Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy(REBT) is a treatment method created by Albert Ellis, which emphasizes the influence of irrational beliefs on emotion and behavior. The core theory is ABC theory. The main method of treatment is to change the unreasonable beliefs of the parties through cognitive techniques, emotional techniques and behavioral techniques so as to eliminate their emotional and behavioral problems, and to unconditionally accept themselves. REBT is based on the assumption that people are born with both rational and non-rational thinking and behavior, rather than rational thinking, many of which are based on early illogical learning or on the influence of parents and the environment. Rational thinking is to cherish the preciousness of life, can be happy, can be thinking, can learn, you can use words to express themselves, communicate with others, with others to establish close relations, grow in love, and towards the goal of self-realization.
On the other hand, there are also irrational or illogical thinking that will make people choose to destroy themselves, evade their thinking, repeat mistakes, superstitious stubbornness, self-pity, dedication to perfection, impulsiveness, lack of patience and avoidance of growth. Ellis believes that when a person choose to irrational thinking, they will have a lot of emotional problems, so they can not live happily.Ellis disagrees with Freudian’s earlier experience of human beings.
He points out that it is a mistake for Ferdinand to reject human nature because Ellis denies that people are completely dominated by their own biological factors. Nor does he agree that man is instinctally driven Because Ellis believes that the main part and the humanistic part of humanism are correct, he believes that one should never give up oneself and should not make oneself victim of an earlier experience. Ellis believes that humankind has huge, unused resources that can be used to develop its own potential and to further change the fate of individuals and society.
However, REBT also emphasizes that because of the irrational tendency of people, the result is that people develop habits and bad behaviors that harm them. Ellis believes that people’s thoughts, emotions and behaviors occur simultaneously. Therefore, he emphasizes that in order to understand people’s self-destructive behavior, we must first understand how people feel, think, understand and act. At the same time, he thinks people have the ability to understand their own limitations, to change their basic concepts and basic values, and to vigorously challenge self-destructive behavior.
Because people have the ability to make an assessment of their own value system, there is a chance to replace them with new ideas, opinions, and values, and as a result, new behavior emerges. In REBT’s ABC theory, “A” refers to something or adversity encountered by an individual, such as an event, a person, an idea, and so on. “C” refers to the emotional and / or behavioral result associated with “A”.
“B” refers to the belief in “A”, which is the main cause of the “C” (consequence). Beliefs can be divided into rational and irrational. Rational beliefs (RBs) are flexible, adaptable, socially realistic and help us reach our goal of life. Irrational beliefs (IBs) are rigid, autocratic and do not conform to the realities of society, and often prevent us from reaching our goals. This theory indicates that the motivational event or personal life experience, or the life event A, leads to emotional or behavioral reactions through the thought process and personal belief in B. Emotional problems and emotional disorders, the key lies in the operation of point B, so A and C are not directly related to B is an intermediary force, but also because of the possibility of rational and irrational thinking, B is often the main cause of C’s.
Therefore, to alleviate the adverse emotional outcomes of C, B must be Disputing, changed, resulting in B to play the role of counseling and treatment, with the effect that the parties have a new emotion or feelings.This theoretical framework not only serves as a guideline for counseling and healers of PST but also can teach the parties to understand the important items and their causal relationships with their own problems and can change the belief system with the help of the therapist Normal or adaptive life. The focus of REBT is not only to improve the client’s feelings about the current situation, but also to teach them to apply those skills in order to be better off in times of adversity. The proactive style makes treatment shorter and more effective. Therapists thus have the opportunity to “teach” clients and are more motivated to encourage them to seek more economical and time-saving treatments. Here is the example to show how ABC theory in REBT: A.activating eventsA friend told you that your girlfriend is dating other man, she want to break up with you.
B. Irrational beliefs(IBs)”I am worthless.””I can’t find another girl as good as her.
“”That’s terrible.”” I can not accept, this is very unfair.”C. Consequences Frustrated or cynicalD. Dispute IBs “Do you have any evidence to proof :”you are worthless””you can’t find another girl as good as her.” “Why her refusal will make you into a bad person?”E. New effect or feeling Sad : “We did have a very good history, and breaking up made me feel sorry.
But there really is a problem between us, and now I can go find new people again.”Worry: “Her annoyance with her contacts really afflicts me, but things are not horrible or unbearable.” The goal of REBT treatment is to change the values of the recipient. Ellis believes that to minimize the latent tendency of the victim to self-destruct and thus to help him have a lenient and reasonable philosophy of life.
The therapist needs to guide the advocate to learn to accept the reality, to organize and control his own thoughts, to be more tolerant and patient to himself, and to reduce unreasonable demands on himself and others. They also encourage client to critically review the most basic values of individuals, face all problems squarely, and learn to think intellectually so that eventually they can live happily.The course of treatment is mainly teaching, corrective and learning process, the therapist has the initiative and instructional functions and help relationship; and the client like a student, through a process of re-education, learning how to apply logical thinking to Solve the problem.Ellis pointed out that the most effective way to help people change their basic personality during the course of treatment is to directly modify the life philosophy of the client and explain their personal opinions and beliefs to them. In fact, they are the main cause of their emotional anxiety. At the same time, They also attack and challenge their irrational beliefs on a logical basis.
Finally, they also teach them how to think logically in order to help them change and eliminate their irrational beliefs. REBT has its own special theory and exercises, but he also overlaps with other treatment systems. This allows REBT to be used with them.
