ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses some of the complexity that surrounds the issue of goals and with reference to the working alliance in Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT). The therapist needs to keep themselves up to date on the state of the client’s goals. There are two main occasions when the rational emotive behaviour (REB) therapist should ask the client to express their goals in therapy: at the start of therapy and after the start of therapy, when they are assessing the client’s problem. Given that REBT considers anxiety to be an unhealthy negative emotion, it would help the client to remain disturbed, albeit with less intensity, if the therapist were to go along with this goal. The REB therapist can discuss this perspective on the adversity with the client, while also helping them to see that they can choose between unhealthy negative and healthy negative emotional responses to that adversity.
