Understanding Psychological Health

The REBT Perspective

Windy Dryden

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9781136882210
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This book draws on Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) - which focuses on resolving emotional and behavioural problems and disturbances and enables people to lead happier and more fulfilling lives - to provide an understanding of psychological health. Each chapter looks at an important aspect of psychological health and then discusses it in relation to the REBT approach.

Divided into two parts the book looks first at how people can remain psychologically healthy in the face of adversity and then goes on to discuss how these healthy philosophies underpin certain key areas of psychological health. As such, topics of discussion include:

• flexibility
• acceptance
• self-motivation
• resilience.

Understanding Psychological Health will be of great interest to all therapists in both practice and training.

Chapter 1
Psychological health: from disturbance to dissatisfaction and development

Levels of problems

One of the defining characteristics of human beings is that we experience problems, and these problems can be viewed from an REBT perspective as existing at different levels. Indeed, one of the distinctive features of REBT is its position on these different problems and the order in which they should be addressed (Dryden, 2009b).

Thus, people have emotional problems where we disturb ourselves about the presence of adversities in our lives. When we deal effectively with our disturbance, we still have dissatisfaction problems about the existence of these adversities. If we are successful at changing these adversities, if they can be changed, or at adjusting constructively to the existence of these adversities if they cannot be changed, then we may experience development problems. Here, while we are not facing life’s adversities we have a sense that we are not fulfilling our potential in life.

As I said earlier, one distinctive feature of REBT is that it outlines a logical order for dealing with these problems.

Tackling disturbance before dissatisfaction

REBT argues that unless there are good reasons to the contrary, people should address their emotional problems before their dissatisfaction problems. The reasoning here is as follows: if we try to deal with our dissatisfaction before we deal with our emotional disturbance, then our disturbed feelings will get in the way of our efforts to change directly the adversities about which we are dissatisfied.

For example, let’s take the example of Paul who is dissatisfied about his wife’s spending habits. However, he is also unhealthily angry about her behaviour and every time he talks to her about it he makes himself angry, raises his voice and makes pejorative remarks about her and her spending behaviour. Now what is the likely impact of Paul’s expression of unhealthy anger on his wife? Does it encourage her to stand back and look objectively at her own behaviour? Of course, it doesn’t. Paul’s angry behaviour is more likely to lead his wife to become unhealthily angry herself and/or to become defensive. In Paul’s case, his anger had, in fact, both effects on his wife. Now, let’s suppose that Paul first addressed his unhealthy anger and then discussed his dissatisfaction with his wife. His annoyance at her behaviour, but his acceptance of her as a person, would help him to view her behaviour perhaps as a sign of emotional disturbance and his compassion for her would have very different effects on her. She would probably be less defensive, and because Paul would not be unhealthily angry, his wife would also be less likely to be unhealthily angry herself. With anger out of the picture, the stage would be set for Paul to address the reasons for his dissatisfaction more effectively.

Tackling disturbance before development

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, I used to go to a number of encounter groups. This was the era of personal growth and development. However, there were a number of casualties of these groups and when these occurred it was because attendees were preoccupied with issues of emotional disturbance and they were being pushed too hard to go into areas of development that warranted greater resilience.

In general, then, it is very difficult for us to develop ourselves when we are emotionally disturbed. To focus on areas of development when we are emotionally disturbed is akin to us climbing a very steep hill with very heavy weights attached to our ankles. First, we need to remove our ankle weights (i.e. address our emotional disturbance) before thinking about the best way of climbing the hill.

For example, Fiona wanted to become a really good public speaker and, to further her goal, she enrolled on a ‘Become a Master Speaker’ training course. However, Fiona was very anxious about public speaking because she was scared of becoming tonguetied and losing her way. This anxiety quickly surfaced on the training course and the tutors advised her to seek therapeutic help first since, as they told her, she would be unlikely to develop her public speaking skills until she had dealt effectively with her anxiety. Taking their advice, Fiona sought help from an REBT therapist and developed a set of healthy beliefs about the possibility of becoming tongue-tied and losing her way while talking in public. Armed with a new set of healthy beliefs, Fiona re-enrolled on the ‘Become a Master Speaker’ training course and developed her skills in this area.