This article will discuss the other three treatments. With Psychoanalytic therapy Psychoanalysis emphasizes that people’s minds, feelings, and actions are divided into consciousness and unconsciousness and that they often bother themselves in an unconscious state. If you want to alleviate the symptoms, you must find out the motivation under the mind. REBT agree that clients are often unaware of their irrational beliefs, but REBT does not consider that the client often”represses”these beliefs, and most of the beliefs are hidden in the sense that they will soon be discovered once the client is calmly looking for them. Therefore, REBT helps clients find their unwarranted or unconfirmed irrational beliefs, clearly bring them to the level of consciousness and disputing them.
REBT also partially recognizes the defense mechanism. In fact, when people are aware of their own “bad” or “wrong” behavior, they can easily become defensive, especially when they think they should do something they do not do it, usually by forgetting, rationalizing, projecting or Take other ways to defend yourself, because if admitted wrong, they will condemn themselves. In their defense, let them know that in fact they are just acting “bad” and may be counterproductive.
Therefore, REBT teaches them to unconditional self-acceptance(USA), to help them recognize their “wrong” demeanor, without blaming their own personality. Once the moderators have mastered the USA, they are less likely to defend or repress them and are constantly looking at their actions rather than themselves. Usually, REBT does not analyze the long-term impact of the client’s childhood experience but focuses most of the current distress. However, in order for the principal to understand the current irrational beliefs, therapists would let them know how these beliefs formed and how they remained without screening in their childhood experience. At the same time, therapists also reviewed with their clients how their self-defeating and behavioral reactions formed in their early life. REBT found that self-derogation is the root cause of most emotional disorders and therefore pays special attention to self-assessment. At the same time, REBT found that most of the clients focused more on interpersonal relationships than other things. And REBT can help people to explore, understand and change their irrational beliefs about interpersonal relationships, and to accept the training of communication skills.
With Behavior Therapy In fact, REBT itself is behavioral therapy. Behavioral therapy usually covers cognitive methods, especially when teaching the main behavioral skills of the patients. However, the effectiveness of this treatment in cognition has not been great, until Ellis began to mention irrational beliefs, there was an absolute influence on emotional disorders. REBT takes a high degree of behavioral orientation. It holds that sticking to irrational beliefs is the main cause of incapacitating behavior and that behavior, in turn, enhances irrational beliefs. Equally important is the belief that the best or only way REBT theory can sometimes change the irrational beliefs of some clients is to allow them to crush these beliefs with action.
For example, people who are afraid of flying may never give up the bad faith of “flying is too dangerous” until they force themselves to fly several times “at risk.” With Person-Centered Therapy and Existential Therapy Person-Centered Therapy and Existential Therapy think everyone has considerable autonomy. To a certain extent, people can choose different types of thinking, feeling and acting, thus shaping their self-help and self-defeating behavior. What makes humans different from other animals is that they have the choice of treating themselves positively or negatively and living with positive or negative attitudes.
As a result, they help their clients accept themselves unconditionally, so unconditionally because they are good for themselves or for others. So, they will always be self-acceptance, Person-Centered Therapy, and Existential Therapy unconditionally accept their client. Their idea is that the client may come forward to follow suit and take over completely if therapists accepted them even they fail or wrong. REBT follows the model of Person-Centered Therapy and Existential Therapy and unconditionally abandons the client during treatment as this can effectively help the client. However, the REBT also means that if the therapist just accepts, many clients will accept themselves because they are accepted by the therapist, and instead require a high degree of conditional acceptance. For this reason, REBT, in addition to unconditionally accepting the client, will also take the initiative to tell them the importance of accepting their own. REBT propose to avoid giving yourself a general rating. As long as the evaluation of their own thinking, feeling and behavior are “good” or “bad”, the assessment criteria is whether they have their own goals and values of interest.
But do not evaluate yourself for your existence, your essence, or your personality.Therefore, REBT is one of the existential psychotherapy methods. However, most of this therapeutic school are passive.
REBT uses several proactive and direct methods and assumes that these methods are more effective in therapy, not only decimating but demonstrating how to do it unconditionally. The Contribution and Application of REBT Refuting the irrational beliefs of human beings, REBT can effectively help the parties face the setbacks and troubles in life more flexible, without causing devastating and negative behaviors. Also, REBT can clarify the relationship between human thought and emotion. Thirdly, REBT focuses on the importance of ideas and thinking and thus assist the facilitator in assessing the degree of rationality of decisions and values.
The client can understand the nature of his problem through REBT. Limitation of REBT The limitation of REBT usually has a close relationship with the therapist, which are several reasons and problems that therapists need to consider: 1. Failure to focus on the past history of the client may invalidate or neglect some of the core and background of the client’s problem.
2. Do not pay attention to the relationship, including the atmosphere that can help cure, such as empathy, the relationship between the therapist and the client is deserted and cold. 3.
It may be easy for the case owner to take the position and opinions of the therapist without actually internalizing and personalizing the opinion. 4. There will be a tendency to diagnose the problem prematurely so that the real problem cannot be dealt with or the premature refusal of the case owner to refute his irrational conviction will make the case owner unacceptable and disgusted. 5.
Whether the issue of personal emotions will be built on the rationalization of individual thoughts will be simplified and the problems will be simplified. There are many problems in life, including the environment, background, interpersonal relationships, and emotions. 6.
Counselors have a high degree of power and guidance, if the counselors themselves lack training, it is easy to the psychological harm caused by the client. REBT is also very suitable for the treatment of anxiety, hostility, depression, marriage and family therapy, also suitable for short-term treatment, easy and specific to see the effectiveness and change. However, they are not suitable for being too young or too old, overly paranoid and anti-logical, too intelligent or autistic, for they require changes in cognition and thinking.
In addition, counselors applying this therapy must have professional training, an objective attitude, a proper understanding of themselves, and they must not compel their recipients to accept their views. At the same time, they must have a high degree of Sensitivity, can quickly observe the grantee’s problem, and can analyze the reasons for refuting and changing the method.