What is therapy like?
What therapy is like depends a lot on the type of therapy you seek.
It also depends on the therapist, you, and your aims in therapy.
Will you be someone who tends to like Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT)?
Chances are you will, if you answer yes to most of the following questions:
- Do you prefer efficiency?
- Are you more interested in the here and now and where you are going rather than exploring where you have been?
- Do you prefer self-reliance?
- Do you enjoy an exchange of ideas rather than having a therapist who mainly listens or tells you what to do?
- Do you believe in the scientific method?
- Do you want to develop a philosophy and methods you can apply to new problems in life that occur?
Probably the most central activities in REBT are:
- teamwork,
- identifying and disputing self-defeating (irrational) beliefs,
- reinforcing rational Beliefs and,
and
- carrying out active homework experiments that target self-defeating habit patterns and build new skills.
In REBT, we first get a picture of what you’d like to change. Then we try to figure out what current Beliefs and habits contribute to your being stuck.
Then we use a variety of techniques to help you change.
In REBT, we assume:
- self-defeating behavior is caused by something,
- no matter how problem behavior began originally, it is being maintained in the here and now,
and
- it will take work and practice to change and stay changed.
