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 or after facing adversity. There are different versions of self-help worksheets. At the bottom of today’s email, you can download the REBT self-help worksheet I recommend using. When you do a worksheet, you are journaling in a structured way. Unfortunately, people do not regularly do these ABC self-help worksheets. If one were to do them periodically and retain them, they would create a record of their therapeutic journey. Over time they would see progress in using REBT.
The REBT Self-Help Notebook and Journal
An alternative to completing an ABC self-help worksheet might be starting an REBT Self-Help Notebook and Journal to help you think about your life from an REBT perspective. Keeping this journal will help you improve your awareness of your emotions, reactions, attitudes, values, and goals. It will enhance your understanding of how well you implement Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy in different situations. Keeping this journal will help you notice patterns of self-defeating responses and note instances when you progress. It will also assist you in goal setting. Your REBT Self-Help Notebook and Journal might have three general categories of recorded information.
Category I – Observation of Self and Others
Awareness is an important skill to possess. Cultivate the habit of observing yourself and others as you and they react to adversity. In REBT, we think of adversity as a negative state of affairs. Record when you and others experience healthy and unhealthy emotional and behavioral reactions. Keep the focus mainly on your responses, but when you see someone upset themselves, it might be good to record it and think about the rigid and extreme attitudes they used to create their self-defeating emotional and behavioral reactions. In so doing, you will train yourself to become an astute observer of human behavior and deepen your understanding of the REBT theory of emotions and the REBT philosophy. If you observe someone handle their emotions well in a challenging situation, you may analyze their reaction and attempt to abstract a lesson you could use in your life in the future.
Category II – Analysis of Your Reactions
Go beyond entries where you record your healthy and unhealthy emotional reactions and select an instance in the day when you upset yourself by holding a rigid and extreme attitude. Alternatively, choose an example of your day when you could have disturbed yourself but instead held a flexible and non-extreme attitude and displayed a self-helping response. In either case, identify your specific attitudes that played a pivotal role in your reactions. Analyze what you did well and what you could have done better.
For your unhealthy reactions, dispute any rigid and extreme attitudes you hold, which will put you at risk for future displays of self-defeating responses. Use the below questions to understand the incident better:
1. What was the Critical A within the situation you faced? Note: The critical A is the aspect of the negative state of affairs you were facing that you found most distressing or aversive.
2.What emotional and behavioral reaction did you display?
3.What made it unhealthy and self-defeating?
4.What would have been an alternative healthy negative emotion you could have chosen to feel?
5.How would that emotion lead to a healthier, more effective behavioral response?
6.What rigid and extreme attitude did you hold that led to your unhealthy emotional reaction?
7.What evidence refutes or supports your rigid and extreme attitude? What does it mean if you cannot find evidence supporting your stance?
8.Would you encourage your child to think as you did? If not, why not? What attitude would you encourage a child to have in a similar situation?
9.Are there any illogical leaps or inconsistencies in how you thought about this adversity?
10.What is a healthier and more adaptive way of thinking about the situation you faced?
11.If you had held this healthier attitude, how might you have acted? What behavior might have flowed from this attitude?
12.What doubts, reservations or objections prevent you from adopting a more flexible, non-extreme, and realistic stance toward this adversity?
13. What healthy attitudes do I wish to have at the ready to meet the challenges I will face in the future?
Category III – Implementation of REBT as A Philosophy of Life
Step back and view your life from the standpoint of the philosophical recommendations REBT suggests. Reflect upon which, if any, you implemented today or yesterday. What opportunities did you miss to implement one or more of these recommendations? Caution – do not attempt to journal on every REBT recommendation below. More is not better because if you try to comment on every one of these recommendations, your journaling will become so time-consuming you will not journal at all! Pick one or more, and on different days go back to this list and journal on an additional REBT recommendation.
1. Self-interest – Did you fail to put yourself first and others a close second? If I did not, what led to this?
2. Social interest – Were you sufficiently interested in the well-being of others? Were you too interested in their well-being to your detriment? What attitudes might lead you to act in this self-defeating way?
3. Self-direction, independent thought, and personal responsibility – Did you think independently today? Did you take responsibility for your thinking and life, or did you blame your reactions on others or your circumstances?
