ABSTRACT
In working with a client, when the therapist has reached the point where they are ready to help them examine their rigid/extreme attitudes, then ideally the client should have understood the relationship between these attitudes and their emotional and/or behavioural problems. The therapist needs to help client to understand that when they are helping them to examine their rigid/extreme attitudes, they are casting doubt on these attitudes not attacking them as a person. Thus, when the therapist helps the client examine their rigid/extreme attitudes towards abusive experiences, it is crucial that they show the client that they understand their emotional responses and indicate that it is healthy for them to be very upset about such events. Conversely, if the therapist uses the argument that such experiences were not awful and that worse things could happen, this will be experienced as at best an irrelevant argument and at worst an insensitive one, even though it is true according to REBT theory.
