Irrational Ideas (Dr Ellis, Rational Emotive Therapy)

I ran across this and found it interesting. What do you all think of it?
Irrational idea 1: The idea that you must have love or approval from all the people you find significant.
Irrational idea 2: You must prove thoroughly competent, adequate (or you must atleast have competence or talent in some important area.
Irrational idea 3: The idea that when people act obnoxiously and unfairly, you should blame and damn them, and see them as bad, wicked or rotten individuals.
Irrational idea 4: The idea that you have to view things as awful, terrible, horrible and catastrophic when you get seriously frustrated, are treated unfairly, or are rejected.
Irrational Idea 5: The idea that if something seems dangerous or fearsome, you must preocculpy yourself with it and make yourself anxious about it.
Irrational idea 6: The idea that emotional misery comes from external pressures and that you have little ability to control or change your feelings.
Irrational idea 7: The idea that you can more easily avoid facing many life difficulties and self-responsibilities than undertake more rewarding forms of self-discipline.
Irrational idea 8: The idea that your past remains all-important and that because something once strongly influenced your life, it has to keep determining your feelings and behavior today.
Irrational idea 9: The idea that people and things should turn out better than they do and that you must view it as awful and horrible if you do not find good solutions to life's grim realities.
Irrational idea 10: The idea that you can acheive maximum human happiness by inertia and inaction or by passively and uncommittedly "enjoying yourself."
Some of these are very similar to the CBT list. What is the difference between CBT and Rational Emotive Therapy? Are they related in some way?

I have no idea if they are, but I see more of these in myself than the CBT list

CBT is an offshoot of REBT, basically the same idea--change the thinking, change the behavior.

What I like about this approach is they work to change you directly, modifying your thoughts and behaviors. Which of course, is what most of us want to do. (That is, feel better, act "normal").

That's what these lists are about...when depressed we tend to think things like "I'm a loser" or I'll never feel better" or "why does everyone hate me". We begin to accept these statements as true. CBT and REBT teach you to recognize these kinds of thoughts and challenge them as a way of getting rid of them.

I think a lot of psychologists are unconfortable with this kind of thing, because it resembles classical conditioning, and tends to reduce the patient to a set of responses to a set of stimuli.

I have to ask though, if it makes me happier and more functional, what's wrong with that?

DJ

Thank you for the explanation Davey =D You are always so well informed! {{{{Davey}}}}

Happy to help!

I had an anger management class taught by a T with a REBT background, he sort of gave us the lowdown. Great class, it actually worked, and we didn't even have to sing show tunes!!! (I just loved that movie)!

I am also blessed (cursed) with a garbage can mind that stashes stuff away to regurgitated later, sometimes even when useful (usually not)!

DJ

Thanks. A teacher of mine responded to an example I gave of how I changed a peception of mine and he had called it rational emotive therapy. I thought it was probably Cognictive behavioral because it sounded extremely familiar when I read about it. But, I wasn't sure because Dr Ackerly's theoretical approach was that he uses what works. So, I probably use a variety of thereuptic ideas in my rather odd thinking.

Both REBT (Ellis) and Cognitive Therapy (Burns, Beck) are CBT. You can think of them like different flavors. They share the same aims and many of the same techniques. They just emphasize different things.

Albert Ellis' "Guide to Rational Thinking" changed my life. I HIGHLY recommend it!

I learned (through class) that Rational Emotive Therapy involves direct challenging of the irrational beliefs. My prof went so far as to say that sometimes the RE Therapist would "insult" the patient's beliefs (ie: "How could you ever believe such a thing about yourself? What kind of person would think that? That's not the right way to think of yourself" etc.) whereas CBT is more...subtle?

I'm not sure how bang on his explanation was, because he presented REBT as something that was really raw and kind of brutal. But that's how it was presented in my university psychology class.

I think what I took from the lecture (Whether the Prof was biased, which he probably is, and spun REBT as something "worse" than it actually is) is that REBT is more "in your face" than CBT.

Am I anywhere near close?

I get depressed just trying to read that list.

Hi,

Good list. I do have a major problem with one of the so called irrational thoughts because I don't live in a vacuum without needs.

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The idea that emotional misery comes from external pressures

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The above just doesn't make rational sense to me as irrational.
We all are dependant on our environment and if it's hostile we can and regularly do suffer and die. Seems like just one more way the power structure can blame their victims and psychologists can pass the buck instead of really helping to problem solve.

