Ps251 - Albert Ellis

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ALBERT ELLIS:

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practiced classical psychoanalysis, but realized that no matter how much the patient gained, they never lost their symptoms & if they did lose a symptom, another replaced it.

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Rational Emotive Therapy (RET):

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• working to change a client's self-defeating beliefs and behaviors by demonstrating their irrationality, self-defeatism and rigidity
• people could understand their self-defeatedness in light of their core irrational beliefs and then develop more rational constructs

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Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT):

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• proposed that therapists help people adjust their thinking and behavior as the treatment for emotional and behavioral problems
• aims to influence dysfunctional emotions, behaviors and cognitions through a goal-oriented, systematic procedure

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Dialectic behavioral therapy (DBT):

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• treats persons with borderline personality disorder
• combines standard cognitive-behavioral techniques for emotion regulation and reality-testing with concepts of mindful awareness, distress tolerance, and acceptance largely derived from Buddhist meditative practice
• also effective in treating patients who represent varied symptoms and behaviors associated with spectrum mood disorders, including self-injury.

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irreverence:

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• not taking anything too seriously

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relationship between thoughts & feelings:

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• ethoughts & feelings are connected
• mental representations/cognitions come along with the feelings about them

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past vs. present cognitions:

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• past is not as important as present cognitions
• not as interested in what your history is but how it makes you think & feel now.

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musterbation:

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• saying MUST - we don't get upset by what the world does to us, we get upset by our false beliefs and believing things MUST be a certain way
• there is no reason why life should be fair or other people should be nice and that we can tolerate a great deal of deprivation
• Musterbation is malicious - all people act irrationally, some more than others

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self talk:

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• an external event A → leads to internal dialogue B

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8 Basic Concepts:

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1. People are born with potential to be both rational & irrational
2. People’s tendency to be irrational is frequently exacerbated (made worse) by culture & family upbringing; includes self damaging habits (ex: drinking), wishful thinking, and intolerance
3. Human beings tend to perceive, think, emote, & behave simultaneously (Ex: jumping to a conclusion)
4. Treatment has to be highly cognitive, active, & directive (homework assigning), & discipline oriented
5. Don’t have to have a warm relationship between the therapist & the client (not necessary for effective personality change) because people change to make therapist happy which isn’t healthy & shows dependence.
6. Approach has to be multimodal- need to use a lot of different techniques
7. All serious emotional problems directly stem from magical empirically invalidated thinking → Cognitive distortions. If you dispute these distortions with logical and empirical thinking, they can be eliminated or minimized
8. Insight does not often lead to major personality change - Hard work & practice is what will work; Insights maintain symptoms

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Theories of Personality:

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Physiological, social, and psychological aspects

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Physiological basis of personality:

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biologically we are naturally inclined to do X rather than Y; have certain propensities to do X & only with enormous counter effort does the individual radically change.

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social aspect of personality:

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emotional disturbance is frequently associated with people caring too much about what other people think; stems from their belief that they can only accept themselves if others think well of them; desire to be liked & if you’re not then you become anxious & depressed

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psychological aspect of personality:

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people needlessly upset themselves - an inappropriate irrational belief system is an example. People CAN stand noxious events, they just don’t like it; have indefinable terms like awful/weird; think whatever they don’t like should not exist. Irrational statement = “You made me angry.” Nobody can make you do anything. Then people blame themselves & label themselves as worthless because they can’t change the world

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irrational thoughts:

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people impose supernatural powers on themselves when saying “why is this happening to me,” as if they can control it, but you can’t control the universe. ‘Should’, ‘ought to’, ‘have to’, ‘must’ are all irrational words. You don’t HAVE to do anything; everything is optional or a result of the choices you made.

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why mental disturbance is not mental illness:

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if you recognize it you can interfere with it

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hypervigilence:

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become anxious about being anxious → vicious cycle - end up with a chain of disturbed reactions which are more painful than the original event itself; becomes a belief system/essence of your personality so you have to self talk positively & interrupt this thinking

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negative cognitive triad (Becks & Burns):

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depressed people have a negative views of the self, the world, and the future

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Burns’ 10 common cognitive distortions:

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1. all or nothing thinking: Look at things in absolutes or black & white categories.
2. overgeneralization: view a single negative event as a never ending pattern of defeat.
3. mental filter: dwell on negatives & ignore the positives. Negative takes over
4. disqualifying the positives: insisting that positive qualities/accomplishments don’t count. To fix this ask yourself “why would I fail?”
5. jumping to conclusions: conclude that things are bad without any definite evidence --> 2 types: a. mindreading- assume people are reacting negatively to you; b. fortune teller error- predict that things will turn out bad
6. magnifying or minimizing: blow things way out of proportion or shrink their importance. Realistic odds- get a realistic grasp on things
7. emotional reasoning: assume that your negative emotions reflect the way things really are; think that your emotions are how you are. Ex: “I feel like an idiot so I am an idiot.” also known as feeling thinking
8. Should statements: sometimes people try to motivate themselves with these statements but it doesn’t work bc you feel frustration & resentment & it means that you’ve already failed.
9. labeling & mislabeling: instead of saying “I made a mistake,” you say “I’m stupid.” You can counter this by accurately describing the situation specifically.
10. blame/personalization: see yourself as the cause of negative external events or blame others