Counseling Theory and Practice Midterm Flashcards
(111 cards)
REBT
A short-term therapy developed by Albert Ellis that helps clients identify and change defeating thoughts and feelings
Goal of REBT
Help people reduce their underlying symptom-creating propensities. Minimization of musturbation, perfectionism, grandiosity, and low frustration tolerance
ABCDE Model
- Activating Events/ Adversity
- Irrational Beliefs about the events at “A”
- The emotional and behavioral Consequences
- Disputes/ arguments against irrational beliefs
- New Effect or the new, more effecive emotions and behaviors that result from more reasonable thinking about the original event
ABCDE
Activating events (A’s) in people’s lives contribute to their emotional and behavioral disturbances or consequences (C’s) largely because they are intermingled with or acted upon by people’s beliefs (B’s) about these activating events (A’s)
What Makes a Thought Irrational?
Irrational beliefs or dysfunctional attitudes that constitute people’s self-disturbing philosophies have two main qualities:
- They have at their core explicit or implicit rigid, powerful demands and commands, usually expressed as musts, shoulds, ought to’s, have to’s, go to’s. (“I absolutely must have my important goals fulfilled!”)
They also have derivatives of these demands:
Irrational Thoughts
Emptional upsets as distinguished from feelings of sorrow, regret, annoyance, and frustration – stem from irrational beliefs
REBT View of Neuroses
Neurotic thinking is the result of unrealistic, illogical, self-defeating thinking, and that is disturbance-creating ideas can be disputed
What does REBT do?
A cognitive-emotive-behavioristic method of psychotherapy uniquely designed to enable people to observe, understand, and persistently dispute their irrational, grandiose, perfectionistic shoulds, oughts, and musts and their awfulizing
Distraction (REBT Technique)
- Adult demanders can be transitorily sidetracked by distraction
- Therapist who sees someone who is afraid of being rejected (one who demands that significant others accept him) can try to divert him into activities such as sports, aesthetic creation, a political cause, yoga exercises, meditation, or preoccupation with the events of his childhood
- While the individual is diverted, he will not be so inclined to demand acceptance by others and make himself anxious
- Distraction techniques are mainly palliative, given that distracted people are still demanders and that they will probably return to their destructive commanding once they are not diverted
Satisfaction of Demands (REBT Technique)
If a client’s insistences are always catered to, she or he will tend to feel better (but will not necessarily get better)
- To arrange this kind of “solution,” a therapist can give her or his love and approval, provide pleasurable sensations (for example, put the client in an encounter group to be hugged or massaged), teach methods of having demands met, or give reassurance that the client eventually will be gratified
Magic and Mysticism (REBT technique)
- Adolescent and adult demanders can be led to believe (by a therapist or someone else) that their therapist is a kind of magician who will take away their troubles merely by listening to what bothers them
- A boy who demands may be assuaged by magic (ex: parents saying that a fairy godmother will satisfy his demands)
Minimization of Demandingnes
Best solution = to help individuals become less demanding
- As children mature, they normally become less childish and less insistent that their desires be immediately gratified
REBT encourages clients to achieve minimal demandingness and maximum tolerance
Temporary, palliative techniques may be used in REBT with clients who refuse more permanent resolution
Benefits/ What does REBT do?
- REBT assists patients in seeing how giving up perfectionism improves their lives
- REBT teaches patients to differentiate between desires and “musts.”
- Behavioral techniques are used in REBT to change habits as well as cognition
- REBT helps clients acquire a more realistic, tolerant philosophy of life
- REBT practitioners often employ a rapid-fire, active-directive-persuasive-philosophical methodology
Mechanism of REBT
No matter what feelings (which, by the way, do not distract the therapist) the patient discusses, the focus is on the patient’s irrational beliefs
Mechanism of REBT
Therapists do not hesitate to contradict a patient’s beliefs and are often one step ahead while showing acceptance
Mechanism of REBT
Therapists may do more talking than their patients
Mechanism of REBT
Therapist doesn’t just tell the patient his or her beliefs are irrational, but also attempts to encourage the patient to see this for him- or herself
Basic Personality Theory of REBT
Humans largely create their own emotional consequences
- They appear to be born with a distinct proneness to do so, and they learn through social conditioning to exaggerate (rather than minimize) that proneness
Client-Centered Therapy
Carl Rogers –> an orderly process of client self-discovery and actualization occurs in response to the therapist’s consistent empathic understanding of, acceptance of, and respect for the client’s frame
The therapist sets the stage for personality growth by reflecting and clarifying the ideas of the client, who is able to see himself or herself more clearly and come into closer touch with his or her real self
As therapy progresses, the client resolves conflicts, reorganizes values and approaches to life, and learns how to interpret his or her thoughts and feelings, consequently changing behavior that he or she considers problematic
3 Essential Therapist-Offered Conditions of Therapeutic Personality Change
- Congruence
- Unconditional Positive Regard
- Empathic understanding of the client’s internal frame of reference
6 Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Change (Client-Centered)
1) Two persons are in psychological contact
2) The client is in a state of incongruence, being vulnerable or anxious
3) The therapist is congruent or integrated in the relationship
4) The therapist experiences unconditional positive regard for the client
5) The therapist experiences an empathic understanding of the client’s internal frame of reference and endeavors to communicate this experience to the client
6) The communication to the client of therapist’s empathic understanding and UPR is to a minimal degree achieved
Unconditional Positive Regard
A nonposessive caring and acceptance of the client as a human being, irrespective of the therapist’s own values
Warm acceptance
Non-judgmental openness to the client as a person and his/her behaviors, beliefs, and values
Empathic Understanding
The ability to absorb the expressed meanings of the client as if the therapist were seeing the world as the client sees; and to feel along with the client in their pain or joy
Congruence
A state of wholeness and integration within the experience of the person (hallmark of psychological adjustment)
Becoming more congruent, whole, and integrated, is a predictable outcome and can be observed in all relationships that provide therapeutic conditions