Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy appeals to me, and hopefully sooner or later to you as well, because it is a liberating philosophy AND psychotherapy. It is self-liberating. It emphasizes choice, self-responsibility from emotional disturbance and self-direction. This is why I practice it on myself and teach it to others. The premise in REBT is that we create our disturbance; we therefore are the liberators of our emotional prisons. REBT encourages patients to acknowledge that adversity in and of itself is not the sole cause of our emotional misery. Yes people and events help us along, but we largely disturb ourselves. No other form of cognitive behavior therapy puts it this way nor is as transparent about its assumptions. REBT is no nonsense. REBT teaches that we take views of events and when those views of adversity are rigid and extreme (the famous shoulds, oughts and musts of REBT which give rise to the equally famous awfuls, terribles, I can’t stand its and devaluation of self, other and life) we are responsible for the creation of the subsequent emotional disturbance. The roots of REBT, Stoic philosophy, have been around over 2,000 years. This philosophy works. It is time tested. With a confident yet compassionate stance I hold my patients accountable and I directly ask them questions like these:
- “How are YOU disturbing yourself about what she did to you?”
- “How are YOU making yourself completely miserable and cutting off all happiness because of the presence of this adversity in your life?”
When patients are honest they tend to answer along the lines:
- “By demanding that she treat me as I want her to treat me”
- “By telling myself my life Absolutely Should and Must be ideal and if it deviates from this dream, I Have to Be completely miserable and whine and complain about it thereby cutting myself off from any joy and happiness whatsoever as long as my life is not ideal.”
REBT challenges you to liberate yourself. I, as your psychologist, cannot do that. Only you can. I can point the way towards emotional liberation but you have to grant it to yourself. You have to earn it by getting after yourself and keeping an eye out for your self-created rigid and extreme attitudes. Those pesky shoulds, oughts and musts tend to rear their ugly head when the going gets rough and things are not going your way. You can exterminate these rigid and extreme attitudes with challenging and self-liberating questions like:
- Are my rigid attitude and extreme attitudes helping me cope with my fate or am I doing myself in emotionally by holding them?
- Are my rigid attitude and extreme attitudes realistic and true OR fanciful, idealistic and false? Am I living in la-la land by holding these attitudes?
- Are my rigid attitude and extreme attitudes logical or illogical? What is the premise I am operating under and do my conclusions follow logically from it?
Rational thinking is a choice. All humans can make the choice to think rationally. At any given moment you can evade the effort or push yourself to think about your thinking and evaluate it. You can fix your thinking. You can adopt a healthier and more flexible or non-extreme attitude towards any adversity if you so choose. Liberate yourself. See that your rigid and extreme attitudes are the prison bars of your mind and emotions. REBT is the key but YOU have to turn the key. Will you choose to turn it?