Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy is a problem-focused, solution-oriented therapy. You can find these solutions by doing REBT self-therapy or working with a professional REBT psychotherapist. When people elect to work with me, I believe I teach them skills and ideas for addressing their emotional and behavioral problems. I help people understand how they create and maintain their emotional disturbance. I help them work through their resistance to changing the attitudes underpinning their upset. I give them homework assignments to strengthen healthy attitudes and learn new behaviors. Lastly, we engage in problem-solving, where we put our heads together to help the individual take the new mindset and go and attempt to influence others and change negative aspects of reality in creative and persistent ways.
I distinguish between wanting to be in therapy and wanting to profit from it. In my view, therapy is preferably a place where people learn powerful ideas and skills and apply these to their particular problems. They then leave therapy with a commitment to work on themselves using the concepts of REBT long after therapy has ended or been interrupted. They may return for future consultation, but they do not see therapy as something they are in and which lasts forever. Perhaps because the public has long thought that therapy involved endless venting of one’s feelings and validation of the pain the individual was in by a trained professional, people often come to treatment ill-prepared for actively engaging in the therapeutic process.
It is my belief therapy is essentially adult education with creative problem-solving. As an REBT psychotherapist, I am helping people learn ideas and skills they preferably could have acquired as a child but did not. I prefer that people come to therapy with the idea that it will not go on forever. When people pay for services out of their resources, they are most likely to be eager to get in and out of therapy while making full use of the learning opportunity while actively meeting with the therapist. There is nothing necessarily wrong when a third party pays for services. However, there is more of a risk that when a third party pays for the services, the individual in therapy will not be as actively involved in self-help. REBT wants the individual to take responsibility for learning the core concepts and then asking their therapist questions about them. To this end, ideal participation involves doing various activities between sessions. They may read the REBT Pocket Companion Clients, 2nd edition. They will actively think about how these concepts apply to their problems. They may also read one of Ellis’s or Dryden’s books on REBT. They hopefully will take advantage of the audio resources on REBTDoctor.com and read my Intermittent Reinforcement emails that arrive in their inbox regularly. Hopefully, they will watch the Saturday morning demonstrations I do and observe others work to apply REBT to various problems. This type of regular observation significantly enhances their learning.
Discomfort Disturbance
One fundamental human disturbance that undermines active involvement in therapy is what REBT theory refers to as discomfort disturbance. This form of emotional disturbance is often responsible for passive participation in treatment. Here is a sampling of the ideas that give rise to discomfort disturbance:
- I want to feel better but do not want to work to achieve this end. I must be able to participate passively in therapy and be cured of my disturbance.
- It is too hard to set aside time to read, study, think about and implement REBT throughout my busy week.
- I need a guarantee that if I work hard studying REBT, I will see emotional and behavioral changes.
- I am too anxious or depressed to hold myself responsible for studying and implementing REBT ideas and strategies.
- It is called talk therapy. Talking (absolutely) should be sufficient to achieve meaningful therapeutic results.
- I must achieve quick and thorough results with minimal effort.
- I (absolutely) should not have to devote ongoing time and effort to maintain and extend my emotional and behavioral changes.
- I have been this way too long. It is too hard to start the process of change.
- Other people cause my emotional problems. They are the ones who must change, not me!
In REBT, I teach people to identify and actively question the above self-defeating attitudes. There are different categories of challenging questions that I use. The two most common are examining the functional disadvantages of the above ideas and whether there is evidence that supports their validity. The more I practice, the more I lean on and emphasize practical challenges because REBT is a realistic approach to coping with adversity and changing what can be changed. Let’s examine alternative attitudes that will yield better results and correspond to each dysfunctional one above.
Dysfunctional attitude: I want to feel better but do not want to work to achieve this end. I must be able to participate passively in therapy and be cured of my disturbance.
Functional attitude: I want to feel better but do not want to work to achieve this end. I can acknowledge this, but I had better be honest and see that magic does not happen in therapy. Passive participation might help me temporarily feel better, but it is unlikely to lead to enduring emotional change. As Ben Franklin noted, if there is no pain, there is no gain. It is practical for me to accept the work and effort REBT recommends.
Dysfunctional attitude: It is too hard to set aside time to read, study, and think about and implement REBT throughout my busy week.
