ABSTRACT
Albert Ellis has always argued that REBT is fundamentally an activedirective approach to psychotherapy. In our experience it is difficult to practise REBT in the early phase of therapy without adopting an active-directive stance. At the start of therapy, you will need to direct your client to his disturbed feelings and self-defeating behaviours and direct him to understanding the ideological roots of his psychological problems. However, if you continue to be directive throughout therapy, you may well deprive clients of the opportunity to become more active and self-directing for themselves. Thus, consider fading the extent of your directiveness in a number of different circumstances. The first of these circumstances is when your client is making progress on a particular problem. Instead of continually directing the client to the ABCDEs of REBT, you can ask questions such as:
• ‘What are you thinking in order not to be anxious?’ • ‘How did you dispute that belief?’ • ‘How could you dispute it more effectively?’ • ‘How could you put that into practice?’
