Blog: Self-Help Posts on REBT

The Case for Replacing Self-Esteem with Unconditional Self-Acceptance

All people have goals, purposes, and values. Pursuing these things produces a sense of accomplishment, satisfaction, and personal meaning. Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy is unique in its emphasis on rating the progress one makes towards these personal goals, purposes, and values while encouraging the elimination of the rating of the self or the person. REBT promotes the … Read more

Cultivating Your Inner Flexible Voice for When Your Desires are Thwarted

Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) acknowledges that it is challenging for humans to think flexibly and in a non-extreme way. In REBT, we encourage you to keep your preferences and desires but to avoid transforming your desires into absolute demands. It is easier to follow this recommendation when the object of your desire is a … Read more

Maintaining and Improving Important Personal Relationships by Avoiding Unhealthy Hurt

​Humans are highly imperfect and fragile. We are social animals who thrive on relationships with other humans. Relationships with significant others are often frayed or ended by the experience of unhealthy hurt. It is sad when people become estranged from family and friends due to hurt feelings. People sometimes are uncomfortable acknowledging feelings of hurt. … Read more

Overcoming Guilty Parent Syndrome with REBT

Perhaps the most challenging role a person can play is playing the role of a parent. It is a great responsibility to parent one, two, or more children in today’s world. There is nonstop decision-making. Once a person becomes a parent, they never sleep the same. As infants and toddlers, children require constant supervision. Raising … Read more

Happy New Year – Now what?

At his trial for impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens, Socrates famously said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” On the first day of this new year, I have been reflecting on four questions: What would you do if you had all the time and money in the world? How would you live if you … Read more

Coping with Emotional Challenges at Holiday Family Gatherings

Movies and paintings depict families in an idyllic way at this time of the year. Brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, grandparents and cousins gather around a warm fireplace and enjoy food and drink merrily. People joyfully sing songs and exchange gifts as snow falls outside, creating a picturesque landscape. Everyone is paired off happily … Read more

Overcoming Your Unhealthy Need for Parental Approval and Affirmation

Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) argues that you can achieve emotional health by cultivating your capacity for enlightened self-interest. This concept means that you learn to think and feel in ways that allow you to take action to put yourself first and others a close second. Enlightened self-interest does not mean that you must always … Read more

Coping with Change

Depending on the circumstances, most humans find adapting to change difficult at one time or another in their lives. When children and adolescents change schools or when a divorce occurs, they can feel anxious and depressed in response to the change. When adults change jobs or career paths, move from one location to another, or divorce, … Read more