Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy in Sport and Exercise

Martin Turner, Richard Bennett, Martin Turner, Richard Bennett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781134891962
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Physical Education

Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) is one of the most widely used counselling approaches in the world and is one of the original forms of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT). Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy in Sport and Exercise is the first and only book to date to examine the use of REBT in sport and exercise.

It brings together leading international experts and practitioners to reflect on the use of REBT in sport and exercise, and examine the techniques used. Each chapter contains a case study, contextualising theory into practice, giving a rare and detailed insight into the use of REBT across a diverse range of issues. Some of the topics covered include:

• the theory and practice of REBT

• REBT intervention for competition anxiety

• the use of REBT interventions in Paralympic soccer

• the use of REBT in managing injury and loss

• using REBT to address symptoms of exercise dependence

• REBT intervention to improve low frustration tolerance

Offering an invaluable insight into the practical application of REBT, this book is essential reading for undergraduates, postgraduates, trainee and qualified sport and exercise psychologists, and counsellors wishing to move into sport and exercise.

1  The use of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) in sport and exercise

An introduction

Martin Turner and Richard Bennett

This book marks a significant development in studying the application of REBT within sport and exercise settings. Enclosed, across sixteen chapters, practitioners generously share their work using, and in many cases adapting, REBT within challenging but rewarding sport and exercise domains. The chapters that comprise Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy in Sport and Exercise demonstrate authors working across many psychological and performance related issues, across a variety of ages, abilities, and cultures, within an assortment of sport and exercise settings. As readers will discover, using REBT within sport and exercise environments has various challenges, some of which are predictable, and others that are unforeseen. Using REBT flexibly in these environments is paramount, because most practitioners do not have 50–60 minutes for a one-to-one session, and in most cases do not have the luxury of a private and dedicated consulting room. However, many practitioners do have the advantage of being able to consult with clients in the actual performance setting in which their clients toil, which, alongside many challenges, presents unique opportunities to apply and integrate REBT into a performer’s environment more effectively.

Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy in Sport and Exercise was conceived due to the lack of published reports of the use of REBT in sport and exercise settings. Whilst practitioners probably quite frequently use REBT in sport and exercise settings, the presence of literature describing this usage is sparse. This presents a number of problems, such as lack of awareness about the utility of REBT, lack of evidence for the use of REBT in sport and exercise, and also a lack of guidelines for how REBT can be integrated into sport and exercise environments. In other words, how can practitioners use REBT in these contexts, and how might the mechanics of REBT be adapted to fit the unpredictable, constantly changing, and dynamic milieu of sport and exercise? This book aims to answer these important questions, whilst meeting a need within sport and exercise psychology literature for more reports of REBT being applied with athletes and exercisers.

The fact that there is a dearth of literature on the use of REBT in sport and exercise is curious, because REBT is not novel. We will comment in some detail on what REBT is (and what REBT is not) in the next chapter, but it is important to realize that REBT was conceived by Dr. Albert Ellis in the 1950s, with the publication of “Rational psychotherapy and individual psychology” in 1957 (Ellis, 1957). Therefore, REBT (or RT as it was first called) is 60+ years old. As such, REBT is not a new discovery, and furthermore even in sport and exercise, the use of REBT is not new. Although the use of REBT in sport and exercise has only recently begun to garner significant research interest, the first reported use of REBT in sport occurred in a book chapter by Professor Michael Bernard in 1985. In his chapter, Bernard describes his application of an REBT program with professional Australian Rules Football players. After the work, Bernard reports that the athletes were better able to control their thoughts to directly influence performance. Bernard’s chapter had a major influence in the development of this volume, as it was essentially a detailed case study that captured the mechanics of using REBT in sport; a chief aim of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy in Sport and Exercise.

The reader can engage with the extant literature that reports the use of REBT in sport and exercise independently, as a full review is not the focus of this introduction. Since Bernard (1985), around twenty papers have been published. Much of the research is covered in Turner (2016), but new research is emerging frequently. Notably, in most research papers, due to publication restrictions and the understandable focus on contribution to length, the intricate details of REBT interventions are often omitted from research articles. The current book addresses this omission by permitting authors to go into greater detail about how they applied REBT with their clients, including facets of the work that might be less glamorous or more difficult, contributing to an on-going narrative about how REBT can and “should” be used. In other words, the authors of the chapters in this book have been encouraged to take a balanced view of what they did, in the interest of self-reflection and transparency.