Here's an example of a real situation that might explain the difference between REBT and CT. There was a teenage girl that sought counseling because she was convinced that people rejected her and made fun of her because of her red hair. She was convinced that most people really disliked red hair. An REBT therapist would directly contradict her beliefs. He/she might say, "That's simply not true." They might try to use some humor by wondering aloud if a popular redheaded celebrity would agree with them. They might encourage this girl to talk back to her beliefs...really get angry and dispute that belief loudly. They might enourage her to make a tape of her disputation to listen to three times a day, etc.

A CT therapist, on the other hand, probably wouldn't directly contradict what the girl said about redheads, but would ask for any evidence she had for the belief, and any evidence she had against the belief. Or, they might ask her to do an experiment for homework...for example, tell her to go through a stack of fashion magazines and make a note of how many of the models are blonde, brunette, and redhead and compare that to how many people have those haircolors in real life. (The hope was that the girl would see that even though redheads make up only 2-4% of the population, they make up nearly 20% of the fashion models...good proof against the idea that people dislike red hair.)

I tend to like CT myself. To my way of thinking, if the person arrives at the new conclusion themselves, it means a lot more than just taking the therapist at his/her word.

If that is the difference, I concur. I don't just accept what a counselor says. I have to go test it. Any T who dislikes that can counsel other people. (I have a degree in biology. So, I have been trained to test things. My odd, inaccurate beliefs is no exception.)

I'm not so keen on cognitive therapy / rational emotive behaviour therapy because I think it is a little too invalidating of peoples emotional experience. Also because... It is based on a couple of assumptions that are not universially true as they are required to be (an example of over-generalising or wishful thinking?)

So, for example...

Someone says that they think people don't like them / reject them because they have red hair...

And one thing you could do is challenge the evidence they have for the belief...

And one thing you could do is challenge the belief directly...

Another thing you could do is accept that the person feels like other people reject them.

I mean...

Isn't that the point?
That the person feels pain...
Because they feel rejected...

And to call that belief 'irrational' is extremely invalidating. Not to mention... Judgemental.

In fact... The person may well have good reason to feel rejected by people (maybe there was an important person in their life who left them).

And to call their belief 'irrational' and try and change it...

Well...

Doesn't work for me...

one day there was a dog...
and the dog was trained thus:

tone - shock
tone - shock
tone - shock

after a while the dog came to respond like this

tone - fear

does the dog have the irrational belief 'tones are dangerous'?

let the dog repeat after me 100,000 times
'tones are not dangerous'

is that going to help extinguish the dogs emotional response?

lol.

EMOTIONAL RESPONSES NEED NOT ARISE IN RESPONSE TO THOUGHTS THEY CAN ARISE IN RESPONSE TO (RELATIVELY) UNINTERPRETED STIMULUS FEATURES

if you flash a picture to someone in (i think...) under 250 milliseconds then they are unable to report seeing the picture and they are unable to report what the picture is of.

if you flash a picture of a spider a snake and a mushroom to someone with a spider phobia then they will show heightened skin galvanisation response (SGR - a measure of emotional response) to the pic of the spider but not the snake or the mushroom.
if you flash a picture of a spider a snake and a mushroom to someone with a snake phobia then they will show a heightened SGR to the picture of the snake, but not the other two.
people without phobias show baseline SGR to all three

EMOTIONAL RESPONSES CAN ARISE IN RESPONSE TO UNCONSCIOUSLY PERCEIVED STIMULUS FEATURES

lets say i have a fear of spiders...

is my emotion irrational?
my emotion is supposed to be irrational because...
fear is a response to a perceived threat (by definition)
thus if i show a fear response to a spider then that must be because i believe
'that spider is a threat'
but if i believe 'that spider is a threat' then how come i say 'i do not believe that spider is a threat - i know that spider cannot hurt me'.

do i believe both (in which case i endorse a contradiction - hence the irrationality)?

what about when my fear occurs in response to a picture of a spider?

do i believe 'that picture of the spider can hurt me'?
do i believe 'pictures in general can hurt me'?

what sort of nonsense is this?

we have already seen that emotions can occur without beliefs (in the case of subliminally perceived stimuli)

lets suppose you tell the person with the spider phobia to repeat after me
'spiders cannot hurt me' 100,000 times...

is this likely to help the person any more than the dog?

EMOTIONS CAN BE ENCAPSULATED FROM COGNITION SO THAT SOME EMOTIONAL RESPONSES ARE NOT RESPONSES TO COGNITION AND CANNOT BE MODIFIED BY IT

of course...

sometimes emotions DO arise in response to cognition...
sometimes emotions CAN be modified by cognition...

but not all of them

and not all of the time

so...

i reckon the cognitive error in cognitive therapy is overgeneralisation.

they ain't perfect neither ;-)

Just because I have some feelings of paranoia, doesn't mean they aren't out to get me.