Functional attitude: It is hard to set aside time to read, study, think about and implement REBT throughout my busy week, but my self-defeating emotions and behavior also take a toll on me. When we think something is too hard, it will be. When we think we do not have the time, we will not make the time. I can choose to set aside at the very least ten minutes a day to read the REBT Pocket Companion for Clients, 2nd edition. I can listen to the audios and videos on REBTDoctor.com while driving to and from work. I can listen to Ellis himself lecture on REBT. I can rehearse healthy attitudes on a voice recorder three times daily and listen to them. I can do something related to REBT daily if I have the will to do it.
Dysfunctional attitude: I need a guarantee that if I work hard studying REBT, I will see emotional and behavioral changes.
Functional attitude: Other than death and taxes, no service you receive and nothing you try in life is ever guaranteed. This attitude will keep you stuck in your misery, and you would be well advised to face the facts.
Dysfunctional attitude: I am too anxious or depressed to hold myself responsible for studying and implementing REBT ideas and strategies.
Functional attitude: It is more challenging when I am anxious and depressed to hold myself responsible for studying and implementing REBT ideas and strategies, but not impossible. Have appropriate expectations. Strive for small gains at first. If you are highly anxious or depressed, seek medication to assist you, and then don’t stop there. Go back to the REBT grind and work at learning and implementing these powerful strategies. If you do not hold yourself responsible for getting better, who will? Who cares most about your well-being? Who has the most to lose or gain from your regular efforts at self-help?
Dysfunctional attitude: It is called talk therapy. Talking (absolutely) should be sufficient to achieve meaningful therapeutic results.
Functional attitude: Although therapy takes place through talking, it does not mean talking is sufficient to produce therapeutic results. Change occurs through thinking and acting differently, which requires effort. It would be great if talking were the only requirement for emotional and behavioral change, but sadly it does not work that way. I will accept the reality that hard work and effort are required. I will not delude myself into thinking I can make therapeutic changes without working to earn those gains.
Dysfunctional attitude: I must achieve quick and thorough results with minimal effort.
Functional attitude: I want quick and thorough results with minimal effort, but I do not have to get this. It simply is not how the change process works. Change usually occurs more slowly and in more circumscribed areas. If you keep at REBT, you can pick up the pace over time, but change always requires effort and discomfort. You would be well advised to accept this and avoid anyone who promises that insight and talking alone will produce meaningful therapeutic changes.
Dysfunctional attitude: I (absolutely) should not have to devote ongoing time and effort to maintain and extend my emotional and behavioral changes.
Functional attitude: I wish I did not have to devote time and effort to maintain and extend my emotional and behavioral changes, but it is not realistic to have this position. If you look at other learning and fitness processes, it is a use it or lose it proposition. After you learn a foreign language and do not continue to practice using it, you will get rusty. If you train for a marathon and after the marathon, you stop running, you lose your cardiovascular fitness. Lossing skill and fitness is the nature of our bodies and minds. We can face the facts or deny them. I suggest you accept reality and commit to regularly refreshing and implementing REBT concepts and strategies.
Dysfunctional attitude: I have been this way too long. It is too hard to start the process of change.
Functional attitude: I have been this way for a long time, but that only means I will need to have appropriate expectations of how long it will take and how much effort will be required to produce some therapeutic change. Don’t sell yourself short and assume you cannot change. REBT is a no-nonsense, good therapy that will empower you to change even if you have had emotional problems for most of your life. Don’t use this as an excuse. Focus on doing what you can to make small changes. Keep at it! The effort to make little changes will pay dividends, and you can bear the struggle.
Dysfunctional attitude: Other people cause my emotional problems. They are the ones who must change, not me!
Functional attitude: Although others contribute to my emotional problems, I contribute more than they do. Other people do things I don’t like. They obstruct me and, in so doing, give me an opportunity to upset myself. I can demand that they modify their behavior, but I cannot make them do that. I have more leverage over myself, and denying my attitude’s role in my unhealthy emotional displays only puts me in a worse position. I still have to face their obnoxious behavior, and I suffer from unhealthy negative feelings by not taking responsibility for what is mine. I could take responsibility for my emotional upset and hold flexible, non-extreme, and self-helping attitudes, which will lead me to feel appropriate and healthy negative feelings. These healthy negative feelings will motivate me to change what I can change AND to have some degree of happiness despite the presence of their obnoxious behavior.
Bottomline: Rather than “be in therapy,” I would strongly suggest you have the mindset of seeking to “actively participate in therapy” to profit from it. Let your therapist guide you, let the books teach you, but assume responsibility for what is yours – the required persistent effort that leads to the creation of REBT-driven psychological change. Avoiding commitment to change, personal responsibility for your disturbance, and action may be comfortable in the short run but often leads to more pain. Keep at it!