Be Your Own CBT Therapist

Beat negative thinking and discover a happier you with Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy

Windy Dryden

• Publisher: Teach Yourself
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781444117172
• eBook ISBN: 9781444136449
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Cognitive Psychology & Cognition
• Index: Psychology

By changing and challenging your negative thoughts, you can free yourself from depression, anxiety and guilt, and embrace a happier, healthier way of life. Windy Dryden, one of the UK's leading practitioners of Behavioural Therapy, will show you how the techniques of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy can not only beat the thought patterns that lead to low mood and emotional distress but will also help you to develop a more balanced way of life and give you a resilient, focused attitude towards overcoming obstacles and coping with daily challenges.

1

What is Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT)? – an introduction

In this introductory chapter you will learn:

• what the terms ‘rational’ and ‘irrational’ mean in Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT)
• how REBT conceives of emotion and behaviour
• what are the three levels of therapy that REBT addresses and in what preferred order.

In the field of counselling and psychotherapy today, much attention is being focused on a therapeutic tradition known as Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (which I will refer to as CBT). In my view, CBT is a therapeutic tradition rather than a therapeutic approach because there are, in fact, many approaches that come under the umbrella of CBT. While there are differences among these approaches, they all share the view that our emotional problems are closely linked to how we think about ourselves, others and the world and how we act based on such thinking. All this goes back to the early Stoic philosophers, one of whom, Epictetus, said: ‘People are disturbed not by things, but by their views of things.’

One of these CBT approaches is known as Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (henceforth called REBT), which is the focus of this book. It is the approach I am going to use to show you how you can think rationally so that you can be emotionally healthy in the face of life’s adversities. Thus, while the title highlights the therapeutic tradition this book is based on a specific approach within this tradition.

In this opening chapter I will discuss in turn the four words that comprise the therapy’s name…

1. Rational
2. Emotive
3. Behaviour and
4. Therapy…

as a way of explaining what REBT is and what its major focus is.

Rational

When Albert Ellis, the famous American clinical psychologist, established the therapy in the 1950s, he called it ‘Rational Therapy’. He did so because he wanted to stress that emotional problems are based on irrational thinking and that if we are to address these problems effectively, we need to change such thinking to its rational equivalent. It is interesting to note that, while REBT has had two previous names, the term ‘rational’ is common to all three names. It is the constant feature that spans REBT’s 50-plus years’ history. So what do REBT therapists currently mean by the term ‘rational’? I can best answer this question if I contrast it with the term ‘irrational’.

The terms ‘rational’ and ‘irrational’ in current REBT theory are most commonly used as adjectives in front of the noun ‘beliefs’. Such beliefs can also be thought of as attitudes in that they describe a person’s stance or position towards something.

Let me consider the major characteristics of rational beliefs and contrast these with the major characteristics of irrational beliefs. In what follows, I will consider the rational belief in the left-hand column and the irrational belief in the right-hand column to facilitate the comparison.

A rational belief is flexible or non-extreme	An irrational belief is rigid or extreme
1 A rational belief is flexible	1 An irrational belief is rigid
Here is an example of a rational belief that is flexible:	Here is an example of an irrational belief that is rigid:
‘I want my colleague to like me, but she does not have to do so.’	‘My colleague has to like me.’
Imagine that you hold such a belief. As you do so, you will see that this belief is flexible because while you assert what you want (i.e. ‘I want my colleague to like me…’), you also acknowledge that you do not have to get what you want (i.e. ‘…but she does not have to do so’).	To compare this belief with the flexible version in the left-hand column, we need to state it in its full form:
	‘I want my colleague to like me, therefore she has to do so.’
	Again, imagine that you hold this belief. As you do so, you will see that this belief is rigid because, while you not only assert what you want (i.e. ‘I want my colleague to like me…’), you also demand that you have to get it (i.e. ‘…therefore she has to do so’).
2 A rational belief is non-extreme	2 An irrational belief is extreme
Here is an example of a rational belief that is non-extreme:	Here is an example of an irrational belief that is extreme:
‘It is bad if my colleague does not like me, but not the end of the world.’	‘It is the end of the world if my colleague does not like me.’
Again imagine that you hold this belief. As you do so, you will see that this belief is non-extreme because, while you assert that you find the event negative (i.e. ‘It is bad if my colleague does not like me…’), you also acknowledge that such an evaluation is not extreme because it could always be worse (i.e. ‘…but not the end of the world’).	To compare it to the non-extreme version in the left-hand column we need to state it in its full form:
	‘It is bad if my colleague does not like me, and therefore it is the end of the world.’
	Again imagine that you hold this belief. As you do so you will see that this belief is extreme because you not only assert that you find the event negative (i.e. ‘It is bad if my colleague does not like me…’), you also claim that it could not be worse (i.e. ‘…and therefore it is the end of the world’).
A rational belief is true	An irrational belief is false
Imagine that you hold the following rational belief that I introduced above: ‘I want my colleague to like me, but she does not have to do so.’ You will note that this belief is made up of two parts:	Now imagine that you hold the following irrational belief that I introduced above: ‘My colleague has to like me.’ Again this belief is made up of two parts:
• ‘I want my colleague to like me…’	• ‘I want my colleague to like me…’
• ‘…but she does not have to do so.’	• ‘…and therefore she has to do so.’
Let’s take one part at a time. First, you can prove that you would like your colleague to like you; after all this is your desire. Also, you can probably cite reasons why you want your colleague to like you (e.g. it makes for a good working relationship where you can help each other). So, the first part of your belief is true.	Let’s take one part at a time. First, you can again prove that you would like the other person to like you for reasons discussed opposite. So, the first part of your belief is true.
Now let’s look at the second part of the rational belief. You can also prove that the other person does not have to like you. To state otherwise would be to deny that person free choice.	Now let’s look at the second part of the irrational belief. You cannot prove that your colleague has to like you. If that were true, she would have no choice but to like you. This demanding component of your irrational belief in effect robs your colleague of free choice, which she retains in the face of your demand. Thus, this second part is false.
So if both parts of this rational belief are true then we can say that the belief taken as a whole is true.	As both parts of a belief have to be true for the belief to be true then we can say that the irrational belief is false.
	Also, when we consider this irrational belief in its short form (i.e. ‘My colleague has to like me’), then it is clear that it is false since it again at...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Meet the author
• In one minute
• Tables and figures
• 1 What is Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT)? – an introduction
• 2 Understanding the ‘Situational ABC’ framework
• 3 Tackling your problems: an overview
• 4 Identifying and formulating your problems and goals
• 5 Selecting and working with a target problem and a specific example of that problem
• 6 Using the ‘Situational ABC’ framework to assess your specific example and to set goals
• 7 Focusing on and questioning your beliefs
• 8 Strengthening your conviction in your rational beliefs
• 9 Responding to highly distorted thoughts at ‘C’
• 10 Coming back to ‘A’
• 11 Using established and new skills across the board
• 12 Dealing with lapses and preventing relapse
• 13 Maintaining your gains
• 14 Dealing with obstacles to change
• 15 Dealing with anxiety
• 16 Dealing with depression
• Taking it further
• Appendices
• Index