ABSTRACT
Using the REBT treatment sequence (Dryden and Neenan 2004a), you will assess the C and A elements of your clients’ problems before identifying their irrational beliefs. As we have already stressed (Point 48), while assessing A you need to determine the most clinically relevant aspect of the activating event (that part of A which triggers the client’s irrational belief). Once you have done this, you need to encourage your clients to assume temporarily that A is true, no matter how distorted A is. The one major exception to this rule occurs when you think that your clients are quite unlikely to think rationally about a very distorted A (e.g. when a client with panic disorder infers that she is going to die). In this case, you need to educate your client concerning the effect of the role that irrational beliefs have in producing distorted inferences and select an irrational belief lower down the client’s chain of disturbance (see Point 21 for a fuller discussion of this issue).
