11/10/2020
The revised ABC model of REBT
Alexandru Tiba, PhD, clinical psychologist.
In 1957, A. Ellis advanced the ABC cognitive model of emotional disturbance and its treatment (Ellis, 1957). This was the origin of Rational Emotive and Behavior Therapy (REBT), the oldest form of the cognitive behavior therapy (David, 2014). According to the ABC model, it is not the adversity (A; stress, trauma, life problems) that causes unhealthy feelings (C; depression, anxiety, anger, etc.), but our destructive cognition or irrational beliefs (B). There are over twenty years since Albert Ellis revised the ABC model (2001, 2002) and proposed a new ABC model: the revised ABC model of REBT. In the revised ABC model, A. Ellis has conceptualised Beliefs as a composite psychological phenomenon of thinking, feeling, and behaving. By this view, Beliefs are in the same time Thinking, Emoting, and Behaving. When people face adversities (A) they create their unhealthy emotions (C) because they react to A with destructive Beliefs (B), thinking they must obtain what they desire or otherwise it is awful and unbearable, in the same time feeling they need to change the adversity along with tension, anxiety, and agitation, and having compulsive impulses or urges of getting what they want.
In Ellis’ words it would be:
“In your regular life, you can see that most of your needless misery and rage are not directly caused by unfortunate Adversities or Activating Events (A’s) that occur in your life—such as financial losses, illnesses, and ecological disasters (e.g., hurricanes and heat waves) but are mainly caused by your destructive thoughts, feelings, and actions. You choose to add to unfortunate A’s your own B’s (Beliefs, Emotions, and Actions). Thus, you add to unfortunate financial reverses healthy Bs (“I don’t like this! I wish it weren’t so! What can I do to gain back the money I lost?”) And then you experience at C the Consequences of healthy caution, sorrow, and regret. Fine!” (Ellis, 2005; http://www.rebtnetwork.org/ask/nov05.html)
This way of thinking of Beliefs as Thinking-Emoting-Behaving has been consistently advanced by A. Ellis’ in his descriptions of the ABC model (e.g., Ellis, 2001, 2002). Yet the model was not adopted in practice. Probably this happened because A. Ellis did not differentiate between thinking, feelings, and actions at B and thinking, feeling, and actions at C. Moreover, the revised ABC model contrasts the standard ABC model in significant ways. In the standard ABC model Beliefs are pure cognitive acts; and feelings, urges, compulsions, or physiological activations are part of complex emotional reactions (C). And last but not least, at that time, the ideas proposed by Ellis have not received substantiated support from science.
Recently, advancements from cognitive and affective sciences have revealed that some types of cognition use embodied representations being at the same time thinking, feeling, and action (Tiba, 2020, Chapter 2). This perspective strongly supports the construction of composite IBs advocated by Ellis in the revised ABC model of REBT. It provides further clarification about which are the thinking, feeling, and action components of Beliefs (Tiba & Manea, 2018). Nonetheless, it helps clarify and separate the feelings and actions at B from feelings and actions at C (Tiba, 2020, Chapter 6). Thus, practitioners who want to use the ABC model of REBT proposed by Ellis may now find actionable ways and scientific grounds for using the revised ABC model in their practice.
According to the embodied simulation perspective of IBs (Tiba, 2020, Chapter 6; Tiba & Manea, 2018): (1) demands about how things should or must be are represented by simulations of craving states in response to adversities, (2) when craving states are consciously activated, demands are accompanied by affective feelings of craving, physiological activations toward the object of craving, and compulsive impulses/urges of getting the object of desire, (3) depending on the focus of attention during the psychological experience of IBs, IBs can be experienced as feelings of craving (when the focus is of feelings and body states), thinking (when the focus is of how strong one believes that he must have) or action (when the focus is of the action tendencies) (Tiba, 2020, Chapter 6).
Implications for the ABC model (Tiba, 2020):
-embodied IBs can be in several activation states: inactivated, partially activated, and fully activated;
-IBs determine C (unhealthy feelings) only when they are embodied in the craving states (states of high activation of anticipatory motivational system) or in other words, when they have partially of fully activated embodiments;
-changing embodied IBs can be done by disputing and changing the demanding thinking, feelings of craving, physiological activation, and compulsive action tendencies of changing A (and controlling the desired situation).
-there are many cognitive, meta-cognitive, biological, and environmental factors that result in state IBs.
