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Thomas Lee Abshier, ND
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Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy
Thomas Lee Abshier, ND

 

1) Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT): Albert Ellis initially introduced the concepts of REBT in the 1950s.  The foundation of the therapy is based upon the steps of the ABCD acronym, which include:

i) Examining the Adverse events of life,

ii) Discovering the unhealthy and irrational Beliefs about the meaning of those adverse events,

iii) Becoming aware of the emotional Consequences associated with those adverse events and irrational beliefs, and then

iv) Disputing the unhealthy beliefs.  If the reactions a person has to an adverse circumstance are extreme compared to a healthy response, then the irrational thoughts/beliefs underlying this reaction are disputed, confronted, and changed.  

b) Summary of REBT: The foundational process underlying REBT is understanding the objective facts about what happened, what was felt, why it was felt, and comparing that with a standard of perfect emotional balance.  Having a sense and standard of the most rational, appropriate, and healthy response to a given situation, the patient is confronted with the thinking and emotional response-error.  Various arguments about the nature of a properly lived life are used to convince the patient on a rational level that he should change his belief structures.  Changing our beliefs about life has an effect on our emotional reactions since emotions are a type of thought that generates emotion-related body sensations.  If the thoughts can be modified, then the feelings can be modified.  In general, the strong inappropriate feelings are based upon irrational beliefs.  These beliefs may be generated from past trauma, instructions, observations, or ingrained hereditary memory.  Regardless of their origin, irrational beliefs must be disputed and changed.  To proceed in developing emotional health, the patient must begin repetitive rejection of the old, inaccurate, irrational thoughts and inappropriate feelings, and replace them with new thoughts and behaviors.  As the beliefs change, the reactions and behaviors change, and the pain of life is defused and positive emotions are generated.  Upon enrolling the patient in the need for change, and developing a desire for change, the patient-doctor team can then develop strategies for implementing the change in the emotional reactivity to the various life circumstances.  

c) Rapport, Confrontation, Change: In REBT, the rapport, confrontation, and change sequence underlies the entire therapeutic process.  Mirroring understanding creates rapport, enrollment in confronting the irrational beliefs allows personal responsibility to be used, and using the various tools of changing thoughts and habits allows a new behavior, thought, and feeling set to arise.

d) OFNR: In REBT, the discovery of the points of irrational belief comes from exploring the person’s experience, which may be located in the past, present, or future.  The OFNR process of exploring the full nature of a person’s reality provides an excellent template for understanding the context within which the irrational beliefs arise.  This exploration includes: 1) Listening to their story about their objective reality, 2) identifying the feelings, 3) understanding the rationality used to evaluate and react to that reality, and 4) evaluating the appropriateness of that reaction by comparing their reaction with the best available standard of Truth.

e) Spiritual Processing: Any therapeutic intervention confronting emotional hyper-reactivity should confront the spiritual aspect of the psyche, since spirits inherently and unavoidably associate with habitual emotional reactivity.  The theory behind this postulate is that every organization of physical particles has a spiritual nature associated with it.  This does not imply that a chair, tree, or mountain has an eternally existent spirit.  Rather, that the conformation of physical particles by itself inherently produces a spiritual aspect which expresses a nature associated with that underlying physical presence.  Evidence of this spiritual nature can be seen in the various pagan religions that acknowledge the existence of spirits associated with nature in their shamanic rituals, witchcraft, and voodoo.  These religions worship (falsely) the spirits of animals, consider the land sacred, and use the spirits to heal and curse.  Of course worshiping these spirits is inappropriate, since only the Lord God of Hosts is worthy of worship.  Nevertheless, the fact that these religions have power, albeit often undesirable, illustrates the existence of an underlying spiritual reality associated with the physical universe.  In Christian philosophy, it is common to categorize all spirits other than the Holy Spirit and angels as demonic.  This may be true, but I consider the spirits of animals, plants, and rocks as more neutral than evil.  Although, if these spirits were allowed to penetrate and influence the human psyche, soul, mind, emotions, and spirit to any depth and duration, their effect would probably be unhealthy, and hence evil.  I believe the entire world is spiritual, and that we interact with the various nature spirits at all times.  The challenge is to only let them penetrate into the soul to the proper depth.  The shamanic practice of full possession by various animal spirits, such as in a vision quest, will probably have an unhealthy effect on some level.  Serving the spirits of alcohol, drugs, sex, gambling, and violence are also examples of unhealthy penetration by spirits.  This analysis has been pursued to note that the emotions are physical conformations in the brain structures, and thus have spirits associated with them.  The strong influence by the spirits of emotion is inappropriate, unhealthy, and leads to unhappiness.  This possession must be confronted directly by disputing the thought processes that allow an emotion to establish itself.  

