Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) & CBT

REBT is the original CBT and originates from Dr Albert Ellis in 1955 and the REBT perspective is that people are disturbed not by things, but by their rigid and extreme views of things. The psychological approaches of REBT and CBT are based on research evidence based clinical practice and can help with a wide range of problems such as anxiety, depression, anger, confidence issues, low self-esteem, bereavement, trauma, obesity, mental/emotional/physical/sexual abuse and drug/alcohol misuse.

In REBT emotional responsibility is about owning your emotions and acknowledging that they belong to you and that the feelings being experienced are due to your own thoughts about the situation. The thoughts experienced are due to beliefs that you have about yourself, about other people and the world and these beliefs can be helpful or unhelpful. ‘You must listen to me’ is an example of an unhelpful thought. It is a demand and when you believe that the person has not listened to you then you become triggered and you experience feeling angry (Unhealthy negative emotion). This could lead to unhelpful behaviour for example shouting/being very argumentative, comfort eating to make yourself feel better, avoiding the person so you don’t encounter them (Unconstructive behaviours).

As you begin to develop more of an understanding that beliefs, feelings and behaviour are all within your control you can begin to identify some of your unhelpful thoughts and this gives you the opportunity to take responsibility and create change by disputing them and establish more helpful beliefs for example ‘I would like you to listen to me but you don’t have to’. You learn that rational thinking leads to emotional change and reduces the intensity, frequency and duration of emotional disturbance.