ABSTRACT
In Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) theory, the relationship between activating events, beliefs, emotions and behaviours is exceedingly complex. Albert Ellis argued that people bring their irrational beliefs to the interpretations they make of activating events and that these beliefs not only have emotional and behavioural consequences, but also have cognitive consequences which serve as As in further ABC episodes. A more productive strategy in such circumstances is for you to teach your client that very distorted inferences are cognitive consequences of prior irrational beliefs. This chapter describes several experiments that the author has done with some of his students. REBT therapists can encourage them to focus on the beginning of such an episode and dispute their irrational beliefs about a mildly distorted interpretation of A. If you are successful, the spiralling process of interacting irrational beliefs and ever-increasing distorted interpretations is brought under control.
