Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) attempts to do several things. It teaches you sensible and self-helping ideas and attitudes. It also hopes you learn a process that enables you to transition from self-defeating emotional-behavioral states into self-helping states as needed. It aims to show you how to skillfully change what you can and live with some degree of happiness when you cannot change dispreferred conditions of your life. Finally, REBT helps you learn to take calculated risks to make more fundamental and structural changes in your life, which can increase meaning and happiness more profoundly. REBT enables you to take an ambitious stance in your self-help journey.
A Sample of the Core Ideas of REBT
The level most people easily accomplish in REBT is an intellectual insight into specific core ideas. I will not list all of these ideas, but here is a sample of some of the fundamental concepts:
- All people are fallible beings whose intrinsic value cannot be estimated. Moreover, the inherent value of one human is no more or less than the intrinsic value of another human being. Humans have aliveness, and their actions have value. Furthermore, humans are in a state of constant, imperceptible change.
- People have emotional choices when facing life’s most significant challenges and problems. REBT helps show you the available healthy emotional options. REBT will reveal to you the attitudes enabling you to experience such healthy emotions in the face of Adversity.
- Expecting life to be easy is unrealistic. None of us are special, but each of us is unique. We all have our share of problems, but life is unfair, and some have more difficult circumstances than others. Feeling sorry for yourself due to the unfairness you face will reduce your happiness and undermine your ability to change what you can to improve your life.
- Motivation to change what is changeable in external circumstances often derives from healthy negative emotions. Healthy negative emotions like concern, disappointment, and sorrow can range from relatively mild or moderate to very strong, depending on what is at stake.
- Condemning yourself or others serves no useful purpose. Holding yourself and others responsible for their actions serves a practical purpose.
- Scientific thinking is how we can regulate our emotion-behavioral responses. We can grow and improve our emotional lives by using a mix of scientific thought and willpower, also known as hard work.
- Acceptance does not mean resignation. Acceptance involves acknowledgment with a commitment to change what is changeable and to have some degree of happiness despite facing dispreferred, unchangeable circumstances.
- Uncertainty in life is unavoidable.
- Utopias do not exist.
- Life is an opportunity to enjoy yourself, not prove yourself. To maximize your enjoyment, cultivate the capacity to delay gratification so that you become a long-range hedonist.
The Emotional-Behavioral Process of REBT
Intellectual insight is the most straightforward form of insight to achieve in REBT. However, it would be best to go beyond a superficial understanding of core concepts and achieve more fundamental emotional-behavioral change. To do this, you must monitor your emotional-behavioral functioning and learn how to transition from self-defeating to self-helping emotional-behavioral states quickly. To do this, you must become familiar with and practice ‘disputing’ your self-defeating, rigid, and extreme attitudes that constitute the foundation of your emotional-behavioral disturbance. When you can use this process in real-time, you have learned a beneficial skill that will allow you to respond to Adversity optimally relatively soon after coming in contact with a particular negative state of affairs.
I have given a great deal of thought to the issue of how to teach people the process of disputing their rigid and extreme ideas. Understanding this process and how to use it on the fly is very difficult for most people. My experience has shown that people need to learn this critical process but often fail to master it. The two best ways are to complete the ABC worksheet attached to this email when you are upset and regularly watch the process I go through every Saturday with a volunteer. These activities will give you a perspective on the process you otherwise would not have if you avoided them.
The first thing to remember is when to initiate the emotional-behavioral self-correction process known as disputing. You dispute once you have noted the manifestation of self-defeating emotions or behaviors. You use this self-correction process against a problem, a self-defeating feeling you are experiencing, or a self-defeating behavior you exhibited recently or may display in the future. You do not use this process if responding with a healthy negative emotion.
You need to identify the Adversity or the ‘A’ and the critical inferences you make about the Adversity associated with your emotional-behavioral disturbance. You also need to identify the emotional-behavioral consequences at point C of the ABC model of REBT. You can only guess the rigid and extreme attitudes at point B once you pinpoint the A and C of your self-defeating emotional-behavioral episode. To identify these two components of the process, remember the phrase taught in algebra “You cannot solve an equation with two unknowns.”
