ABSTRACT
While clients can readily understand the role that irrational beliefs have in their emotional disturbance when the adversities they face are minor or moderate, they find it more difficult to accept the ABC model in the face of major adversities. Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) makes a distinction between healthy and unhealthy negative emotions. Healthy distress stems from your rational beliefs about a negative activating event, whilst disturbance stems from your irrational beliefs about the same event. REBT theory argues that you, being human, easily transmute your rational beliefs into irrational beliefs, especially when the events you encounter are very negative. These therapists argue that time-limited irrationalities in response to very negative activating events are not unhealthy reactions, but the perpetuation of these irrationalities is unhealthy.
