Question

What will be the goals of REBT therapy and what intervention strategies would you as a counselor used to accomplish those goals?

Answer 1

Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) is a scientific form of cognitive psychotherapy which focuses on taking responsibility of own actions and practicing rational and realistic thinking. It is based on the idea that events don't make us feel emotions. It is our beliefs about those events that make us feel certain emotions. This psychotherapy was developed by Albert Ellis in the early 1950s. Today, REBT is one of the most popular psychotherapies used because of it's cost effective nature and it's early benefits.

Goals of REBT:

The fundamental objective of REBT is to free the patients of their present negative methods of insight and replace them with ones that are more realistic and adaptable as means for discovering satisfaction and happiness. Doing this enables patients to understand and appreciate inclusion, self-realization, suddenness, and duty. It depends on a couple of standards: that you are in charge of your feelings and additionally your activities, and your irrational reasoning makes you emotionally and behaviorally react negatively. You can conquer these negative reactions by thinking in a more reasonable manner, from that point making those considerations a piece of yourself. This enables patients to completely acknowledge themselves by changing their point of view to something more reality-grounded.

REBT uses something called the ABCDE model to help clients understand how their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are related. The A stands for "activating events," which are related to rational or irrational "beliefs" (B). The beliefs involve "consequences" (C), which, if the belief is irrational, may be emotional disturbances. The D represents the therapist "disputing" the irrational belief and the E stands for the more "effective" way of thinking that marks success with REBT.

Intervention Strategies:

Cognitive, emotive, and behavioral methods are used in combination to facilitate client change.

Some of the cognitive methods include:

1) Disputing irrational beliefs (e.g., pointing out how irrational it would be for a client to believe he/she had to be good at everything in order to consider himself/herself worthwhile)

2) Thought stopping (the therapist interrupts the maladaptive thought by yelling "STOP"); reframing (situations are looked at from a more positive angle); and problem solving.

The emotive techniques, including role playing, modeling, the use of humor, and shame-attacking exercises, are all aimed at diffusing the upsetting emotions connected with certain behaviors or situations.

Finally, behavioral techniques such as the use of homework assignments, risk-taking exercises, systematic desensitization (which involves incremental exposure to the frightening situation while focusing on remaining relaxed), and bibliotherapy (reading about the disorder) are all used to teach clients that they can safely and comfortably substitute adaptive behaviors for the maladaptive ones they have relied on in the past.