One notable consequence of REBT being written about and talked about in sport and exercise domains is the increased number of sport and exercise psychology practitioners and trainee practitioners becoming trained in REBT. Similarly, those who are already trained in REBT, and who typically work in clinical environments, are becoming more interested in how their skills may apply to athletes and exercisers. This represents a fascinating cross-pollination of skills and ideas across very different domains that can only serve to enhance our understanding of REBT, and more broadly, the psychological health and well-being of athletes and exercisers. With the current book, we hope to further engage and interest practitioners across domains, and hope to encourage those using REBT in sport and exercise to write about and publish their experiences.

Considering this brief introduction, it can be seen that REBT in sport and exercise is gaining research interest, is becoming more popular with practitioners, and is beginning to inspire performance-specific developments (e.g., the measurement of irrational performance beliefs). This book builds on the research to date by offering sixteen diverse, and in many cases pioneering, chapters that illustrate how, and importantly why, REBT has been applied in the sport or exercise setting the practitioner found themselves in. For the first time, a book brings together the expertise and experiences of practitioners applying REBT in sport and exercise settings from around the world. This book will appeal to established REBT practitioners who are curious about the various applications of REBT in sport and exercise, and sport and exercise psychologists who are curious about REBT. This book will appeal to neophyte and experienced practitioners, researchers and academics, athletes, and students who wish to understand more about REBT and how it can be used in sport and exercise settings.

References

Bernard, M. E. (1985). A rational-emotive mental training program for professional athletes. In A. Ellis & M. E. Bernard (Eds.), Clinical applications of rational-emotive therapy (pp. 227–309). New York, NY: Plenum.

Ellis, A. (1957). Rational psychotherapy and individual psychology. Journal of Individual Psychology, 13, 38–44.

Turner, M. J. (2016). Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), irrational and rational beliefs, and the mental health of athletes. Frontiers: Movement Science and Sport Psychology, doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01423.

2 The theory and practice of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT)

Richard Bennett and Martin Turner

This chapter outlines the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) and places it in a historical context with other models within the cognitive behavioral tradition. The distinctive features of REBT as a model for understanding human psychological function and dysfunction will be outlined and Albert Ellis’s ABC model will be described in detail. In defining the central tenets of REBT theory, the chapter will describe the primary role that rational and irrational beliefs, formed in response to real or perceived stimuli, play in predicting emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and physiological consequences. The chapter will describe how the ABC model can assist sport and exercise psychologists and others working in the field of performance management in the development of assessment, formulation, and intervention strategies.

REBT in context

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) holds a dominant position within the field of psychological therapies. This is due to the significant evidence base that it has amassed for its efficacy across a range of different presentations and domains. Despite its often-reified status, it is important to establish at the outset that CBT is not a unitary ‘thing’. Rather, it is a psychotherapeutic tradition, within which several different models have flourished, notably Cognitive Therapy (CT: Beck, 1976), REBT (Ellis, 1962), and more latterly Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT: Hayes, et al., 1999).

The philosophical and conceptual foundations of CBT were initially established by Albert Ellis in the 1960s and many of the ideas and concepts central to REBT practice can be found in later variants of CBT, although Ellis’s influence is not always acknowledged or credited (Velten, 2007). Ellis’s (1962) pivotal text, “Reason and emotion in psychotherapy”, presented his now familiar ABC model, although the roots of this model can be found in Ellis’s writings further back (e.g., Ellis, 1958). Ellis was influenced by his love of philosophy, including the writings of Lao Tzu, Buddha, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. With respect to these latter Stoic philosophers, Ellis was the first to apply a central tenet of their teachings to psychotherapy. This notion, that an individual’s psychological disturbance is not wholly determined by events, but rather it is influenced by the beliefs that the individual holds about those events, has become a dominant feature of all models within the CBT tradition. Thus, Ellis paved the way for a sea change in the world of psychotherapy, in that formative experiences or parental attachments have been given less emphasis in pursuing an understanding of emotional distress, in favour of a more present-focused exploration of the way an individual’s beliefs shape his or her emotions and associated behaviors. This ‘here and now’ focus has given rise to a more elegant form of psychological intervention; much more suited to today’s healthcare economy. These characteristics also seem helpful within a sport and exercise context, given that practitioners are likely to be working under various constraints and that many athletes will not have the time or inclination to ‘lie on a couch and talk about their mother’ in the manner of the older psychoanalytic tradition. REBT is a short-term, structured, active, and collaborative therapy well-suited to the immediate and busy pace of many sport and exercise contexts.