f) Strong Emotional Reactions: To treat and overcome a problem, it must be well identified.  In the realm of human relationships, it is difficult to universally categorize a particular word, phrase, sentence or paragraph as evil, wrong, bad, or problematic in isolation.  But, by looking at the context of an entire situation, we may diagnose and then treat a person suffering from emotional upset.  One indicator of the presence of an inappropriate emotion is one which has disturbed a man’s heart for an extended period of time.  We can get some guidance as to how long an emotion may linger before it is almost certainly problematic from the scriptures.  Ephesians 4:26  "Be angry, and do not sin": do not let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give place to the devil.  Thus, unresolved emotions and unforgiven offenses, which persist into the time of sleep, may cause problems.  The process of dreaming and sleep may allow reorganization of the brain to accept and integrate new stimuli with previously learned concepts.  This allows feelings of hurt, judgment, and irrational assumptions to become progressively more embedded as truthful perspectives about reality.  

g) REBT Thesis: People to a large degree consciously and unconsciously construct emotional difficulties such as self-blame, self-pity, clinical anger, hurt, guilt, shame, depression and anxiety, and behaviors and attitudes like procrastination, over-compulsiveness, avoidance, addiction and withdrawal by the means of their irrational and self-defeating thinking, emoting and behaving.

h) ABCD Sequence: The method of overcoming these unhealthy responses is to use the ABCD method of confronting this negative self-talk.  

i) A: Adversities or Activating events: these are the bad things that happen in life that cause us to feel bad about ourselves and life.  

ii) B: Beliefs: these are the principles that we believe are true about life and about ourselves.  

iii) C: Consequences: There are natural emotional responses to the Adversities of life which are natural, healthy, appropriate, and proper.  But, these natural emotional responses are amplified or diminished by our Beliefs.  Thus, our negative beliefs can cause excessively strong responses to adversities, which will then affect behavior and results in life.  This in turn validates our negative beliefs about self and life, and a new, lower level of defeated attitude and performance ensues.  A positive Belief system produces the exact opposite effect since a positive attitude drives us to look for the blessing and opportunity in each Adversity.  (Romans 8: 28  And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.)

iv) D: Dispute: the method of repairing the downward spiral of negative beliefs coloring the events is to refute, oppose, and discount the negative belief by showing that it inaccurately reflects reality.  Disputing the negative belief is helpful to the extent that I adopt new attitudes, beliefs, reasons, expectations, and behaviors.  A new experience of life fulfillment only results when I vigilantly choose this a new more positive set of life habits.  Of course the process is incremental, and any positive adopted change will help move in the direction of mental and emotional health.  An entire life habit cannot change in a moment, but new beliefs and behaviors should be implemented as habit as quickly as possible.  Be encouraged over making even small progress because change incorporated into any one area of life will cause ripples of change throughout one’s entire life.  In other words, be prepared to learn new ways of acting and thinking in your relationships, work, marriage, child rearing, friends, and church interactions.  Change can be uncomfortable, because it is unfamiliar, but remember it will produce a better in the future, and make all the effort worthwhile.

2) Rational thinking: Rationality is dependent upon the design and nature of the universe.  God made the creation to operate through mechanisms of cause and effect using agents to carry messages of force, using physical particles or waves that interact with other particles and transmit messages which instruct movement.  The force and movement-connection is clearly visible in the physical world of particles, but the entities that collide and transmit messaged in the world of thought and mind are more abstract.  And, given the possible connection with the spiritual world, it is more difficult to identify the entities that embody force and movement.  Nevertheless, we shall retain the model of entities colliding, and the production of movement to describe the process of thought, emotion, and behavior.  

a) Thought Entities: A single neuron firing may generate thoughts.  Likewise, a collection of neurons firing in a particular pattern may produce a thought, or be identified as a thought by introspection.  Though generation may include: 1) Physical stimuli may initiate the neural firing that results in a thought, 2) Other brain processes may trigger the neural-firing and thought-production, or 3) We may directly perceive spiritual messages, or spiritual forces may move the physical neural chemistry and produce a thought.  

b) Consciousness: God created the point of consciousness, identified as “I”, before our birth.  (Jeremiah 1:5  "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; Before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations.")  That created-spirit, the “I” point of consciousness, localizes to my body and perceives the external world through the sensory signals sent to the brain.  It may be able to perceive the creation directly, as evidence by reports of paranormal phenomena such as astral projection.  Perception of the internal world is produced by normal neurological activities of the brain, such as neurons, and patterns of neurons, firing.  The spirit perceives neural activity as thoughts.  Taking hallucinogenic drugs directly stimulates neural firing, resulting in changed thought patterns.  This evidence clearly indicates that thoughts are related to changes in patterns of neural activation.  

c) Memory: Wilbur Penfield, MD, reported that in 5% of patients undergoing local anesthesia, conscious, brain surgery have vivid, lifelike memories stimulated by an electric probe touching a small spot of the temporal lobe of the brain.  Other researchers found it impossible to eliminate the memory of a rat which had learned to run a maze by taking out various portions of the brain.  And, some people have eidetic memory, and are able to remember situations, lists, etc. in great detail.  It appears that memory is both localized and generalized, normally requires strong and/or repetitive stimulation, but some people have the ability to remember large amounts of information as an inborn trait.  These facts paint the picture of memory storage and recall as a largely brain-based.  Still, there may also be an extra-corporeal (beyond the body) aspect to the storage of memories.