Thats right.
And of course... You can know full well that they are NOT out to get you...

And yet...

Continue to feel afraid...

no, I DO know they are out to get me but I'm not afraid. (is this backwards???)

different emotional responses can occur in response to the same belief

'they are out to get me'

one person might feel all excited BRING IT ON!!!
another person might feel afraid
another person might feel angry...

(apparantly it depends on other beliefs... but where does it end? do we need to factor in the persons entire belief network in order to deduce their emotional state from their beliefs?????)

and this disregards the affective primacy thesis (ie that emotions can occur before beliefs)

I think it also depends upon how much therapy one has endured to get to the non fear point?

yes. and the kind of therapy that is likely to help one get to the 'non-fear point'

i appreciate that cognitive therapy / rational emotive beahviour therapy helps some people to get to that point...

or that it helps some people get to that point regarding some of their emotional states...

but i also think that it is far from the end of the story.

and so for those people out there who find that cognitive restructuring / challenging of beliefs doesn't really help change ones emotional response...

well...

they are not alone.

thats all i meant to say really.
they are not alone.
and they are not freaks or anything.
because everybody experiences this with some of their emotional responses
and some people experience this with the emotional responses that are the most distressing to them...

and...

people are still working on this (thank god)
and therapies that are more in line with the recent empirical findings are still being developed (thank god)

:-)

and...

if some therapist ever tries to tell you that you simply MUST endorse these 'irrational beliefs' BY DEFINITION... And that if you say 'look I really don't think I do...' then they tell you 'well, then you endorse them unconsciously then...' and if they ever try to tell you that those 'irrational beliefs' are the CAUSE of your distress...

and they disregard your phenomenology...

well... that is their ignorance and the empirical findings actually follow the phenomenology more than their assumptions...

'the idea that you must have love or approval from all the people you find significant'

well... it does hurt when someone you find significant does not love or approve of you...

and regardless of what you tell yourself...

it does hurt.

and if it hurts one hell of a lot...

that doesn't mean you endorse that irrational belief...
that doesn't mean you endorse that irrational belief unconsciously even...

it is a normal response.
and when the response is extreme...

well...

tone - shock
tone - shock

past experiences...

You raise some excellent points, Witt, but I've got to disagree with you on a few. Disregarding or invalidating a person's emotions and their phenomenological reality is not a tenant of CBT. Providing accurate empathy and a solid understanding of the client's world isn't stressed in the literature for the same reason that "having steady hands" isn't stressed in surgical textbooks...it's assumed that this is a precondition for doing any kind of therapuetic work.

CT also doesn't disregard affective primacy. It says nothing at all about what comes first, it simply says that cognition is very influential and that cognitive restructuring can have a huge impact on emotion and behavior--regardless of where it resides in the "firing order".

And finally, your Pavlovian example of the tone/shock association with the dog isn't really analagous because dogs don't have cognition--at least, they don't have the kind that can be influenced with either direct disputation or Socratic dialogue. (And when you think about it, this isn't the kind of fear most people come into therapy with. I fear flying in airplanes...not because I've been in thousands of airplane crashes that reinforced this fear, but because I have an irrational fear that my plane will crash.)

I think your main point that not every kind of therapy works for every person is a very good one. I think that's too often ignored by therapists of all varieties.

Hey there. Thanks for your response I really enjoy having theorietical discussions and kicking ideas around so thanks for taking the time to think and to disagree.

I know that there is nothing in the CBT / REBT textbooks about how one must be sure to invalidate or disregard the clients experience of their emotional states... I just think... That this can be an UNINTENTIONAL consequence of a view that places such a heavy burden on the role of cognitive factors in the production and modification of emotional responses.

So, for example, you have some theorists working on modifying / altering CBT in a way that appreciates that ACCEPTANCE is JUST AS important as CHANGE. And that EMOTIONS can be just as primary as THOUGHTS. Linehan has done some work on this. And there is a book that she has written with the ACT guy (acceptance and committment therapy) Hayes (or similar) and there is a part about the 'third wave' of CBT. The first being Behaviourism, the second being Cognitivism, the third being... Well... Focused on the role of Mindfulness / Acceptance / Affective Primacy etc.

CBT contradicts itself regarding whether it does or does not make a committment regarding the primacy of cognition over emotion. I imagine that is because... Different theorists think differently. I have also found people contradicting themselves over that one...

