Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy - schools are copping on!

Have you heard a child, colleague (yourself!) use expressions such as she made me angry, if only the weather were better, I can’t stand it when things don’t go my way? These kind of self-talk statements indicate an underlying belief system which precipitates feelings and behaviours that are not self-helpful and may also be harmful to others. For those of us who believe that the way we feel and behave is dictated by factors external to ourselves this will challenge that view and hopefully provide some food for thought!

A long time ago (100 AD) a person called Epictetus developed his philosophy about life. The legacy of his wisdom sits at the core of personal development programs for students, teachers and parents being implemented in school communities across the land. His message across the ages to us is this,

“We are troubled not by things, but by the view we take of them.”

Epictetus was one of many wise folk, collectively called the stoic philosophers. Their advice and good counsel have not fallen on deaf ears however. Early last century a young 16 year old began a life long journey of learning about and personal application of “stoic philosophy’ in his life. He has since incorporated this into his now famous and planet wide approach to psychotherapy called Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy. I am of course talking about the eminent psychotherapist Dr. Albert Ellis, considered to be the grandfather of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy. He formulated his ABC Theory of Emotional Disturbance and began applying it in practice in 1955.

 

Albert Ellis

Our biological inheritance and our early learning combine and influence the formulation of our core beliefs (our assumptions, rules for living, our values). REBT asserts that when we think, we feel and behave; when we feel there is a thought and behaviour linked to that feeling and so on. It follows then that if what we believe (think) drives our feelings and behaviours then we have the potential to control (self-regulate) how we feel and behave! If this is so we can choose to feel and act self-helpfully, so, as Ellis says, we can achieve the goals we set ourselves. We do this by having (cultivating, learning) a ‘mindset’, (automatic habits of thinking) which helps us to live a satisfactory and rewarding life.

The ABC Theory of Emotional Disturbance

A = Activating event i.e. what happened

B = Beliefs i.e. my constructed ‘thinking rules’

C = Consequences of A and B i.e. how I feel and behave

Beware of the following automatic thought categories! If you believe these to be true, you will act and behave self-defeatingly!

1.     Awfulising: using words like 'awful’, 'terrible’, 'horrible’,'catastrophic’ to describe something - e.g. 'It would be terrible if …’, 'It’s the worst thing that could happen’, 'That would be the end of the world’.

Perspective!

       2.  Cant-stand-it-itis: viewing an event or experience as unbearable e.g. 'I can’t stand it’, 'It’s absolutely unbearable’, I’ll die if I get rejected’.

       3.  Demanding: using 'shoulds’ (moralising) or 'musts’ (musturbating) e.g. 'You should not have done that, 'I must not fail’, 'I need to be loved’, 'I have to have a drink’.

       4. People-rating: labelling or rating your total self (or someone else’s) e.g. 'I’m/you’re stupid /hopeless /useless /worthless.’

Some of us are more resilient than others; we seem to cope better with the slings and arrows that come our way. Others are predisposed to feeling (and therefore acting) in ways that are self-defeating. REBT offers us the tools with which to boost the ‘psychological immune system’ of the individual as a protective mechanism against unhealthy negative emotions. Jonas Salk talked about the possibility of psychologically immunising young people. Ellis, Seligman and others would argue that this is possible through programs based on sound psycho therapeutic principles.

This is what a growing number of schools are doing through Rational Emotive Behaviour Education in South Australia.

Personal Reflections on Albert Ellis & REBT by Aaron T. Beck

Aaron Beck talks about Ellis' life and work on the occasion of Ellis' passing in 2007. Rational Emotive Behaviour Educators in Whyalla, South Australia continue his work to promote student mental health.

On the Contributions of Dr. Albert Ellis

Aaron T. Beck
A eulogy is a highly subjective matter. It often reflects as much of the personal narrative of the speaker as it does of the subject. As Ellis pointed out numerous times, we see the world through our own filters or lenses.

That said, I will try to tell what Albert Ellis meant to me personally as well as to the world. We all know Ellis as an explorer, revolutionary, therapist, theorist, and teacher. But how did these various roles play out in his actual interactions with his colleagues and friends?
To describe my personal narrative of Al Ellis, I have to go back many decades to my beginnings in the field of therapy and research.
Like Ellis, I was trained as a psychoanalyst. Although I always had some misgivings regarding the Psychoanalytic Establishment, which was like a religious order in many ways with its authoritarianism, rites of passage, and demands for obedience to its rituals, I believed that the theory and therapy had a solid basis. Having caught the research bug early in life, I was determined to demonstrate through my research that the theory was correct and skeptics were wrong. In actuality, my research indicated that I was wrong and the skeptics were right. In short, I came up with a new theory and therapy which I later called Cognitive Therapy. Unfortunately, there was nobody I could discuss this with, except my wife, Phyllis, and daughter, Judith. At this point, Al came into my life.
He happened to see a couple of my articles published in 1963 and 1964 and made contact with me.
This was particularly significant because at last I had found someone I could talk to. I soon discovered, of course, that he had broken ranks with traditional psychotherapy many years previously and had laid out a new cognitive theory and therapy that he called Rational Therapy and then Rational Emotive Therapy. I also found that our approaches were simpatico, and Al graciously reprinted my 2 articles in his house organ, The Journal of Rational Living.
I also was thrilled to learn that he had directly challenged the psychotherapy establishment, had established a clinic and a school, and was a prolific author. I was particularly impressed not only by his no-nonsense therapy but by his bare knuckled, no-nonsense lectures.
Subsequent to this, Al organized a symposium bringing together the very few like-minded therapists. These were primarily behavior therapists who were disillusioned with classical learning theory and sought to blend cognitive techniques into the established behavior therapies. Around the same time, Al provided the funding for Don Meichenbaum to launch his Cognitive Behavior Therapy Newsletter, which was the precursor of the journal, Cognitive Therapy and Research.
Al and I continued our interchange over the years. One telling example of his therapeutic personality occurred when I invited him to do a Grand Rounds at the University of Pennsylvania Department of Psychiatry. He interviewed a young lady before a large audience of residents, medical students, and staff (largely psychoanalysts). He conducted the interview in his usual directive, brash manner but underneath this was tenderness and understanding. Afterwards, several of my colleagues reproached me for having invited him. Their attitude was that by ignoring the patient's unconscious, he was harming her. Later, I had occasion to talk to the patient and asked her about the interview. She remarked, "He is the first person who ever understood me."
Al's uncanny ability to tease out patients' thoughts and feelings was also obvious in the Friday night sessions at the Institute, which I attended whenever I had the opportunity.
In recent years, Frank Farley brought us together for dialogues at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association. Needless to say, there was an overflow audience at these sessions. These interchanges were highly informative and entertaining. On one occasion, Frank asked me to start off the conversation with a summary of my recent work. When I was finished, Al was asked to respond to my comments. He replied, "To tell you the truth, I didn't hear a damn thing he said," — his hearing aid was turned off— but he responded anyhow!
There is much more I could tell about Al but I would like to close with a personal appreciation of what Al meant not only to me but to the world. When I was a young boy, I read about the Cedars of Lebanon, grand trees that lived for over 100 years and were objects of awe and reverence. It was believed that if these trees were cut down, it would be the end of civilization because they were irreplaceable.
Al was one of the cedars and he will not be replaced in this generation. However, he leaves a grand legacy behind him with his wonderful wife, Debbie, all his students, and the scores of grateful patients who are living better lives because of him.

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