Once you have A and C identified, you can use the following three ideas to help you identify your rigid and extreme thinking, which you are unknowingly using to disturb yourself:
Three Rigid Attitudes
1. I have to, I must, or I (absolutely) should do perfectly or reasonably well or possess certain desirable personal qualities. (Rigidity towards oneself)
2. You must, you have to, and you (absolutely) should treat me nicely, fairly, and precisely as I demand. (Rigidity towards another person)
3. Life must be as I want it to be. (Rigidity towards life conditions)
Five Extreme Attitudes Deriving from Your Rigid Attitudes
1. When things are not as I want them to be, it is awful, terrible, and the end of the world. (An extreme and invalid evaluation of the badness of something)
2. This situation is unbearable, or my internal reaction to the problem is intolerable. (An extreme and invalid evaluation that something is unbearable)
3. I am deplorable or lesser (as a person) for not being or doing as I must be. (A devaluation of yourself as a person based on an undesirable characteristic or a negative act or series of actions)
4. You are deplorable or lesser (as a person) for not being or doing as I say you must be or do. (A devaluation of another person based on an undesirable characteristic or a negative act or series of actions)
5. Life is completely bad because it is not as it must be. (A devaluation of the totality of life based on undesirable aspects of life, experiences, or times in life)
I recommend you specify one rigid idea and one extreme attitude. Once you have done this, you need to evaluate the identified rigid and extreme attitudes and question them. The three best questions to ask yourself are:
1. Are these rigid and extreme attitudes leading me to experience unhealthy emotions and self-defeating behaviors undermining my long-term goals? If yes, how so?
2. Where is the evidence that supports these rigid and extreme attitudes? If there is no evidence, why are they false to the facts?
3. Would I teach a child to think this way? If not, why not?
Creating A New Attitude and Acting In Harmony With It
The above three questions of the self-correction process taught by REBT will help you create alternative flexible and non-extreme attitudes that will enable you to feel healthy negative emotions which will help you do one or both of two things. These healthy negative emotions, like disappointment, sorrow, or concern, will acknowledge your negative state of affairs and give you the impetus to creatively and persistently change what you can change if it suits you. If it is not worth it to you to change the Adversity you face or it is something you cannot do much about it, this new attitude will help you have some happiness despite living with a negative state of affairs. I take comfort in the idea that life will not beat me emotionally, even when I face really bad events in life. This assumption embedded in the philosophical core of REBT has kept me an REBT psychotherapist for thirty-two years. It is also why I enthusiastically encourage others to learn REBT. Adopting the flexible and non-extreme attitudes created by the self-correction process will enable you to change what you can and live reasonably well with whatever Adversity remains in your life. However, you must do one last thing to receive profound emotional change through this process. You need to find where and when to act upon this philosophy in life. You need to live in harmony with this attitude and work at implementing it when it is most challenging. You will only experience the profound philosophical-emotional-behavioral change you can achieve with REBT when you push yourself to get out of your comfort zone and implement this new attitude as often as possible.
Calculated Risk-Taking and Structural Changes in Your Life
REBT can help you go beyond reducing emotional disturbance. It can assist you in finding the courage to take calculated risks like changing careers, moving to a new city or country, going back to school, marrying or divorcing or opening your relationship, having or not having a child, leaving a job, or making a financial investment or buying a house. All these things can increase the meaning and happiness you experience in life but involve risk to achieve anticipated rewards. REBT can help you to cultivate the attitudes you need not to act foolhardily but carefully evaluate your options. To make these changes, you must tolerate the discomfort of doing homework and get the information you need to make the best decision possible. REBT can also help you build the uncertainty tolerance necessary to act upon your decision. Said another way, REBT can emotionally prepare you to follow through on your judgment and do what it takes to bring about the anticipated rewards that flow from these more fundamental changes. Lastly, REBT can help you unconditionally accept yourself and life when your calculated risk doesn’t produce the desired results. REBT can help you have some happiness even if your calculated risk backfires.
Summary
REBT teaches sensible ideas and a process for correcting your self-defeating emotional-behavioral reactions. Becoming familiar with the rational ideas of REBT is the easy part. Learning to identify and challenge your dysfunctional attitudes that lead to your self-defeating emotional-behavioral reactions and doing this process on the fly is more challenging. Doing REBT worksheets and regularly watching on Saturdays as I lead others through the disputing process vis-a-vis different problems will help you acquire this more complex skill. Do not limit the benefits you can derive from the philosophy of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy. Go beyond learning to dispute your self-defeating philosophical attitudes and develop the ability to take calculated risks, and get out of your comfort zone to enrich the meaning and happiness you experience in life. Live your life to the fullest by learning to master all REBT offers.