'It simply says that cognition is very influential'

Sometimes cognition does indeed have an influence on emotional states.

But I want to maintain (and they do not) that othertimes EMOTION IS INDEPENDENT FROM COGNITION AND IS NEITHER CAUSED BY IT NOR CAN BE MODIFIED BY IT

I know dogs don't have cognition ;-)
That was the point of the example.
I was being a little tongue in cheek.
It is a vivid example of emotion without cognition is it not?
And OF COURSE the dogs emotional responses are unable to be modified by telling the dog 'tones can't hurt you' because the dog cannot understand what you are saying...
But...
I think some human emotional responses can be like that too.
Informationally encapsulated from higher cognitive processes...
And unable to be modified by higher cognitive processes...

Your fear of airplanes...

How many airplane crashes have you seen on tv?
In the newspaper?

Experience...
Can be vicarious too...

In fact...

You probably hear more hoo ha around airplane crashes than you hear around car crashes...

Which might go some way towards explaining why it is that you fear airplane crashes more than car crashes...

Whats with the urge to have yourself described as 'irrational'?

Rational response...

What is most likely to help you?

Repeat after me:

'you are more likely to crash your car than in an airplane'
'not many airplanes crash really'

or...

flooding...
or graduated exposure...

?

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wittgenstein said:
I just think... That this can be an UNINTENTIONAL consequence of a view that places such a heavy burden on the role of cognitive factors in the production and modification of emotional responses.

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Agreed. Some CBT therapists go overboard and ignore basic principles of good counseling.

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CBT contradicts itself regarding whether it does or does not make a commitment regarding the primacy of cognition over emotion. I imagine that is because... Different theorists think differently. I have also found people contradicting themselves over that one...

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Another factor here is that theorists and therapists tend to present the very simply A causes B causes C, etc. formula to clients because it's assumed that this is a more effective way of getting the point across, and that most people have little or no interest in exploring the ambiguos landscape of cognition/affect/physiology/behavior relationships. (And, I think the total lack of interest shown by other members to our discussion illustrates this nicely--please note: the preceding comment was aimed at my post's lack of relevance to the support mission of the forum...it was not meant to be unkind to any members. I tend to exaggerate. That's just my style of writing.)

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Your fear of airplanes...

How many airplane crashes have you seen on tv?
In the newspaper?

Experience...
Can be vicarious too...

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Yes, but the 95-98% of people who do not fear airplane crashes have had such vicarious experiences as well. What makes me different? That's the really interesting question. (I'm not saying CBT offers the definitive answer, just that it offers one that makes sense.)

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Whats with the urge to have yourself described as 'irrational'?

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No urge at all. In fact, I never called myself irrational. I said that I had an irrational fear. Big difference. In fact, it illustrates a certain cognitive distortion quite nicely. I recognize that I have an irrational fear, but if I made the jump to "I'm an irrational person" I would feel much, much worse about myself.

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What is most likely to help you?

Repeat after me:

'you are more likely to crash your car than in an airplane'
'not many airplanes crash really'

or...

flooding...
or graduated exposure...
?

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Flooding and graduate exposure for sure. A good CBT therapist would recommend them too--hence the 'B' in CBT. But how do these techniques work? One possible explanation is that as I'm flooded (or work through my hierarchy in graded exposure) I experience the feared stimuli and realize--and realization implies cognition--that the feared consequences do not occur. (The strict behaviorist view of these techniques don't really explain much about how they work.)

The work with acceptance is really interesting. I've done a little reading, but I have to catch up. Since most people come to therapy because they "feel bad" and they don't want to feel bad anymore, I think the idea of acceptance would be a tough sell--then again, there's an awful lot about this concept that I don't understand so I could be looking at it all wrong.

For what it's worth, my own view of things is that thoughts, feelings, behavior, and physiology are all part of an interdependent and interacting system and that when one changes, it necessarily changes the others. From a biological standpoint, I don't think it matters much what order they come in. What matters is how people experience these elements phenomenologically. What element can we work with to influence the system? It depends on the person, the problem, the context, etc.

It seems weird to me that when a person seeks treatment with a mental health professional, the most important factor in what kind of treatment they'll receive isn't the client's preference, the client's personality or temperament, isn't even the kind of problem the client is having...it's the approach embraced by the therapist. (Kind of like if I went to my doctor with a complaint about my back and hips and he responded by examining my ears because his training was in ear, nose, and throat!) Not very "client-centered" methinks.