Educating the client in the revised ABC model
Although several ways of explaining the revised ABC model of REBT and resulting interventions are described elsewhere (Tiba, 2020, Chapter 7), I will illustrate three ways of presentation:
The “Strong Belief” method
“…from this example, you realized that are not the adversities (A) that cause us misery such as disturbed emotions (C) but our destructive reactions. Especially we create our own misery and unhealthy feelings (anxiety, depression or anger) when we have Strong Beliefs that adversities should not be the way they are because, more than thinking that in reality they should be the way we want, we also (1) feel they need to be that way craving for controlling them and (2) we have urges to change them the way they should be. In turn, to create healthy feelings (E) we have to dispute our Strong Beliefs by disputing the idea that things should be the way we want them to be and that otherwise is awful, intolerable, us (life or others) being of no worth; feel desire instead of craving; and let go the urges to control the adversity (D)”.
In the Strong Belief Method, the therapist explains the Beliefs as Strong Beliefs in which people are not only convinced the things should be the way they desire, but that they have feelings of craving for them to be that way, along with tension, agitation, and anxiety and they have the urge to change them. As a result, to change these Strong Beliefs, the clients have to change their conviction in the belief, but also feelings of craving and the urges to change the A. Techniques at each component of Strong Beliefs are described elsewhere (Tiba, 2020, Chapter 7).
The “Craving Reaction” method
“…from this example, you realized that are not the adversities (A) that cause us misery such as disturbed emotions (C), but our destructive reactions. Especially we create our own misery and unhealthy feelings (anxiety, depression, or anger, etc.) when we crave for instead of just wanting what’s important for us (1) saying that things should be the way we want and are awful and intolerable if they are not, (2) feeling we cannot be without having what we desire, and (3) having the urge to getting them back. In turn, to create healthy feelings (E) we have to stop craving for what we want and keep with our desires by disputing the idea that things should be the way we want them to be and that otherwise is awful, intolerable, us (life or others) being of no worth; feel desire instead of craving and let go the urges to control the adversity (D)”.
The craving method does not teach the Beliefs part, but focuses on components of craving: (1) thinking, (2) feelings and physiological activation, and (3) action tendencies.
The focus on the change process
The therapist may educate the client in the standard ABC model (DiGiuseppe et al. 2014), but at the step of changing the Beliefs, the therapist may introduce three ways of changing beliefs:
“What do you know about changing IBs? (client responds).
There are three ways of changing IBs:
(1) One way is changing our thinking-that is to analyse the beliefs and see if they reflect the reality, are logic or they help us. If the belief is not logical, supported by facts or does not help us we need to find a different way of looking at the situation-a new helpful belief.
(2) The second way is to change how we feel and let us feel in a different way according to the new belief.
(3) And third way is to change our action tendencies. It is hard to change a belief if we still tend to act according to it.
References:
David, D. (2014). Rational emotive Behavior Therapy. Oxford Bibliographies.
David, D., Kangas, M., Schnur, J. B., & Montgomery, G. H. (2004). REBT depression manual; Managing depression using rational emotive behavior therapy. Babes-Bolyai University (BBU), Romania.
DiGiuseppe, R., Doyle, K. A., Dryden, W., & Bacx, W. (2014). A practioner’s guide to rational emotive behavior therapy. Oxford University Press.
Ellis, A. (1957). Rational psychotherapy and individual psychology. Journal of Individual Psychology 13, 38–44.
Ellis, A. (2001). Feeling better, getting better, staying better: Profound self-help therapy for your emotions. Impact Publishers.
Ellis, A. (2002). Overcoming resistance: A rational emotive behavior therapy integrated approach (2nd ed.). Springer Publishing Co.
Tiba, A., & Manea, L. (2018). The embodied simulation account of cognition in rational emotive behavior therapy. New Ideas in Psychology, 48, 12–20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.newideapsych.2017.08.003
Tiba A. (2020). Embodying Hot Cognition (Chapter 2). In: Embodied Hot Cognitive Vulnerability to Emotional Disorders. Springer, Cham.
Tiba A. (2020). The Treatment of Embodied Rigid Appraisals: Restructuring Embodied Irrational Beliefs (Chapter 6). In: Embodied Hot Cognitive Vulnerability to Emotional Disorders. Springer, Cham.
Tiba A. (2020). An Embodied Simulation Model of Irrational Beliefs: Embodied Irrational Beliefs (Chapter 7). In: Embodied Hot Cognitive Vulnerability to Emotional Disorders. Springer, Cham
