Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy: Principles and Practices - Article Example

? Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy: Principles and Practices Lecturer Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy: Principles and Practices Rationalemotive behavior therapy is an active directive and comprehensive empirically and philosophically based psychotherapy that focuses on resolving behavioral and emotional disturbances and problems and allowing people to lead joyful and more gratifying lives. Albert Ellis established and developed rational emotive behavior therapy after being inspired by numerous teachings of ancient Greek, Asian and Roman as well as modern philosophers. Rational emotive behavior therapy was expounded in the mid-1950s as one of the forms of cognitive behavior therapy by Albert Ellis. Ellis’ book asserts that rational emotive behavior therapy is a psychotherapeutic system of practice and theory. It was one of the original cognitive behavior therapies as anticipated in Ellis’ article about a decade before cognitive therapy was first set forth. The heralds of some elementary concepts of rational emotive behavior therapy have been determined in different philosophical traditions, specifically stoicism. This is seen in Albert Ellis’ very first publication in which he highlights the basis of philosophy of rational emotive behavior therapy as a principle in which someone is not often emotionally affected by external things but, instead, by his attitudes, perceptions, and internalized things concerning outside events and things (Ellis & Windy, 2007). One of the primary essential premises of rational emotive behavior therapy is that human beings in several cases do not just get disconcert due to inopportune adversities but also through how they assemble their own views of reality through their evaluative beliefs, language, philosophies, and meaning about themselves, the world, and others. The article attributes this fundamental concept far back to Greek philosopher Epictetus, usually known to utilize the same conceptions. In rational emotive behavior therapy, the clients often learn and apply the concept through mastering the A-B-C model of psychological change and disturbances. The A-B-C model asserts that it is not merely an A activating event or adversity normally that results in dysfunctional and disturbed behavioral and emotional Cs consequences, but also what we believe B to be concerning the adversity A. Adversity A may be an external thought or a situation or any form of internal event, and may also include a past, future or present event (Ellis & Windy, 2007). The beliefs, Bs, which are most important in the A-B-C model, are implicit and explicit philosophical assumptions and meanings concerning personal desires, events, and preferences. The most significant beliefs, Bs, are highly evaluative and entail integrated and interrelated cognitive, behavioral and emotional dimensions and aspects. As Albert Ellis puts it about the rational emotive behavior therapy, if a person’s belief B concerning adversity A is absolutistic, rigid and dysfunctional, the behavioral and emotional consequences C are likely to be destructive and self-defeating. Then again, if the evaluative belief B of a person is flexible, preferential and constructive, the behavioral and emotional consequence C is likely to be constructive and self-helping. Through rational emotive behavior therapy by mastering the role of their evaluative, mediating and philosophically founded unrealistic, illogical, and self-defeating meanings, assumptions and interpretations, people can normally learn to determine them once again, begin to dispute D, challenge, refute, and question them, subscribe to more self-helping and constructive constructs and question them (Ellis & Windy, 2007). The framework of rational emotive behavior therapy assumes that human beings have both innate irrational (social, self-defeating and un-helpful) and rational (constructive, social and self-helping) leanings and tendencies. Rational emotive behavior therapy argues that people, to a huge extent, unconsciously and consciously construct emotional complexities such as self-pity, self-blame, hurt, clinical anger, depression, guilt, anxiety, and shame, as well as behavior tendencies such as over-compulsiveness, procrastination, addiction, avoidance, and withdrawal through the means of their self-defeating and irrational thinking, behaving, and emoting. Rational is basically utilized as a process of education where therapists directly and actively teach emotive behavior therapy to their clients how to determine and identify self-defeating and irrational philosophies and beliefs which are rigid, unrealistic, extreme, absolutist and illogical in nature, and then to actively and forcefully dispute and question them and substitute them with a more self-helping and rational ones. Through application of various emotive, cognitive, and behavioral activities and methods, the client with the therapist’s help and in homework exercises is able to obtain a more self-helping, rational and constructive means of emoting, thinking, and behaving. One of the primary concerns and objectives of rational emotive behavior therapy is to demonstrate to the client that whenever unfortunate and an unpleasant adversity or activating event happens in their lives, they have a choice to make themselves self-helpingly sorry and feel healthily, frustrated, disappointed, and annoying, or making themselves feel terrified, unhealthily, self-defeated, depressed, panicked, self-pitying, and self-hating. Ellis asserts in his article that through ingraining and attaining a more self-constructive and rational philosophy of themselves, the world and others, people are most likely to emote and behave in a more adaptive and self-serving ways (Ellis & Windy, 2007). One of the primary pillars of rational emotive behavior therapy is that dysfunctional and irrational patterns and ways of feeling, thinking and behaving are contributing too much, even though rarely, to all disturbances of human beings and behavioral, emotional, social and self defeatism. Rational emotive behavior therapy teaches that when people generally turn flexible desires, preferences and wishes into absolutistic, fatalistic and grandiose dictates, it tends to result in being upset and disturbances arise. As Ellis puts it in his article, the core dysfunctional philosophies in the evaluative behavioral and emotional system of beliefs of a person in rational emotive behavior therapy are likely to contribute to arbitrary, unrealistic and crooked distortions and inferences in thinking. Rational emotive behavior therapy, according to Ellis, teaches that when a person in a devout and insensible way overuses dogmatic, absolutistic and rigid “must” “should,” and “ought,” then they tend to upset and disturb themselves. In addition, rational emotive behavior therapy asserts that upset evaluations to a large extent happen through over-generalization in which people globalize and exaggerate traits and events, often undesired traits, events or behavior that are out of context, while ignoring the positive traits or events or behaviors at all times (Ellis & Windy, 2007). In summary, the general goal of rational emotive behavior therapy is to help clients view the means through which they have studied how they normally do not need to disturb themselves, how to empower themselves and lead a more fulfilling and happy lives. The interfaces and applications of rational emotive behavior therapy are used in clinical systems with a wide range of clinical problems in psychotherapeutic settings such as family, group or individual therapy. Rational emotive behavior therapy is used for general therapeutics and treatment for a large number of psychological problems and distinct conditions that are normally linked to psychotherapy (Ellis & Windy, 2007). References Ellis, A., & Windy, D. (2007). The practice of rational emotive behavior therapy (2nd ed.). London: Springer Publishing. Read More