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Cognitive Therapy
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy

REBT  >  What It Is  >  Case Study  >  Who Is Helped


WHAT IT IS:

Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, "REBT," is a powerful system for helping people to:
  • feel better
  • be more effective
  • achieve more
  • express themselves more fully
Key features are:
  • REBT is collaborative. Your therapist doesn't do it to you. You make it work, when it makes sense to you.
  • It's methodical. There are particular ways to look at your experiences which are like shining a bright light in a dark room, with the resulting clarity leading to better decisions, less emotional discomfort. You will be empowered.
  • It's deliberate. You use your thinking to change your thinking, when irrational beliefs and distorted interpretations are causing problems.
  • It can work quickly, but often, productive change takes time and hard work. You have to keep disputing those beliefs which cause problems, and often they are deeply ingrained mental habits.
  • Self-acceptance is encouraged always. You learn to rate your behavior, not your self.
Your therapist suggests possibilities, and encourages exploration of your thoughts and feelings, and points out alternative ways of looking at things which might work better. The interactions between your thinking, your emotions, and your behavior are understood much better. In the therapy process, your feelings tell you when something is important, your thinking tells you when you're distorting, and specific behavioral changes speed up the process of healing.

When people are emotionally distraught, troubled, in some kind of distress, we find that there is almost always a part of their thinking that is irrational. When you exaggerate, or when you only see things as black or white, or all or none, for example, you are going to be much more upset by your difficulties than if you took a matter-of-fact approach. A grounded, relativistic view results in more peace of mind. When you think you must have things you desire, you will be much more upset if you fail to get them than if you thought of those things as preferences, rather than urgent needs.

The first, original cognitive therapy was invented by Dr. Albert Ellis in the 1950's, and refined over subsequent years, to become Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, widely taught and widely practiced to this day.

In REBT, you learn to identify distortions or exaggerations or assumptions which make you feel worse than you need to feel, and you learn how to replace "irrational" thinking with good clear thinking.


CASE STUDY:

The problem:
My patient, who I will call Andy, is a 32-year-old medical technician. He was quite fond of a young woman he was dating. After two months she told him she didn't want to go out with him any longer. He was devastated. He felt lonely, abandoned, and foolish. I asked him what he was thinking, about being "dumped". He said there must be something wrong with him; and he was afraid he would never be able to have a good, lasting relationship with a woman.

Intervention strategy:
I asked Andy if he really believed that when one person didn't like another it meant there was something wrong with the "un-liked" person. We talked about it, and he decided he didn't believe that that was the case. Sometimes people just don't meet each others' needs. He felt less distressed when he put his experience in that perspective.

Then I asked him if there was any real evidence that he was incapable of having a good relationship with a woman, and if this one instance of a relationship failing to thrive meant that a lasting good relationship couldn't or wouldn't happen. After discussing what he had seen of other people's relationships, and what he knew, Andy realized he was over generalizing, predicting the future, and turning something which was unfortunate into a catastrophe. In fact, he had had good relationships in the past, and it was likely that he could do so again.

Changing his thinking about the events resulted in a much-improved outlook and much less emotional upset. He had also learned to avoid irrational thinking.

The gains people experience with REBT are significant and long lasting. You will learn strategies which you can readily use on your own, at any time in any place.

A person is empowered by becoming more grounded, realistic, practical and positive in his or her viewpoints, attitudes, and assessments of self, others, and life situations.


WHO IS HELPED:

REBT has been shown to be an effective treatment for depression, anxiety, and many other emotional problems. Some of the benefits come from learning how to avoid the kind of thinking which causes problems. Other benefits come from learning positive approaches to problems: thinking clearly, sorting out issues, behaving constructively.

In the case of very serious and intractable mental/emotional problems, such as schizophrenia, REBT helps significantly by teaching unconditional self-acceptance: no matter the disability, any human being has basic worth and the right to be treated decently by his fellow human beings. It is always counterproductive to negatively rate yourself (or others). Rather, start from who you are, and figure out where to go from there.

REBT can help you to cope with chronic illness, parenting issues, other relationship problems, and major life changes.

REBT is also an effective problem-solving strategy, for people who are functioning well but have encountered unexpected difficulty in an isolated area.

Linda G. Waters Ph.D.      16055 Ventura Blvd. Ste 545    Encino, CA 91436      818.789.9387