The goal of REBT is not merely to help you feel better but to get better in a self-sustaining way. REBT teaches you healthy attitudes AND a process of emotional self-correction for self-therapy when you are in a state of emotional disturbance. My experience has been that people acquire healthier attitudes relatively easier than learning the process of self-therapy. This failure to master the self-therapy process concerns me because REBT aims to liberate you and produce long-term results. You need to understand how to help yourself when disturbed using REBT ideas and its emotional self-correction process to become independent of your REBT therapist in the future.
The REBT self-therapy process using the ABCDEF model involves these steps:
- Notice you are engaging in an unhealthy emotional or behavioral reaction (C).
- Identify the adversity (A) or negative state of affairs you are reacting to during your unhealthy reaction. This may be a memory of a past event, a current difficult situation, or an anticipated problem in the future.
- Identify the rigid and extreme attitudes (B) you are using to disturb yourself.
- Dispute (D) your specific and extreme attitude using the teach your child question.
- Create a new healthy, flexible, and non-extreme attitude (E) to adopt (i.e., an attitude you would teach to your child.
- Live in harmony or function in accord with that new attitude (F) to change what you can change of the negative state of affairs you face and have some degree of happiness if you cannot change the adversity or it takes a while to do so.
The primary stumbling block most people have is when it comes to disputing their rigid and extreme attitudes. People can understand that three rigid attitudes are at the core of their disturbance. They can also understand the three secondary derivative attitudes (unbearability, awfulizing, devaluation of self, others, and life). However, people avoid disputing, which is the critical thinking process whereby they target their rigid and extreme attitudes. They appear to find this kind of critical thinking hard to do. The consequence of skipping this vital examination process is failing to undermine and loosen their grip on their rigid and extreme attitudes. They may or may not create practical alternative attitudes to replace their self-defeating rigid and extreme attitudes. They may weakly acknowledge that their attitudes are problematic but doing this leads to minimal therapeutic gains.
Dr. Windy Dryden is likely the REBT therapist who came up with the disputing strategy of asking the patient to consider whether or not they would teach the rigid and extreme attitudes they hold to a child and why they would not. I want to highlight and emphasize the utility of this straightforward question in learning the disputing process.
Typically in REBT, we emphasize three general categories of questions in the disputing process. One is to examine the results our rigid attitudes yield, another is to review the evidence for and against these attitudes, and the third is to analyze if the attitudes are logical. I am not suggesting we abandon multiple challenges, but it is better to emphasize the teach your children dispute. By asking people if they would teach their children to think in the rigid and extreme ways they do, and if not, why they would not, it creates a helpful mindset to orient the person to the disputing process. With this mindset of what they would not teach a child, they can examine the results their rigid attitudes yield, review the evidence for and against these attitudes, and analyze if they are logical. Furthermore, imagining a conversation with a child when you are disputing your attitudes will give you an imaginary interlocutor, making engaging in this critical thinking process easier and less intimidating.
For homework self-therapy, I encourage patients to focus on this simple question when engaging in the disputing process: “Would you teach a child to hold your rigid and extreme attitude in this situation, and if not, why not?” Emphasizing one question may increase the chances that the individual will engage in the disputing process between sessions.
Most people will instinctively try to show children how to face adversity by talking to them about how their attitude will not get them good results, does not have evidence to support it, and is illogical. Older adults will not use these words, of course, but the spirit of their effort is likely to help their child think along these lines.
I have devised a very clean AND simple worksheet based on this premise. Please open it and use it the next time you are upset or engaging in self-defeating behavior. Let me know if my assumption is correct. You can write to me at (REBTDoctor@gmail.com).
One simple question may be more memorable, less intimidating, more effective, and better for learning to dispute your rigid and extreme attitudes. Try it and see!