REBT is a system of ideas for facing life’s challenges. It’s a tool that helps you identify and modify your self-defeating reactions while instilling specific values. But it’s more than just about survival-REBT is about thriving in a challenging world and finding greater happiness and meaning in your life.
Who is Responsible for Your Emotional Disturbance?
REBT rests on personal responsibility. We argue that you will do better if you hold yourself accountable for your reactions to others and life’s challenges. Ellis argued that humans often assume that other people can cause their emotional disturbance. He thought this was a faulty assumption. Another person may treat you unkindly, and you soon feel angry and hurt. However, the fact that your reaction correlates with their behavior does not mean it causes your response. There is no denying that their behavior contributed to your reaction. However, REBT attempts to show that the attitude you hold towards what they do to you plays a more critical role in contributing to the emotional disturbance you feel than the behavior done by the other party.
Hold Yourself Accountable for Healthy Reactions to Adversity
In REBT, we distinguish between healthy (self-helping) and unhealthy (self-defeating) reactions. We encourage people to adopt flexible and non-extreme attitudes, the foundation of self-helping, healthy responses to adversity. If you assume it is possible, you can hold yourself accountable for generating a healthy reaction to life’s challenges. Work at it. It takes practice, but you can get better at choosing a healthy feeling when facing adversity.
In the mid-1950s, when Ellis was laying the foundation for his new approach to emotional and behavioral disturbance, he argued that other therapies placed too much emphasis on the role of the environment. He sought to show that while your culture, teachers, and parents may influence you, the rigidity you bring to their teaching is a biological predisposition. Ellis taught his clients to challenge their biological predisposition to rigid and extreme attitudes by going against the grain and doing what comes less naturally to them. He encouraged people to think scientifically, tolerate discomfort, and do what was best in the long run to increase their chances of survival and happiness. Ellis repeatedly emphasized personal responsibility in emotional and behavioral responses and de-emphasized environmental factors without going to the other extreme of denying them. He inspired his clients to change their mindset and adopt this empowering position toward the factors involved in emotional disturbance.
The Current Zeitgeist
Personal responsibility is again losing favor amongst many people. As a psychologist, I have worked with parents reluctant to emphasize responsibility and implement contingency agreements with their children and adolescents. Their noncontingent relating is a mistake. Holding children and adolescents to reasonable contingency agreements helps them to develop self-discipline and self-control. Self-discipline and self-control are the foundation of achieving one’s goals. Ellis was right when he pointed out that people are inclined to avoid short-term discomfort even when it harms them in the long run. When people do this broadly in their lives, it could be considered evidence of an emotional disturbance that will keep them from developing their abilities and lead to underperformance and over-reliance on others.
REBT aims to help people lead more fulfilling lives by assisting them in accepting responsibility for what is theirs. It seeks to liberate people from self-defeating and unhealthy emotional reactions by addressing their thoughts and the theory of emotion they hold. REBT emphasizes that we are responsible for creating healthy and effective attitudes towards the parts of life that are challenging or dispreferred.
Firm, Loving, Contingent Parenting Practice
Suppose you are a parent who has difficulty holding your children to the contingency agreements you make with them around homework, attendance at school, doing household chores, and their behavior towards yourself and others. In that case, adopting the flexible and non-extreme attitudes of REBT can help you remain loving but firm in your dealings with your children and adolescents. Below, you will find several healthy attitudes parents can hold which will assist them in fostering accountability in their children and adolescents:
Adhering to the contingencies will positively impact my children’s behavior is challenging but not unbearable. It is worth doing, and my children are worth doing this for. Cultivating accountability will enable my children to care for themselves and survive in a challenging world. I will teach them how to be accountable for their emotions and behavior.
Enforcing contingencies is a crucial part of my role as a parent. While I value my child’s short-term approval, I understand that it’s not necessary. I can live without their approval. If my child is upset with my decision to hold them accountable, I will accept myself unconditionally. I believe not holding them accountable will likely harm them in the long run, and I am committed to their well-being.
People often resist accountability because fallible humans like to remain comfortable. My child and adolescent are no different. Their tendency to wish to avoid discomfort and do what is best, in the long run, does not make them a bad kid. It merely shows they are human and imperfect like everyone else. Nonetheless, my job is to help them cultivate the ability to tolerate short-term pain for long-term gain. I am willing to do what is uncomfortable and hold them accountable so that they can take care of themselves and lead productive lives long after I am no longer around to help them.
If my partner disagrees with me on holding our child to a reasonable contingent agreement, I will discuss this matter with them behind closed doors. We must be united in enforcing contingencies with our child to influence our child’s responses and long-term behavior positively. It may be uncomfortable for us to work out our disagreements, but not unbearable. If we cannot agree on how to respond to our children, it is best to seek professional help to resolve these differences. Giving children inconsistent messaging from their parents is a recipe for exacerbating misbehavior.
I cannot change the past. I wish I had held my child accountable in the past, but sadly, I did not have to do so, even if that would have been better. My past noncontingent responses to them may have contributed to their current behavioral difficulties. I cannot change how I parented in the past. However, the good news is that I can implement a new way of responding to them immediately. At first, there will be some tension as I communicate with them that I will no longer noncontingently provide goods and services to them when they do not hold up their end of our agreements. I will have reasonable expectations for their efforts at doing their agreed-upon tasks, not unrealistic ones, but those expectations will be firm. The tension that I will initially face will be uncomfortable, not unbearable. Things may get tense in the short run, but if I remain firm and do not give in, I will help my child and adolescent cultivate the inner resources to help them function well as adults.
Summary
REBT aims to help people take responsibility for their emotions and behaviors when facing life’s challenges. It is a compassionate approach as it teaches people to help themselves. Emotional and behavioral accountability is the basis of self-discipline and independence. Teach yourself and your children to take responsibility for emotions and behavior. Firmly hold your children to agreements and influence them to learn how to care for themselves and develop their potential. Doing so will help them maximize their chances of survival and happiness.