Diagnostic stage
At this stage, the main task of the counselor is to make a preliminary analysis and diagnosis of the client's problems according to ABC theory. By talking with the client, he can find out the specific manifestations of his emotional distress and behavioral discomfort (C) and the induced events corresponding to these reactions (A), and preliminarily analyze the unreasonable beliefs between them (B).
Among them, the event A, emotional and behavioral reaction C encountered by the helper are relatively easy to find, while the unreasonable belief B of the helper is difficult to find. The main characteristics of unreasonable beliefs of help seekers are absolute requirements, excessive generalization and extremely bad. Absolute requirement refers to the belief that something will or will not happen based on one's own wishes. Therefore, when something happens contrary to its absolute requirements, individuals will find it difficult to accept and adapt, thus easily falling into emotional distress. Overgeneralization is an unreasonable way of thinking, just like judging a book by its cover. It is an individual's unreasonable evaluation of himself or others, and its typical feature is to evaluate the overall value of himself or others by one or several things. Extremely bad is an irrational result, and imagining and inferring the possible consequences of things is very terrible, very bad, and even catastrophic. When people stick to this idea and encounter something he thinks is terrible, they will fall into extremely negative emotional experience. According to the above characteristics, the consultant can find, discover and accurately grasp the unreasonable ideas of the helper.
This is actually a process of finding a helper problem ABC. In this step, the counselor should pay attention to whether the helper has secondary symptoms, that is, the helper's problem may not be simply manifested as an ABC. Some help seekers may have many questions, and one question covers several other questions. For example, a college student becomes depressed after failing an exam (C 1), and his unreasonable belief may be "I should be an excellent student, and this failure is too bad" (B 1). However, his bad mood (C 1) is likely to become a new trigger event (A2), which makes him have another unreasonable belief that "I must always be a happy person and never be so worried as I am now" (B2), which leads to his worse emotional reaction (C2).
Therefore, consultants should prioritize and find out the problems that helpers want to solve most. On this basis, it is also necessary to negotiate with customers to determine the consulting objectives. This goal generally includes both emotional and behavioral aspects, usually through treatment to alleviate or eliminate emotional distress and behavioral disorders.
Finally, the counselor should also explain the ABC theory of reasonable emotional therapy to clients, so that clients can accept this theory and explain their own problems. The consultant should make the client realize the relationship between A, B and C, and let him analyze his own problems preliminarily. Although this work does not necessarily involve the specific unreasonable beliefs of the seeker, it is the basis of the following consultation stage. If the seeker does not believe that the root of his problems lies in his views and beliefs about things, then it will be difficult to consult in the future. At this stage, psychological counselors should pay attention to the current problems of visitors. If they pay too much attention to visitors' past experiences, they may hinder rational emotional therapy.
Understanding stage
The main task is to help customers understand the principles of rational emotional therapy, so that customers can truly understand and realize:
First, it is not external events that cause his emotional distress, but his attitude, viewpoint, evaluation and other cognitive contents. It is his beliefs that lead to the consequences of emotions and behaviors, not the events themselves.
Second, changing emotional distress is not changing external events, but changing cognition, and then changing emotions by changing cognition. Only by changing unreasonable beliefs can their existing symptoms be alleviated or eliminated.
Third, the helper may think that the reason of emotional distress has nothing to do with him, and the psychological counselor should help the helper understand. The cognition that causes emotional distress is precisely the helper's own cognition, so the cause of emotional distress is related to the helper himself, so they are responsible for their emotional and behavioral reactions.
