REBT is built on the premise that our emotional and behavioral disturbances are driven by fundamental, dysfunctional beliefs we hold about ourselves, other people, and life in general. To create lasting emotional and behavioral change, REBT uses a 5-step process called the ABCDE model. The goal is to identify your unique dysfunctional attitudes and replace them with healthier alternatives. Here you will be introduced to the model and how to use it.
To start, take a piece of paper and create five sections labeled as follows:
A: Activating event
B: Beliefs
C: Consequences
D: Disputation
E: Effective alternative
Leave a few lines in between each section so you can fill them in.
Although the worksheet is ordered as presented, the actual process does not follow that exact linear order. We start with the A, move to the C, go to the B, then the D, and finally the E. As you go through the process, you will see why we prefer this structure.
The first step is to identify a situation or problem that you want to address. This is the A, or the Activating Event. It can be about anything that is bothering you now, in the past, or in the future. The main skill to learn here is to clearly identify and describe the problem you wish to address. As Charles Kettering, a leading engineer and inventor of his time, put it: "A problem well stated is half-solved."
Some helpful ideas to complete this step:
Describe the what, when, where, and who. Leave out the why.
Describe the event as a witness might describe it in a courtroom.
Describe the event as if you were a security camera recording it.
The second step is to skip the B for now and focus on the behavioral and emotional consequences associated with the event described in A.
This can be a little confusing, especially if you’re not accustomed to separating your emotions from your opinions. Many people will say something like, “I feel I was mistreated,” as if it were a feeling, when in fact it is an opinion that results in an emotion that needs to be named. Corrected, it might look something like this: “I think I was mistreated” followed by the actual emotion: “I felt angry.”
Some people have never learned to label their emotions. A list of the more common disturbing emotions includes:
Anger / Rage
Hurt
Sadness
Anxiety
Shame
Guilt
Embarrassment
When describing behaviors, you want to include the actions directly associated with what happened, as well as what you wanted to do but ultimately did not (such as wanting to walk out, scream, or hide).
Have you ever said to yourself something like, "What were you thinking?" Here’s where we get to that. It's where we fill in the space between A and C.
There are two kinds of beliefs. The first ones are about why you think something happened. They represent your opinions as well as your evaluation of the situation being processed:
"I got fired because my boss is a jerk."
"He didn’t answer my text because he’s totally self-absorbed."
We will refer to these as level 1 beliefs.
The second type of beliefs has to do with more fundamental rules about how we and others should behave or not behave, and about how life should or should not be. We will refer to these as level 2, or fundamental attitudes. The way to identify these is to look for explicit or implicit use of words like should, must, have to, need to, and so forth. In addition, these rules often imply extreme consequences if they’re broken.
Consider a sentence like:
"I must not fail the test. If I do, it would mean I’m an idiot."
The first part is the rule, and the second part is the consequence.
Some other examples:
"She must not leave me. If she does, I’ll never be happy."
"People should respect me. If they don’t, I have to do something about it."
"I cannot be fired. If I am, I couldn't stand it."
The D part of the process stands for disputation. What we want to do here is examine the information that we supplied in the B part of the process. We want to take a look, especially at the second type of beliefs—the fundamental ones—and see how they hold up under scrutiny. The purpose of this is to come to a conclusion as to the relevancy of these beliefs and whether or not we should keep them. For instance, a rule of gravity is probably one that we may not want to mess with. On the other hand, a rule about ourselves which demands perfection is one that we may want to take a second look at.
Disputation is done by putting together a series of relevant questions. Here are some of the basic ones:
The Functional Question: How well is this principle working out for me? Is the idea that I must be perfect in everything I do, and that if I don't, I am a complete idiot, helping me get along in life?
The Logical Question: How well does this idea hold up logically? Does it follow that I must be perfect in everything I do, or is there any evidence to suggest that we are not perfect after all? If we were who we think we should be, we wouldn't be who we are.
The Advisory Question: Is this what you would advise someone who wants guidance? If a 12-year-old came to ask you for advice about how to live, would you advise him to believe that he must be perfect in everything he does, and that if he screws up, it would prove that he is completely useless?
Once we complete our examination of the core beliefs identified in B, we move on to consider effective alternatives. Instead of the shoulds and musts, we look for preferences. Instead of it has to be, we think it would be nice if it were that way, but it doesn't have to be.
So, a fundamental attitude that demands perfection—like "I must do well in everything I do"—might be considered as a preference or a desire:
"I would love to do well in everything I do and I want to strive towards always doing well, but I know that this is not always going to happen. When it doesn't, it just means that I'm a human being acting like human beings act."
Once you come up with a credible effective alternative, you may want to go ahead and use the same disputation questions to see how valid and useful the alternative is. In other words:
If you were to hold on to the idea that you prefer to always get it right, but that you don't absolutely have to, and that if you don't, the world keeps going—is that idea going to help you function better in life?
Does it make sense? Does it hold logically to believe that I want to do better in life, but I don't have to, and if I make a mistake it just means I'm a human being?
Finally, would you advise a 12-year-old to hold that idea—that it is great to strive for perfection, but that more often than not you're not going to find it, and that it's okay to make mistakes because that's what humans do, try to learn from them, and move on?
Wrapping Up Your Practice
Once you have completed the worksheet, take a moment and ask yourself: What would it be like if I were to hold these new effective alternatives instead of the old ones? How would I handle difficult situations like the ones I was confronted with?
As you start realizing that you're better off navigating the world as it is and not as it should be, you may surprise yourself by finding that increasingly, your emotional and behavioral reactions make more sense than they used to.
Now, in order to put this into practice, you're going to need to set aside some time—maybe 10 to 15 minutes a day. Think about events that have bothered you in the past, maybe the ones in which you engaged in behaviors that you sort of wish you had never engaged in, or where you said some things that you wish you hadn't said, and start with those. Then, start taking a few minutes every day to look back on your day and see how it went when you were able to apply the effective alternative.