d) Emotions: The limbic brain is a complex collection of brain structures deep below the outer cortex.  These structures are responsible for generating the neural patterns and stimulating the areas and pathways which we then perceive as emotions.  Emotions are felt as body sensations and cognitive patterns.  The body may use the various neural plexi such as the mesenteric nervous system, the various nervous ganglia, and the myocardial heart tissue as effectors or receptor tissue for the production of the thinking-feeling complex of emotions.  These peripheral tissues may be involved in responding to signals from the brain, and/or generating their own signals to produce the cognitive-kinesthetic perception and feeling of emotion.  Conscious and unconscious concepts underlie each emotion.  The emotional experience may be a primary pathway of communicating the message held by the deep reservoir of unconscious concepts.  Thus, the large body of memory and associated emotional responses may be integrated together and speak to the conscious mind through this unseen barometer of emotions.  Thus, when irrational feelings come up that interfere with healthy responses, it is important to trace them to their origins, explore the past for adverse events to: 1) Learn the lessons of past experiences, 2) Put those past experience in proper perspective, 3) Forgive the perpetrators by making the transaction fair, and by letting God handle the injustice and details that can’t be resolved, 4) Prepare against future similar problems by training mind, speech, and body to behave in new ways to more successfully meet similar situations.

3) The Spiritual-Psychological-Physical flow of Cause and Effect:

a) Spirit çè Thoughts çè Emotions çè Actions çè Consequences: This sequence of causative connection maps the general flow of human behavior from the most etheric spiritual force to the most concrete expression in the physical realm.  Each element of this sequence can initiate an upstream and downstream effect, and, the flow at any point can be stopped.  Intervention at any point

b) Spirit: We live in a spiritual world, which appears physical.  This world is not Heaven or Hell, but at a center point in the creation that stands between the two spiritual polarities.  The two kingdoms war for the allegiance of men’s minds.  The battle between good and evil in the spirit realm is the most significant aspect of the creation, other than the fact that God will eventually win, and the matured universe will be able to bask in the joy of His victory, plan, and love.  Space is thick with spirits, and virtually anything and everything in one’s environment or mind could be considered a spirit.  Just as the Word created all things on Earth, likewise, the spiritual hierarchy, both in Heaven and Hell, was created by God’s Son by the Word of His command.  The definition of evil and good is fuzzy from our perspective, because all things can be used for good or evil.  Thus, we must remain vigilant in our attunement to the leading of the Holy Spirit.  When we fail to act or hear properly, we must remain in faith that all the bad things that happen will be used to bring forth good fruit eventually.  The only difference between the physical and spiritual world is the layer in which we perceive it.  There are many layers of spirits, and spiritual forces, that operate on the human psyche; they all influence the formation of thoughts, to serve evil and good purposes.  Our job is to develop habits of thinking, and ways of framing life which are positive, Godlike, and Righteous.  As we do so, our neural circuitry that generates thoughts is more likely to be stimulated by positive spiritual forces.  

c) Thoughts: Thoughts are the objects of mental manipulation that populate the internal world.  Thoughts allow us to construct virtual worlds prior to building them in the physical.  They can be visual, verbal, and kinesthetic.  Visual thoughts carry the most detailed information; words symbolize objects, actions, and modifiers; feelings give a tone of desirable or aversive to the raw scenario of reality.  Thoughts can be used to reconstruct past events, present reality, and future possibilities.  All thoughts are based upon the present because that is where we live, but visions, lessons, and feelings about the past and future quickly blend with the present.  Educational experiences inform and establish patterns of reality within our mental constructs so we may know the actual structure and expected modes of movement and reaction of life’s objects.  Memories and imagination allow us to populate our mental landscape with people, objects, and give them rules of motion so we can model possible future realities.  

d) Emotions: Emotions are indicators of the pleasure or pain associated with each life experience.  Feelings can have more resolution than just pleasure or pain, but they give general indication of state rather than extremely specific and high definition data.  Each external world and internal world thought-scenario elicits a feeling.  Our feelings give us conscious feedback as to how our subconscious mind has computed and evaluated each scenario’s outcome.  

e) Actions: The movements we make in this world, whether it is legs, arms, speech, facial gestures, all reflect the outcome of our processing of the spiritual influence, thoughts, and emotions.  Our actions can be generated from any of these sources, in any sequence, and in proportion.  Ideally the processing is guided by rational beliefs, and understanding of how the creation really works.  Wisdom is the quality of judging accurately the ways of God, and courage is exercising the strength to act in those ways.

Consequences: When actions are taken, they influence the external world, and those consequences will automatically produce a reaction that returns to the originator.  Consequences are unavoidable from action, since every action will create a reaction.  The reaction may be pleasant or unpleasant, but there will be a reaction to every action.  Thus, choose your actions based on the effect you want, and the reaction you can tolerate.