Assignment 4 Brief therapy - Essay Example

or “How can the therapist provide what is needed to get the patient unstuck?” (Budman, Hoyt & Friedman, 1992). Among the approaches presented, I am partial to the cognitive behavioral techniques. In this paper, two of the known ones shall be discussed, namely Ellis’ Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy pioneered by Aaron Beck. It is believed that much can be said about how a person reacts to a situation. In times of successes and positive moments, most people celebrate with joyous reactions.

However, in troubled times, people react with different shades of negative emotions. Some spring back right away and take positive action while others dwell in doom and even fall into a dark depressive state. For these people, how do they find their way back to the light? Ellis’ Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) is considered to be the forerunner of Cognitive Behavior therapies. Its basic hypothesis is that our emotions stem mainly from our beliefs, evaluations, interpretations and reactions to life situations.

Ellis believes that we have an inborn tendency towards growth and actualization but we often sabotage our movement toward growth due to self-defeating patterns we have learned. Through therapeutic processes, the client learns skills to isolate and dispute their irrational views which were mostly self-constructed and maintained by self-indoctrination. REBT helps clients replace such irrational views with rational and constructive ones, thus resulting in more productive change in behavior and reactions to situations.

Although Ellis believes that therapists maintain unconditional regard for the client, he also warns against giving too much warmth to the point of coddling, as it encourages clients’ dependence for approval from the therapist. Maturity is expected of the client as great