The task of the consultant is not strictly different from the previous stage, but it is more in-depth in finding and confirming the unreasonable beliefs of the helpers; Moreover, through further explanation and proof of the theory, the helper can understand at a deeper level that his emotional problems are not caused by his early life experiences, but by his unreasonable beliefs now, so he should be responsible for his own problems. The work at this stage can be divided into the following two aspects:
First of all, counselors should further clarify the unreasonable beliefs of help seekers. This is not a simple task, because unreasonable beliefs do not exist independently, and they are often mixed with reasonable beliefs and are not easy to be detected. For example, being ridiculed or accused is an unpleasant thing, and no one wants it to happen. This is a reasonable idea, and the resulting unpleasant emotions are also appropriate. But at the same time, other beliefs, such as "everyone should like me and agree with everything I do, otherwise I can't stand it", may be mixed in, which is an unreasonable concept and will lead to inappropriate negative emotional reactions. Therefore, psychological counselors should distinguish between reasonable beliefs and unreasonable beliefs of help seekers.
In addition, when confirming unreasonable beliefs, counselors should pay attention to distinguish them from the superficial views of the helpers. For example, a mother is often angry because her son doesn't like studying and is naughty. Some people may think that "my son doesn't listen to me" is the belief that causes her to be angry and angry. But in fact, this is just a superficial idea. The really unreasonable belief may be an absolute requirement such as "My son must study hard and listen to me". Therefore, when looking for the unreasonable beliefs of help seekers, we must grasp the typical characteristics, that is, absolute requirements, excessive generalization and extremely bad, and link them with the negative emotions and behavioral reactions of help seekers.
Metzby's Five Criteria for Distinguishing Reasonable Beliefs from Unreasonable Beliefs;
① Most reasonable beliefs are based on some known objective facts; Unreasonable beliefs contain more subjective guesses;
2. Reasonable beliefs can enable people to protect themselves and live happily, while unreasonable beliefs can cause emotional distress;
(3) Reasonable beliefs can make people achieve their goals faster; Unreasonable beliefs make it difficult for people to achieve realistic goals and worry;
4. Reasonable beliefs can keep people away from other people's troubles; Unreasonable beliefs can hardly do this;
⑤ Reasonable beliefs make people stop or quickly eliminate emotional conflicts; Unreasonable beliefs will make emotional distress last for a long time and cause inappropriate reactions. [2]?
In addition, when confirming unreasonable beliefs, we should pay attention to distinguish them from the superficial views of the helpers on the problem. For example, there is a mother who is often angry because her son doesn't like studying and is naughty. Some people may think that "my son doesn't listen to me" is her belief that leads to anger and anger. But in fact, this is just a superficial idea. The really unreasonable concept may be an absolute requirement such as "My son must study hard and listen to me". Therefore, when looking for the unreasonable beliefs of help seekers, we must grasp the typical characteristics, that is, absolute requirements, general generalization, and extremely bad, and link them with the emotional and behavioral reactions that help seekers do not adapt to.
On the other hand, the work at this stage is to let the help seekers know more about their own problems and the relationship between existing problems and their unreasonable beliefs. It is difficult for customers to really understand only by empty theoretical explanations. Counselors should combine specific cases, from concrete to general, from perceptual to rational, and repeatedly experience the true feelings of visitors. In this step, the consultant can't be eager for success. Sometimes people who ask for help accept ABC theory on the surface and seem to have reached an understanding, but this is probably an illusion. Because this may be because the seekers want their problems to be solved in time, they are more or less eager to please the consultants and hope to get the "magic bullet" as soon as possible. This shows that they have not realized their responsibility for the problem and still hope to rely on external forces to solve the problem. In order to test whether the helper really understands, the counselor can guide the helper to analyze his own problems and let him give some examples to illustrate the root causes of his problems.
The fact that the above-mentioned help seekers find it difficult to understand their own problems is actually the resistance they often encounter in reasonable emotional therapy. This kind of resistance may also be manifested in other aspects, which makes the consultant feel that the consultation is stagnant and in a rigid situation. The reasons for this impedance may come from two aspects: consultants and helpers. On the one hand, for consultants, if they take too much responsibility for the problems of the help seekers, fail to grasp the core issues, or talk too much, so that the help seekers are limited to passivity, it will cause resistance in consultation; On the other hand, the clients pay too much attention to their emotions or induced events, fail to realize what they can do now or feel that they have no ability to change the status quo, which is also the main reason that hinders consultation. Therefore, counselors should pay special attention to these factors that hinder the consultation process and strive to overcome their own problems; Guide help seekers to get rid of emotional troubles and past experiences, and face up to unreasonable beliefs that cause these problems.
