1. MEBO RESEARCH Presentation
Cognitive Behavior
Therapy (CBT)

2. Commonalities between all Cognitive Behavior Approaches
Collaborative relationship between therapist & client
Premise psychological distress is largely a function of disturbance in cognitive processes
Focus on changing cognitions behaviors to produce desired changes

3. Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT)
Stresses thinking, judging, deciding, analyzing, and doing
Teaches that our emotions stem mainly from our beliefs, evaluations, interpretations, and reactions to life situations
Albert Ellis

4. Assumptions of REBT
People contribute to their own psychological problems & symptoms by way they interpret events & situations
Reorganization of one’s self-statements will result in reorganization of one’s behaviors
Operant conditioning, modeling & behavioral rehearsal applied to thinking & internal dialogue

5. View of Human Nature
We develop emotional & behavioral problems when we mistake simple preferences (love, approval, success) for dire needs
We are born with a potential for both rational and irrational thinking
We have the biological and cultural tendency for self- preservation and self- destruction
We learn and invent disturbing beliefs and keep ourselves disturbed through our self-talk
Humans are self-talking, self-evaluating & self- sustaining
We have the capacity to change our cognitive, emotive, and behavioral processes

6. Emotional Disturbance
We actively reinforce self- defeating beliefs by the processes of autosuggestion and self-repetition.
To recover from neurosis (personality disorder) we need to stop blaming ourselves and others
Blame is the core of emotional disturbance-so to recover stop blaming self & others
We escalate desires & preferences into dogmatic & absolutist “shoulds, musts, oughts, demands, commands- which are irrational beliefs which need to be changed

7. Irrational Beliefs Irrational ideas lead to self-defeating behavior
Some examples:
“I must have love or approval from all the significant people in my life.”
“I must perform important tasks competently and perfectly.”
“If I don’t get what I want, it’s terrible, and I can’t stand it.”

8. Disputing Intervention
Challenges irrational beliefs
Use principles of logic to destroy unrealistic, unverifiable hypotheses
Detect - detect the “shoulds”, “I musts” “awfulizing” “self-downing”
Debate - learn to logically & empirically question beliefs-to argue self out of them
Discriminate - irrational-self-defeating from rational-self-helping beliefs