The goal of REBT, Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy, is to help the person identify the beliefs they have constructed and how they are connected to the way they feel and behave in response to adverse happenings. The emphasis is on the views one holds, personal philosophies that underpin and drive how we feel and behave, as it is they, not solely the adverse event, that ‘makes’ them as upset as they become. In essence we upset ourselves, and Albert Ellis calls this self-disturbance, we are causing what he calls our own ‘upsetness.’
This presentation is titled ‘our – upsetness’ as Ellis’
invites us all to learn to be less ‘self-disturbable.’ In the school context we
call this endeavour Rational Emotive Behaviour Education.
 |
| Dr. Albert Ellis |
The Have a Go Spaghettio! Success Helper approach to social,
emotional, and behavioural wellbeing provides a pedagogy for teachers to use in
the early childhood context. It is underpinned by Rational Emotive Behaviour
Therapy and General Semantics theories, and conveys to young constructivist
learners that thinking, feeling, and behaving are interconnected. It provides
them with the tools that they can use to learn how they self-regulate in the
later primary years when they reach the stage of metacognition i.e., it:
• Teaches the think
– feel – do connection.
• Promotes
the ABC Theory of Emotional Disturbance paradigm as a self-regulating tool.
• Teaches to the six Have a Go Spaghettio! qualities promoted in daily teaching practice.
Can we teach this counselling paradigm to young early
childhood student constructivists?
Can they learn to apply it in their lives?
YES. WE. CAN!
YES. They. CAN!
How?
Of course, we don’t teach it as we ‘ve discussed as per the
ABC’s of REBT but we do when we talk to the Have a Go Spaghettio! Success Helper chart of capabilities
in terms of the behaviours associated with each colour, the emotions
experienced and the Success Helper/Success Stopper thinking associated with
them. E.g., the Purple SH talks about controlling our feelings by various
methods, including using thinking (SH) that helps us maintain control. We ask
questions like:
- What
happened
- How
do you feel
- What
are you thinking?
Apply the ‘you can’t teach a child how to swim when they’re
drowning,’ principle when the child is in the midst of emotional upset. When
settled we can draw on the child's Have a Go Spaghettio! learning, to engage
them in some Have a Go! discussions, goal setting, some things to work on.
Have a Go Spaghettio!
The counsellor – child interaction in using the child's
learning and understanding of the Have a Go! SH capabilities and we also employ the General Semantics principle of the ‘verbal pollution free zone’ when we ask:
What do you mean?
How do you know?
What have you forgotten/not considered?
The application of these ideas and principles will hopefully
become part of the child’s own tool kit for when they reach the stage of
metacognition i.e., they will be able to monitor how they feel and behave, use
strategies to self-regulate, one of which would be to check their thinking, to
rethink. Dr Albert Ellis, who created REBT wanted to people to learn how to
help themselves, become their own therapists so to speak.
Let's review what we’ve been talking about. This is
the ABC Theory of Emotional Disturbance counselling paradigm that we are
teaching our young learners via the Have a Go Spaghettio! pedagogy. The ABC
theory also draws on the work of Alfred Korzybski’s General Semantics theory
which reminds us the words we use to label things and people are not the words
themselves. E.g., I cannot be a good person, I am not the word good, though I
may have done things that can be described as good e.g., helping someone.
The child cannot be good/bad/naughty/cute /smart though many
decide that they can be. The belief we can be causes upset because we have
learned to abstract discrete aspects of our selves, who we are and decided it
describes our total being which renders us ‘unsane’ as described by Alfred
Korzybski who created General Semantics. We are not thinking rationally, in a
sane way hence we become ‘unsane.’
 |
| Alfred Korzybski |
Let’s revisit Alfred Korzybski's idea of the ‘verbal
pollution free zone’ VPFZ where he asks:
What do you mean?
How do you know?
What have you forgotten/not considered?
These questions represent the D part of the ABC Theory of Emotional Disurbance paradigm described earlier, the stage where we dispute what we believe at B of the
paradigm.
Emotional and behavioural upset, we teach students, is
linked to what we call Success Stopper (SS) or Brain Bully (BB) thinking. This
kind of thinking we call as adults, irrational thinking, as it gets in the way of us
pursuing our goals, our desire to feel OK and generally to feel positive about
things.
We can use the VPFZ idea to help children develop a SH motto or
mode of thinking with which to work on. They have been involved in identifying
the SS/BB thinking and challenged its veracity i.e., what did they mean? How do
they know? What are they missing/forgetting?
We’ve incorporated the Emotional Thermometer (ET) and Catastrophe Scale (CS) to help identify emotions,
describe them, decide if they are helpful or not and consider how ‘bad’ a
situation might be according to the CS.
Though the students don’t know it, they are all applying
what they understand of the ABC Theory of Emotiuonal Disturbance and General
Semantics vis the Have a Go Spaghettio! pedagogy.
Once teachers get a handle on the ABC theory and General
Semantics theory, they become critical literacy tools that they can use to examine
the experiences of characters in books and films, that children can identify
with. They will recognise the ideas and tools the teacher is using to examine
what’s happening and offer reasons as to why Franklin the Turtle in the book 'Franklin's Bad Day,' in this instance, feels
and acts as he does. How far away is Franklins ‘map’ from the ‘territory?’ Can
Franklin develop an outlook where his thinking best approximates the reality of
what's happening?
The teacher reads the book and asks questions along the way,
‘how is Franklin feeling, what happened? Why do you think he feels and acts
like he does? They might say it’s because his friends moved away (Otter has
moved) and that he can only feel ok again if she returns and things are the same
again. Is this likely and can Franklin learn to accommodate what’s happening
and can he and Otter be friends in a different way?
Franklins Bad Day analysis
A - What happened? Franklins Friend Otter moved away:
B - What did he believe? Otters moved away. It’s not fair. I
can’t feel happy again.
C - How did he feel? Sad and angry. How did he act?
Aggressive to others. Throwing stuff.
D – What do you mean? How do you know? What have you not
considered.
Franklins' dad challenged the way Franklin was processing
what had happened. Things weren’t the same, but dad said he could be friends in
a different way.
Franklins' demeanour changed, he felt happy again, and he
was looking at what happened differently. Hs ‘map’ was more aligned with the
‘territory.’ In other words, Franklin had reached E. What’s E?
E = ‘In the ABCDE model of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT), E stands for Effective new beliefs or Effect. It represents the cognitive and emotional result of disputing (D) irrational beliefs (B), where the individual replaces self-defeating thoughts with healthier, rational, and constructive attitudes, reducing emotional disturbance.’ AI
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