Introduction for Clients to REBT - CBT treatment sessions

The ABCDE model explained:
The most important instrument for self-care that I hope you will learn during your therapy is the ABCDE model.

The model is a simplified version of human cognition (i.e. thoughts and beliefs) aiming to help people to assess their target problems carefully, investigate their thoughts and beliefs about their target problems and disputes any found irrational thoughts and beliefs, as they are assumed to be the main causes of emotional and behavioural disfunctions in human beings.

After analysing the problem and disputing the irrational cognition, the model will lead you to create an alternate rational cognition that can help you to develop healthy emotions and behaviour, which are most likely to help you in activating your goals in life.

What do these letters ABCDE stand for?

*A = activating events
Usually you, as any other human, will become aware that something is going wrong in your life when you are not achieving your goals.

Basically speaking, most human beings, if not all, will have two major goals to acheive in their lifetime. The first is to survive as long as possible and the second is to be happy as much as possible, as being alive is hardly enough for most people. Yet, there are many events in life that can and will block one or both of those basic goals at different stages in our life. Unfortunately, some of these events will be so severe that they are likely to activate our irrational cognition, which in turn is likely to lead us into emotional and behavioural disturbances.

The event that will activate the irrationality and at what stage will differ greatly between one individual and another. For example, not all people will develop irrational cognition and depression if or when they have lost their job. Why? Because we all have different thresholds, which are mainly based on our biological make-up, life experiences, levels of education and so on. Therefor, knowing your A's will help you to know where your threshold lies.

*B = Beliefs
Beliefs is about what you believe about the interpretation that you gave to the bad events that happened for you at A. For example, you may have lost your job and in order to make sense of this event you may interpret it as an act against you. Now you are left with the choice between believing that your interpretation is true or untrue.

Basically, when it comes to beliefs, we need to know if our beliefs are rational (rBs) or irrational (iBs). Usually rBs are flexible, realistic and undemanding, whereas iBs are rigid, unrealistic and demanding.

For example, if you are holding rBs about losing your job, you may say something like this to yourself:
"It is really unfair that I had to lose my job, but the world is an unfair place to be and I have had the misfortune to experience that kind of mishap. It's very bad to lose my job at this stage of my life, yet I can be grateful that I did not experience something far worse than that. It's hard to go out there and look for a new job, but I am overall a capable person and I can find a way of bringing back an income and comfort into my life, even if it is not an easy task".