4. High frustration tolerance/discomfort tolerance – Did you take the easy way out today? What long-term gains did you sacrifice for more immediate pleasures and comfort? What attitude could you develop to help you effectively deal with urges that will undermine your long-term goals? Alternatively, were you all work and no play today and experienced too little fun in life? Did you live your life today to prove yourself, i.e., your self-worth, instead of enjoying yourself? Are you trying to perfect yourself or prove yourself by sacrificing too much? Did you take a good idea to an unhealthy extreme?
5. Flexibility – Name an instance where you displayed flexibility today. When did you fail to adapt to life by maintaining a rigid stance toward the events that unfolded today?
6. Acceptance of uncertainty – Were you tense and anxious today because you sought a guaranteed outcome? Did you tolerate uncertainty today well? How would you have acted if you had been better able to handle uncertainty? What would you have done differently?
7. Commitment to creative, vitally absorbing pursuits – Did you engage in a creative quest today? Are there any new pursuits you might consider at this point in your life which would uniquely add meaning or pleasure? How did you hold yourself back from adventuring today?
8. Scientific thinking – Did you retain the stance of a scientist as you encountered adversity today? Did you discriminate between inferences and “facts?” Did you fall in love with your hypotheses and forget to look for evidence that could disconfirm them? Did you maintain an open mind to other people and life?
9. Unconditional Self-Acceptance – Did you rate a part of yourself negatively and then devalued your total self today, or did you accept yourself with your strengths and weaknesses?
10. Unconditional Other-Acceptance – When dealing with another person, did you rate a part of them and then devalue the whole of the person, or did you acknowledge their negative behaviors or characteristics but accept them as a fallible person?
11. Unconditional Life-Acceptance – Did you rate life in an overgeneralized way today, either negatively or positively? What was your attitude, and how did it impact your feelings and behavior?
12. Calculated risk-taking – Were there any calculated risks you took today? Did you miss any opportunities to take a calculated risk today? What feelings and attitudes held you back from taking a calculated risk today? Did you take any foolhardy risks today? What feelings and thoughts lead to irresponsible risk-taking today? Were there negative consequences to your decisions and actions?
13. Long-range hedonism – Did you strive to remain a long-range hedonist, or did you yield to your short-term impulses? What attitudes caused your short-sighted actions?
14. Nonutopianism and nonperfectionism – Did you keep in mind that perfection does not exist in this world? Did you engage in perfectionistic behaviors? How did your perfectionism undermine your performance?
15. Self-responsibility for your emotional disturbance – Did you take responsibility for your feelings and actions today, or did you shift the blame to the circumstance you were in or blame other people? Did you work to change what is under your power to change, or did you try to change and control others that are beyond your control?
16. Healthy sense of humor – Were you too serious today? Did you take yourself, others, or life too seriously or insufficiently seriously today?
17. Semantic precision – Were you careless in your thought and language today? Did you make overgeneralized statements? Did you make allness or always evaluations instead of making limited statements? Did you use E-Prime today? Did you remain aware of the impact of using the little verb “to be” and try to limit using it? Concerning problems you face, did you remind yourself that you will remain hopeful and more creative if you maintain the stance that you “don’t see how to solve this problem yet?”
18. Efficient use of time – Did you squander your time today? Did you take a moment today to list and prioritize tasks before starting your work on these tasks? Did you spend too much time making a list and not enough time taking action? If so, what factors lead to your procrastination?
19. Maintenance of physical health – Did you take time to do something to maintain your physical well-being today? What excuse did you give yourself not to care for your body? What consequences will occur if you continue to avoid caring for your body?
20. Acceptance of death and the process of dying – Did you call to mind that you will die and leverage this awareness to savor today’s blessings? Did you take your loved ones and friends for granted today? If so, how might you do better tomorrow? What would be your biggest regrets if you died tomorrow with specific goals and bucket list items unachieved?
Closing Thoughts on Your REBT Self-Help Notebook and Journal
The REBT Self-Help Notebook and Journal I am proposing here is something fallible humans could easily avoid implementing due to perfectionism. Please do not turn your journal into something that must be so comprehensive that you fail to experiment with it. Initially, make your goal shorter entries, cultivating the discipline to make daily entries. As time goes on, your REBT Journal will evolve as you evolve. Try it!