There is a current trend within the CBT tradition for isolating the active ingredients of the model, such that it can be applied in much wider contexts, including for people with mental and physical health diagnoses, and in areas outside of the clinical realm, such as occupational and performance settings. To this end, there is a search for ‘transdiagnostic’ processes (Harvey, et al., 2004; Ellard, et al., 2010) and models of CBT with broad applicability. In this context, it is useful to be reminded that REBT was designed not as a means of diagnosing and treating ‘mental illness’, but as a means of understanding human function and dysfunction. It offers a perspective on human cognitive, emotional, and behavioral function that is equally applicable to an individual in a hospital ward diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia (e.g., Bennett & Pearson, 2015) as it is to an athlete striving to maintain peak performance (e.g., Turner, 2016).

There is an extensive literature, including meta-analytic data, on the application of REBT to common mental health problems (Lyons & Woods, 1991; Engels, et al., 1993; Gonzalez, et al., 2004; Haddock, et al., 2015). REBT is also one of the interventions featured in the guideline for the treatment of depression by the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence in the UK (NICE, 2009). However, its application within the field of sport and exercise is in its relative infancy. The flexibility of REBT as a model that can help both explain and ameliorate distress and associated dysfunction irrespective of diagnosis or the form of that distress makes it well placed to address the many and varied issues that the sport and exercise context presents.

When one is delivering psychological interventions within a sport and exercise setting, there are certain advantages to adopting a theoretical model that can be flexibly applied across a range of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral issues. To illustrate with one example, it is possible that performance in a sporting competition might be viewed as a behavioral correlate of underlying emotional distress, such as anxiety or low mood. At a cognitive level, poor performance might also be a consequence of unhelpful beliefs around a demand for perfection, or global and negative self-evaluation when results do not go as desired. The ABC model of REBT is designed to elegantly account for this variation and allows the practitioner to apply the same assessment, formulation, and intervention template, irrespective of the precise content. Amongst the advantages of such a model is that it can be used as the basis for individual and/or group intervention without having to state narrow inclusion or exclusion criteria.

At the level of technique, there are a number of similarities between REBT and other forms of CBT. For example, REBT and CT have many similarities in both theory and practice, although there are some key points of divergence (for a review see Hyland & Boduszek, 2012). Notable amongst these differences is REBT’s philosophical focus, in comparison to the more medical disorder-driven focus of CT. There have been few studies directly comparing REBT with CT, although in one study into the treatment of depression, Szentagotai, et al., (2008) found that whilst REBT, CT, and medication showed equal effectiveness post-intervention, REBT performed better at reducing irrational beliefs at six-month follow-up. This indicates that its impact may be longer lasting. When the underlying predictions of the different theoretical models have been explored using structural equation modelling, greater support has been found for REBT and the primary role of demandingness beliefs in the development of distress symptoms (Hyland, et al., 2014).

It is important for any model that is chosen to inform psychological intervention in sport and exercise to be able to explain the relationship between cognitions, emotions, and behavior. Poor performance is not an island and there are other influencing and interacting factors within an individual’s experience, as well as in the interface between that individual and their environment. How often do we hear assertions such as, “Losing is so depressing” or, “That referee makes me so angry”? Whilst both beliefs might be associated with poorer sporting performance, the common interpretation here is that an external event has caused an emotional response, and that this leads directly to an undesirable behavioral consequence.

Such an interpretation, in REBT terms, represents an unhelpful ‘A-C’ model of thinking, in which an individual is powerless to resist the impact of external events, and where losing (A) makes him depressed (C), or refereeing decisions (A) make her angry (C). If this were really the case, and individuals were merely victims of circumstance, and there would be no role for a sport and exercise psychologist … but, what if the individual could learn to exert some influence between (A) and (C)? What if (C) were not dependent on (A)? What if the beliefs (B) that one holds about (A) were really what mattered? This book is about applying an ABC model to the issues relevant to sport and exercise psychology, in which an individual’s beliefs about their situation are the driver for the emotion and behavior that follow.

REBT and the ABC model

Figure 2.1 illustrates the difference between an A-C model and an ABC model, the latter being consistent with REBT theory.

Figure 2.1 Comparing an A-C model and an ABC model

An individual who asserts that their emotions and behaviors are a direct result of external events (as in the A-C example) surrenders their agency in terms of influencing their own response. If someone takes the view that losing the match made them depress...