Repair stage
The work at this stage is the most important part of rational emotional therapy. The main task of psychological counselors is to use various skills to make clients correct or give up their original irrational ideas and replace them with reasonable beliefs, thus alleviating or eliminating symptoms.
The so-called repair is the process of working through people. This term is the same as the name in psychoanalytic therapy, but it has different meanings. In rational emotional therapy, correction is not achieved through the common techniques of psychoanalysis, such as emotional venting, dream research and physical symptoms. Rational emotional therapy does not encourage emotional catharsis, thinking that it will strengthen the problems of help seekers and make them fall into their own emotional troubles and unable to face up to their own problems. Moreover, rational emotional therapy also limits the connection with the past experience of the helper to a certain extent, and does not examine the influence of these experiences on his current situation.
If the work in the first two stages is explanatory and analytical, then the work in this stage is technical and methodological. Counselors should use various methods and skills to correct and change the unreasonable beliefs of the clients. This is the core content of the whole rational emotional therapy.
Reasonable emotional therapy steps
Common techniques of rational emotional therapy;
(1), arguing with unreasonable beliefs [2]?
This is the most commonly used and characteristic method of rational emotional therapy, which comes from Socrates' dialectics, the so-called "midwifery" debate technology. Socrates' method is to let you speak your own point of view, then further reason according to your point of view, and finally lead to fallacies, so that you can realize the unreasonable places in your previous thoughts and take the initiative to correct them. This method of debate refers to challenging and questioning unreasonable beliefs and assumptions about oneself, others and the surrounding world from the perspective of scientific rationality, so as to shake one's own beliefs.
This method is mainly carried out through the active questioning of consultants. Counselors' questions have obvious characteristics of challenge and doubt, and their contents closely revolve around the irrational characteristics of the beliefs of the helpers.
For example, in view of an unreasonable belief in the absolute requirements of helpers, psychological counselors can directly ask the following questions: "What evidence shows that you must succeed (or be appreciated by others)?" "What reason do others have to be friendly to you?" "Why do things have to develop according to your will? If not, what will happen? " etc
The corresponding question to the unreasonable belief of the helper can be: "How do you prove yourself to be a useless person?" "What do you mean worthless?" "If you fail in this matter and you think you are a worthless person, what does your previous successful experience show you to be?" "Can you guarantee that everyone will not make mistakes in everything? If they can't do this, what reason is there to show that they are hopeless? " Wait; In view of the extremely bad unreasonable belief, the corresponding question can be: "How bad is this thing? Can you come up with an objective quantity to explain? " "If this terrible thing happens, will the world perish? Will you die because of this? " "If you think it is extremely bad, I can give ten times worse examples. What will happen to you if you encounter these things? " "How can you prove that you really can't stand it?" Wait for questions.
Psychological counselors can use the "golden rule" to refute the absolute demands of help seekers on others and the surrounding environment. The so-called golden rule refers to the rational concept of "don't do to others what you don't want others to do to you". Some people who ask for help often use this law wrongly. Their ideas may be unreasonable and absolute requirements such as "what I do to others, others must do to me" or "others must like me and accept me", but they can't do it themselves. Because when such an absolute requirement is difficult to achieve, he tends to be angry and hostile to others-this has actually violated the golden rule and constituted the "anti-golden rule." Therefore, once the seeker accepts the golden rule, he will soon find that his absolute requirements for others or the environment are unreasonable.
Generally speaking, help seekers will not simply give up their beliefs, they will look for various reasons to defend themselves. This requires psychological counselors to keep a clear, objective and rational mind at all times, buckle one ring at a time according to the answers of the helpers, firmly grasp the unreasonable contents in the answers of the helpers, and make the other party feel that the defense of their beliefs becomes unreasonable through repeated debates.
