ABSTRACT
A number of years ago I (WD) introduced into the REBT literature the ‘challenging, but not overwhelming’ principle (Dryden 1985). While REBT therapists prefer to encourage their clients to take large steps forward and to take big risks to help them overcome their problems, such tasks which we as therapists might consider ‘challenging’ may be experienced by clients as ‘overwhelming’. The fact that their experience may well be based on irrational thinking is not the point here. What is relevant is that if clients evaluate therapeutic tasks as overwhelming they will not undertake them.