Tackling dissatisfaction before development

Abraham Maslow (1968) is perhaps best known for his work on self-actualisation. The relevance of this concept for our present discussion is this. It is very difficult for us as humans to focus on our higher-order ‘needs’ while we are preoccupied with issues with respect to our lower-order ‘needs’. Thus, if a person is faced with an adversity which he (in this case) cannot compartmentalise in his mind and that person also wants to explore his writing ambitions, then he needs first to address this adversity, even if he holds a set of healthy beliefs about it, unless the presence of the adversity will help him write a better book!

The scope of this book

This book is divided into two major parts. In the first part of the book, I will outline how we can become psychologically healthy in the face of life’s adversities. This is where you need to start if you are, in fact, disturbing yourself about such adversities. In this part of the book, I will be dealing with the heart of REBT’s position on psychological health. In brief, we are psychologically healthy about life’s adversities to the extent that we:

• hold flexible (as opposed to rigid) beliefs about life’s adversities

• hold non-awfulising (as opposed to awfulising) beliefs about the adversities

• believe that we are able to tolerate (as opposed to not tolerate) the discomfort of facing these adversities

• adopt an accepting (as opposed to a depreciating) attitude towards ourselves, other people and life conditions as these relate to the adversities.

In the second part of the book, I will show how we can employ the above healthy beliefs in the following areas of personal development: self-motivation, self-discipline, resilience, tolerance of uncertainty and self-control.

Taken together, then, the two parts of this book present REBT’s position on psychological health which takes this therapeutic approach out of the consulting room into everyday life where it can potentially make its most profound contribution to health and well-being.

Part I
The basics of psychological health: being healthy in the face of adversity

Chapter 2
Flexibility

Introduction

In this chapter and the three that follow, I will discuss the four cornerstones of a psychologically healthy response to the presence of life’s adversities. The view that I will be propounding in these four chapters and that permeates the rest of the book is based on the pioneering work of Dr Albert Ellis (1913–2007), the founder of a therapeutic approach known as Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT).

Ellis’s work on the conceptualisation of emotional problems (which I discuss fully in the companion to this volume—Dryden, 2009a) extended Epictetus’s maxim that ‘People are disturbed not by things but by their views of things’. Ellis argued that such ‘views’ are best understood as irrational beliefs that are illogical, empirically false and lead largely to poor results for the person holding them.

Ellis argues that there are four such irrational beliefs. In brief, we disturb ourselves about life’s adversities to the extent that we:

• hold rigid (as opposed to flexible) beliefs about life’s adversities

• hold awfulising (as opposed to non-awfulising) beliefs about the adversities

• believe that we are unable to tolerate (as opposed to tolerate) the discomfort of facing these adversities

• adopt a depreciating (as opposed to an accepting) attitude towards ourselves, other people and life conditions as these relate to the adversities.

As I showed in Chapter 1, we deal with the same adversities in a healthy way to the extent that we:

• hold flexible (as opposed to rigid) beliefs about life’s adversities

• hold non-awfulising (as opposed to awfulising) beliefs about the adversities

• believe that we are able to tolerate (as opposed to not tolerate) the discomfort of facing these adversities

• adopt an accepting (as opposed to a depreciating) attitude towards ourselves, other people and life conditions as these relate to the adversities.

Ellis (1994) argued that of the four healthy beliefs mentioned above flexible beliefs are at the very core of a healthy response to life’s adversities and that the other three are derived from this flexible core. In this chapter, I will concentrate on the concept of flexibility, and I will discuss the other derived healthy beliefs in the following three chapters.

The two basic components of flexible beliefs

In this section, I will discuss the two basic components of flexible beliefs: a preferential component and a non-rigid component.

The preferential component of flexible beliefs

Aside from fallibility, which I will discuss in Chapter 5, perhaps the defining characteristic of human beings is that we have likes and dislikes.

Positive and negative preferences

We are oriented towards certain things because we prefer them to happen. I call such preferences ‘positive preferences’ because they articulate our desires for the presence of things to which we assign a positive value. Conversely, we are oriented away from other things because we prefer them not to happen. I call such preferences ‘negative preferen...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1 Psychological health: from disturbance to dissatisfaction and development
• Part I The basics of psychological health: being healthy in the face of adversity
• Part 2 Psychological health: beyond the basics
• References
• Index