Walter J. Matweychuk, Ph.D.

The Philadelphia Eagles quarterback, Jalen Hurts, responded graciously to a reporter’s inquiry following his team’s heartbreaking loss, despite his extraordinary performance in Superbowl LVII. Hurts said, “The beautiful part about it is everyone experiences different pains, everyone experiences different agonies of life. You decide if you want to learn from it. You decide if you want … Read more

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. – Steve Jobs Sadly, you will die. Although dying has a downside, as Steve Jobs recommends, you can use your limited time and death to your advantage. The fact that you will … Read more

Considering adversity as awful or terrible has profound emotional consequences. When we “awfulize” and “terriblize,” we evaluate an adverse event with an illogical badness rating scale, leading to unhealthy anxiety, worry, and panic. Therefore, it is essential to understand how you think and what you mean when you awfulize. It would be best if you came to see that regardless of … Read more

Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy is a philosophy that encourages personal growth throughout the lifespan. REBT gives you the tools to stay youthful and enjoy life fully as you age. REBT teaches it is better to see life as an opportunity to enjoy yourself rather than as a prideful test to meet the expectations of others and … Read more

In Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), we encourage you to cultivate unconditional acceptance of others. We make this recommendation because unconditional other acceptance is beneficial to you. Although the person you unconditionally accept will also profit from your emotional maturity, you will remain motivated to discipline yourself to unconditionally accept others if you identify the … Read more

​Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) is a self-help form of therapy and a philosophy of life. In REBT, we encourage you to work at helping yourself regularly. One way to do this is to use an ABC self-help worksheet when you are upset or displaying self-defeating behavior. Doing so will be helpful to you before … Read more

A core idea of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy is to avoid esteeming yourself. Self-esteem means valuing the self. You then value yourself based on material possessions, relationships, achievements, and many other things. Thinking in this way puts you on an emotional roller coaster of good feelings linked to the self and bad feelings linked to … Read more

It is customary to reflect upon the past year and chart a course for the year ahead. I suggest you consider the below four resolutions as you plan for 2023: 1. A commitment to deepening your unconditional self-acceptance and learning how to do things better, not perfectly. 2. A commitment to furthering your unconditional other-acceptance … Read more

You never have to get what you want, regardless of how badly you want it. You do not live in a utopian world where you can always have what you want. Other people will often not cooperate with you. They do not have to do so even when it would be better if they did. … Read more

Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) has much to offer because it emphasizes precision in language and thought. In REBT, we encourage you to become emotionally literate and understand the eight basic negative emotions. Each of the eight has a healthy and unhealthy version. REBT teaches that when you face a negative state of affairs, you … Read more