In rational emotional therapy, counselors are mentors, persuaders, analysts, authoritative information providers and debaters against the irrational beliefs of help seekers. He plays a proactive role.
The treatment process of this therapy is generally divided into four stages:
1, psychological diagnosis.
This is the initial stage of treatment. First of all, the therapist should establish a good working relationship with patients and help them build up their self-confidence. Secondly, find out all kinds of problems that patients care about, classify them according to the nature of these problems and the emotional response of patients to these problems, and start with the most urgent problems to be solved.
Step 2 be knowledgeable
This stage is mainly to help patients realize what their inappropriate emotional and behavioral manifestations or symptoms are, and the causes of these symptoms are all self-caused. We should find out the ideological or philosophical roots of these symptoms, that is, find out their irrational beliefs.
3. Through work
At this stage, the therapist mainly uses the method of debate to shake the patient's irrational beliefs. Use exaggerated or challenging questions to ask the patient to answer what evidence or theory he has to hold different views on event A, and so on.
Through repeated debates, the patient can't defend his irrational beliefs, which makes him really realize that his irrational beliefs are unrealistic, illogical and unfounded. We began to distinguish rational belief from irrational belief, and replaced irrational belief with rational belief.
This stage is the most important stage of this therapy, and other cognitive and behavioral therapies can be used in the treatment. For example, give patients cognitive homework (read articles about this therapy, or write a report refuting their irrational beliefs, etc. ), or relaxation therapy to enhance the therapeutic effect.
4. Re-education.
It is also the last stage of treatment. In order to further help patients get rid of the old way of thinking and irrational beliefs, it is necessary to explore whether there are other irrational beliefs unrelated to this symptom and argue with them, so that patients can learn and gradually develop methods to argue with irrational beliefs.
The habit of rational thinking, so as to establish new emotions, such as problem-solving training and social skills training, in order to consolidate this new goal.