However, consultants are not satisfied with this. Because his role is not only a debater, but also an authoritative information provider and a guide to a reasonable life. That is to say, through debate, not only should the helper realize that his beliefs are unreasonable, but he should also distinguish between reasonable beliefs and unreasonable beliefs and help him learn to replace those unreasonable beliefs with reasonable beliefs. When the client has a certain understanding of these beliefs, the psychological counselor should give affirmation and encouragement in time to make him realize that even if unexpected things really happen, they can face these realities with reasonable beliefs.
It should be noted that there will also be various obstacles in the debate, making it difficult to make progress or ineffective. The reasons for the boycott also lie in two aspects: the consultant and the helper. First of all, if the consultant fails to combine the specific problems of the other party, or fails to grasp the core of the problem, or even directly puts forward his own irrationality in order to win the favor of the helper, or asks too tactfully and implicitly, then he will make the debate superficial. Therefore, consultants should have clear goals for the issues to be debated, and be targeted; At the same time, he must maintain an absolutely objective position, and be tit-for-tat and merciless to the unreasonable beliefs of those who ask for help, instead of tolerating them for fear of being rejected by the other party.
On the other hand, the reason for resistance lies in the helper himself. The main performance is that his arguments and doubts about the counselor will include "If I change so much, then I am not me" or "If I change those necessary and just requirements, I will become mediocre and have no motivation to move forward."
In view of this situation, the psychological counselor should point out to the helper that changing his unreasonable concept is not to eliminate his motivation. Everyone has a desire to succeed, but if you ask yourself to succeed, it is not easy to achieve your goal. Reasonable ideas will make it easier to achieve your goal.
Debating with unreasonable beliefs is a highly active and instructive cognitive change technology, which requires not only the counselor to actively ask and question the unreasonable beliefs held by the help-seekers, but also the counselor to guide or guide the help-seekers to actively think about these concepts, so as to make them feel deeply about their own problems. Doing so will make the debate more effective than passively accepting the sermon from the counselor.
Debate about the operation of midwifery;
Reasoning is based on the belief of the helper. In the process of reasoning, there will be fallacies because of unreasonable beliefs, and the helper will inevitably make corrections. After many revisions, the helper will hold reasonable beliefs, and reasonable beliefs will not cause negative emotions, and the helper will get rid of emotional troubles.
The debate on midwifery has its basic forms, generally from "as you say …" to "therefore …" and then to "therefore …", that is, the so-called "three-stage" inference, until it produces fallacies and contradictions. Psychological counselors use contradictions to make visitors have to admit contradictions, force visitors to change unreasonable beliefs and finally establish reasonable beliefs.
(2) Reasonable emotional imagination technology
The emotional distress of the helper is sometimes the trouble that he spreads to his own mind. He often spreads unreasonable beliefs to himself, exaggerates all kinds of failures in his mind and produces inappropriate emotional and behavioral reactions.
Reasonable emotional imagination technology is a method to help help help seekers stop this spread, and its specific steps can be divided into the following three steps:
1, let the helper enter the situation where he once had an inappropriate emotional reaction or felt the most unbearable, and let him experience the strong emotional reaction in this situation.
2. Help the helper to change this inappropriate emotional experience and let him experience a moderate emotional response. This is usually achieved by changing the incorrect understanding of the emotional experience of the helper.
3. stop imagining. Let the helper say what he thinks, how and how his mood has changed, what he has changed and what he has learned.
Psychological counselors should promptly strengthen the positive changes in the mood and concept of the clients, and consolidate the new emotional response they have obtained.
The above process is carried out by imagining an unexpected situation. In addition, there is a more positive method, that is, let the helped person imagine a situation in which the helped person can feel and act according to his own wishes. This can help him to have a positive mood and goal.
(3) homework
Cognitive homework is also a common method of rational emotional therapy. In fact, it is an extension of the debate between the counselor and the client after treatment, which is to let the client argue with his unreasonable beliefs. There are two main forms: RET self-help form and rational self-analysis report (RSA).
