it, poor me.’ This belief is associated with feelings of
self-pity and hurt, and problems of self-discipline – for example,
procrastination and addictive behaviour.

36. A.Ego Disturbance – Demands about Self In this
type of disturbance, it is quite clear that the person
concerned is making demands about himself and the
issue concerns his attitude towards himself. Thus,
the major derivative from the demand concerns
some variation ofself-depreciation: for example, ‘I
must obtain a good degree and if I don’t I am no
good.’
B Discomfort Disturbance – Demands about Self
Here, the person makes demands about himself but
the real issue concerns his attitude towards
discomfort: for example, ‘I must obtain a good
degree because if I don’t, life conditions will be harsh
and I couldn’t bear that.’

37. C Ego Disturbance – Demands about Others Here, the
person makes demands about another person, but the
real issue concerns his attitude towards himself. A
common example of this is found when another person’s
behaviour serves as a threat to the person’s self-esteem
and his unhealthy anger about the other’s behaviour
serves to protect his self esteem: for example, ‘You must
treat me nicely because if you do not then that proves
that I am no good.’
D Discomfort Disturbance – Demands about Others
Here, the person makes demands about others but the
real issue discomfort: for example, ‘You must treat me
nicely because I couldn’t stand life conditions if you do
not.

38. Ego Disturbance – Demands about Life Conditions
Here, on the surface, the person makes demands
about some aspect of life conditions, but the real
issue concerns his attitude towards himself: for
example, ‘Life conditions must be easy for me
because if they are not then that’s just proof of my
worthlessness.’
F Discomfort Disturbance – Demands about Life
Conditions .This kind of disturbance is a more
impersonal form of low frustration tolerance. It
is often seen when a person loses his temper with
inanimate objects: for example, ‘My car absolutely
must not break down because I couldn’t
stand the frustration if it did.’

41. Rational emotive behavioural theory does, however,
put forward a more elaborate account of how we
perpetuate our psychological disturbance.
First, it argues that we do so because we lack three
major insights:
(a) Psychological disturbance is primarily determined
by rigid and extreme irrational beliefs that we hold
about ourselves, others, and the world;
(b) we remain disturbed by re-indoctrinating
ourselves in the present with these irrational
beliefs; and
(c) the only long-term way of overcoming
psychological disturbance is to work against our
irrational beliefs and against our tendency to think
irrationally and act dysfunctionally.

42. Secondly, rational emotive behavioural theory holds
that we perpetuate our disturbances though our
actions and subsequent modes of thought.
. When a person thinks irrationally at B about an
activating event at A, then I have shown that that
person will experience an unhealthy negative
emotion at C. But, the person will also tend to act
self-defeatingly at C (behavioural consequence) and
think unrealistically at C (cognitive consequence)
These behaviours and subsequent modes of thought
frequently serve to strengthen the person’s
conviction in his irrational beliefs at B and in doing so
they serve to perpetuate the person’s psychological
disturbance.

43. It states that if clients are to overcome their emotional and
behavioural problems, they need to:
(a) acknowledge that they have a problem;
(b) identify and overcome any meta-disturbances about this problem;
(c) identify the irrational belief that underpins the original problem;
(d) understand why their irrational belief is, in fact, irrational
(that is, illogical, inconsistent with reality, and will give them poor results
in life);
(e) realise why the rational alternative to this irrational belief is logical,
consistent with reality, and will give them better results; (f) challenge
their irrational belief so that they begin to strengthen their conviction in
the rational alternative;
(g) use a variety of cognitive, emotive, imaginal and behavioural
assignments to strengthen their conviction in their rational
belief and weaken their conviction in their irrational belief;
(h) identify and overcome obstacles to therapeutic change using the
same sequence as above while accepting themselves for their
tendency to construct such obstacles; and
(i) keep working against their tendency to think and act
irrationally.