In the depth of your addiction to drugs or alcohol, you spent a lot of time holding on irrational beliefs. These formed with your drug use or mental health problems. But as you strengthen in your sobriety, irrational beliefs do not serve your recovery well. This is why you benefit from REBT, a type of psychotherapy that helps you accomplish important change.
How REBT Began
Rational emotive behavior therapy is a type of cognitive behavioral therapy. It started with the work of a therapist named Dr. Albert Ellis. In his youth, Dr. Ellis struggled with loneliness and the desire to find a female companion. But fear blocked that effort of talking to the opposite gender. The young Ellis decided to experiment with his fear. He forced himself to visit a park and talk to 100 women throughout a month. In that month, his fear of talking to women changed. This led him to realize how our view of the world around us affects our behaviors and potential. Ellis used this experience as a foundation for REBT therapy development. His approach used behavioral methods with a strong look at underlying thoughts and feelings. In his training as a clinical psychologist, Ellis found few options for treating people in this way. He noticed that his patients saw their underlying problems but grew stuck at spawning change. So he continued working on his theory and an approach to therapy designed to help people bring their own change. This change needed to happen by helping clients manage their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. From the 1950s forward, he called his method rational therapy. In 1992, it became rational emotive behavioral therapy. Using REBT, people change their illogical thoughts and negative thinking patterns to overcome hurdles they put in their own way. All of this forms on Ellis’ original experiment and his view that things do not disturb people, instead of with a disturbance coming from their view of those things.
Ellis’ ABC Model and Basic Steps of Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy
According to Ellis, people blame external events for much of their own unhappiness. But he argues that we can change our unhappiness by interpreting events differently. He developed the ABC model to recognize our need for such change. This model includes an activating event (A), beliefs (B) and consequence (C). Activating events are things happening in the environment around you. You form your beliefs about the situation or event. Then you have an emotional response to what you believe. For the rational emotive behavioral therapy process, you go through three major steps to change. You first get to the root of your psychological distress by identifying the underlying irrational thought patterns, feelings, and beliefs. These usually occur using statements like, “I must,” “I cannot,” or “I should.” These ways of thinking make it hard for us to look at things from a healthy viewpoint. Instead, our rigid beliefs lead us to regret, anxiety and disappointment. This is why the next step in your REBT is for challenging your negative beliefs. To challenge them, your therapist guides you in an almost confrontational way. The final step in rational emotive behavioral therapy is to work with your therapist to bring real change. For this, you examine your emotional responses to problem thoughts. You use a variety of tools to do so, such as meditation, guided imagery, and journaling.
Therapies Needed for Lasting Recovery
Rational emotive behavioral therapy is complex. It can be hard to see how this therapy relates to your substance use and addiction as of right now. But as you progress through rehab treatment for your addiction, you experience breakthroughs using a wide variety of therapies, including rational emotive behavioral therapy. Men seeking strong, lasting recovery should turn to Red Oak Recovery® in Leicester, North Carolina. At Red Oak Recovery®, you gain multiple types of addiction therapy services. The addiction treatment programs at Red Oak Recovery® include:
- Partial hospitalization and outpatient rehab treatment
- Dual diagnosis treatment
- Trauma therapy
- Gardening and eco-therapy
- Outdoor wilderness hybrid program
- Individual, group and family therapy
Red Oak Recovery® understands the roots of your addiction formed in your worldview and other aspects of your inner being. This is why you gain REBT and other therapies to gain the most insight into your problem and how to bring lasting change. Contact Red Oak Recovery® now at 866-457-7590 for more information about bringing this change to your life.
