REBT’s psychological fitness is like physical fitness. You need to maintain your psychological flexibility, your non-extreme thinking, and your self-acceptance for those inevitable times you mess up. Here are four good beliefs to call to mind each day: 1. I want what I want, but I never absolutely have to have what I want. … Read more
First Control What You Really Can Control 1/2/2015 In Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) we emphasize controlling what an individual can control. Often patients request help in responding to other people. Patients report that the other person in their life is unfairly criticizing, mistreating, disrespecting, insulting, or hurting them in some way. The patient then […]
Each day think of the ABC model of emotion. Remind yourself that your beliefs at point B play a very important role in how you react at point C when things go against you at point A. Control your beliefs. You can control this one thing. You cannot control other people, you cannot control what … Read more
Anger is a terribly self-defeating emotion. In my sessions with patients I do my best to show them how to give up their unhealthy feelings of anger. People have great difficulty letting go of anger but it never helps them cope with their problems or a problematic relationship. Sometimes people get angry at themselves. … Read more
“When confronted with a situation which we cannot change, we are then challenged to change ourselves.” Viktor Frankl, M.D., Ph.D. Dr. Viktor Frankl survived a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps. His book Man’s Search For Meaning describes his ordeal and how his own beliefs and internal coping capacities allowed him to carry … Read more
“People and things do not upset us. Rather, we upset ourselves by believing that they can upset us.” -Albert Ellis, Ph.D
REBT is the Cognitive Behavioral psychotherapy that can really help a person when their worst nightmare, sadly becomes a reality. It takes direct aim at the beliefs that make us most vulnerable to emotional disturbance.
Like all people, Albert Ellis did not have an easy life. He was ill as child, spent much time away from his family in the hospital as a boy, experienced poverty as a young adult, and was ridicule as a professional. His professional peers ridiculed him for teaching his clients that the past did not … Read more
In today’s world it is prudent to practice safer sex strategies. Sexually transmitted diseases too often have significant implications for those who contract them. The CDC reports that “studies of sexually transmitted diseases and sexual behaviors suggest a resurgent HIV epidemic among men who have sex with men.”1 The CDC goes on to say that … Read more
REBT teaches people to see that their beliefs about the misfortunes of life have a profound impact on their emotional and behavioral reactions. Rigid beliefs about life’s adversities will produce self-defeating emotional upset. In REBT we distinguish between appropriate and healthy feelings of sadness and unhealthy feelings of sadness, depression, despair. When very bad things … Read more