RET self-help table is to let the helper write event a and result c first; Then find out B that suits your own situation from more than a dozen common unreasonable beliefs listed in the table, or write other unreasonable beliefs not listed in the table; Ask the helpers to analyze B one by one, find out the reasonable beliefs that can replace those B, and fill in the corresponding columns; Finally, the helper should fill in the new emotions and behaviors he has acquired. Filling in the RET self-help form is actually a process of helping the helper to do ABCDE work by himself.
Rational self-analysis (RSA) is basically similar to RET self-help table, which also requires the client to write ABCDE entries in the form of a report, but it does not have the strict and standardized steps as RET self-help table, but the focus of the report should be the debate between D and unreasonable beliefs.
D: refute b, e: new ideas
(4) Other methods
Although rational emotional therapy is a highly cognitive therapy, it also emphasizes the integration of cognition, emotion and behavior. Therefore, in reasonable emotional therapy, we often see some emotional and behavioral treatment methods and skills.
The reasonable emotional imagination technology mentioned above is an emotional method. In addition, the methods often used in emotion also include the complete acceptance and tolerance of the helper. This shows that no matter how absurd and unreasonable the emotions and behaviors of visitors are, psychological counselors should understand and accept them, acknowledge and respect their existence as a person, rather than hate and exclude them.
In addition, counselors should encourage help-seekers to accept themselves, that is, to accept their own good aspects and their own bad aspects. Of course, this acceptance does not mean that the counselor can tolerate or appease the unreasonable emotions and behaviors of the helper, but only shows respect for the helper as a person who may make mistakes.
Although there are great differences between rational emotional therapy and help-seeker-centered therapy, they agree on unconditionally accepting help-seekers.
In addition to emotional methods, rational emotional therapy has also accepted many theoretical viewpoints of social learning, and applied some behavioral techniques in the treatment, but these techniques are not only aimed at the superficial symptoms of help seekers, but their purpose is to further eradicate unreasonable beliefs and establish behaviors with reasonable concepts and stable emotions. The commonly used method is self-management program, which is based on the principle of conditioned reflex and requires helpers to change their inappropriate behaviors with self-reward and self-punishment.
Another method is called "stay here", that is, to encourage those who ask for help to stay in bad situations to fight against evasive behavior and terrible thoughts.
These methods can be carried out in the form of homework. The purpose is to give help seekers an opportunity to take risks and try new things, improve bad behavior habits according to the principle of behavioral learning, and thus completely change the unreasonable concept of help seekers. In addition to the above methods, behavioral techniques in rational emotional therapy also include relaxation training and systematic desensitization.
Re-education stage
The main task of psychological counselors at this stage is to consolidate the effects of the previous stages of treatment, help visitors get rid of the original unreasonable beliefs and ways of thinking, and strengthen new concepts, so that visitors can still use what they have learned to deal with problems in life after consultation, so as to better adapt to real life.
At this stage, the methods and skills that counselors can use can still include the contents of the previous stage, such as continuing to use the skills of arguing with unreasonable beliefs, the methods of reasonable emotional imagination and various cognitive, emotional and behavioral assignments.
In addition, psychological counselors can also apply skills training to help clients learn more skills and improve their ability to deal with various problems, which is also helpful to change their unreasonable beliefs and strengthen new and reasonable concepts. This kind of training includes self-confidence training, relaxation training, problem-solving training and social skills training. The first two skills are mainly to improve the ability of help seekers to cope with anxiety; The latter two mainly help seekers to improve their ability to seek the optimal solution of the problem and their social communication ability.
The main purpose of this stage of treatment is to rebuild, that is, to help the help-seekers to re-establish a new coping model in terms of cognitive style, thinking process, emotion and behavior performance, and to reduce their tendency to appear emotional distress and bad behavior in their later lives.
A theory and method of psychotherapy initiated by the famous American psychologist Ellis in 1950s has also been translated into "rational emotional therapy" in many works. As the name implies, this method aims to change the irrational concept of the helper through pure rational analysis and logical speculation, thus helping him solve emotional and behavioral problems.