Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy

Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) is a comprehensive, active-directive, philosophically and empirically based psychotherapy which focuses on resolving cognitive, emotional, and behavioral problems in human beings. REBT was created and developed by the American psychotherapist and psychologist Albert Ellis. REBT is one of the first forms of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) and was first expounded by Ellis in mid-1950s. Fundamental to REBT is that disturbance and emotional suffering and upsetness results from our evaluations, our beliefs and philosophies about the negative events that happen to us in addition to the events per se. In other words, that human beings on the basis of their belief system disturb themselves, and even disturb themselves about their disturbances.

The REBT framework assumes that humans have both rational and irrational tendencies. Irrational beliefs prevent handling of adversities, goal attainment, lead to inner conflict, more conflict with others and poor mental health. Rational beliefs lead to better handling of adversities, goal attainment, better mental functioning and more inner harmony. REBT claims that irrational and self-defeating thinking, emoting and behaving are correlated with emotional difficulties such as self-blame, self-pity, clinical anger, hurt, guilt, shame, depression and anxiety, and behaviors like procrastination, over-compulsiveness, avoidance, addiction and withdrawal. REBT is an educational and active-directive process in which the therapist teaches the client how to identify irrational and self-defeating tendencies which in nature are rigid, extreme, unrealistic, illogical and absolutist, and then to forcefully and activily dispute them, and replace them with more rational and self-helping ones. By using different methods and activities, the client, together with help from the therapist and in homework exercises, can gain a more rational, self-helping and constructive rational way of thinking, emoting and behaving. One of the main objectives in REBT is to show the client that whenever unpleasant activating events occur in people's lives, they have a choice of making themselves feel healthily and self-helpingly sorry, disappointed, frustrated, and annoyed, or making themselves feel unhealthily and self-defeatingly horrified, terrified, panicked, depressed, self-hating, and self-pitying (Ellis, 2003).

As Albert Ellis says; "When people keep challenging and questioning their self-disturbing core philosophies, after a while they tend to automatically, and even in advance, bring new, rational, self-helping attitudes to their life problems and thereby make themselves significantly less upsettable", (Ellis, 2003).