Dealing with Emotional Problems Using Rational-Emotive Cognitive Behaviour Therapy: A Practitioner's Guide

313 Pages·2011·1.72 MB·English

In this practical companion to the Client’s
Dealing with
Guide, Windy Dryden draws on rational-
emotive cognitive behaviour therapy (RECBT)
Emotional – a form of CBT that focuses on challenging and
changing the irrational beliefs that largely
determine emotional and behavioural issues –
Problems Using
to encourage people to deal with their emotional
problems.
Rational-
This Practitioner’s Guide includes all of the
Emotive information presented in the Client’s Guide
with the addition of helpful hints and tips for
the therapist, making it straightforward to use in
Cognitive the consulting room with no need for further
references.
Behaviour
Dealing with Emotional Problems using Rational-
Emotive Cognitive Behaviour Therapy: A Practi-
Therapy: A
tioner’s Guide will allow the therapist to work
through and help the client learn to deal with
Practitioner’s their problems from an RECBT perspective,
covering:
Guide
anxiety
depression
Also available, Dealing with guilt
Emotional Problems Using shame
Rational-Emotive Cognitive hurt
Behaviour Therapy: A unhealthy anger
Client’s Guide. unhealthy jealousy
unhealthy envy.
This practical workbook presents each emotion
in a similar way, allowing the reader to compare
and contrast common and distinctive features of
each problem. It will be essential reading for any
professional using RECBT with their client.
Windy Dryden is Professor of Psychothera-
peutic Studies at Goldsmiths, University of
London.
Dealing with
Emotional
Problems Using
Rational-
Emotive
Cognitive
Behaviour
A Practitioner’s Guide
Therapy
WINDY DRYDEN
First published 2012 by Routledge
27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex BN3 2FA
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business
� 2012 Windy Dryden
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Dryden, Windy.
Dealing with emotional problems using rational-emotive cognitive-
behaviour therapy : a practitioner’s guide / Windy Dryden.
p. ; cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-415-67764-6 (pbk.)
1. Rational emotive behavior therapy. 2. Cognitive therapy. I. Title.
[DNLM: 1. Cognitive Therapy. 2. Emotions. 3. Psychotherapy,
Rational-Emotive. WM 425.5.C6]
RC489.R3D78632 2012
616.89'1425–dc23
2011013056
ISBN: 978-0-415-67764-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-15763-3 (ebk)
Typeset in Stone Serif by Garfield Morgan, Swansea, West Glamorgan
Paperback cover design by Andrew Ward
Printed by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
Contents
Preface vi
1 Emotional problems: foundations and healthy alternatives 1
2 Dealing with anxiety 22
3 Dealing with depression 56
4 Dealing with guilt 87
5 Dealing with shame 117
6 Dealing with hurt 148
7 Dealing with unhealthy anger 176
8 Dealing with unhealthy jealousy 207
9 Dealing with unhealthy envy 237
References 267
Appendix 1 268
Appendix 2 273
Appendix 3 275
Appendix 4 277
Appendix 5 279
Appendix 6 281
Appendix 7 289
Index 299
Preface
I have written this book as a practitioner’s companion to Dealing with
Emotional Problems with RECBT: A Client’s Guide. In that book, I deal with
the eight emotional problems that clients routinely seek help for and
show them how they can deal with them.
There are three ways I could have written this Practitioner’s Guide. First, I
could have written totally separate Client and Practitioner Guides. In taking
this approach I would have to make frequent page references to the
Client’s Guide in the Practitioner’s Guide. This means that you would have
to have both guides open when working with a client and go backwards
and forwards from book to book. While there would be little repetition
within each book, you would waste much valuable therapy time con-
sulting both texts at the same time.
The second approach I could have taken is to write totally separate
Client and Practitioner Guides but to include them in one volume. Again in
taking this approach I would have to make frequent page references to the
Client’s Guide in the Practitioner’s Guide. This means that you would have
to go backwards and forwards from guide to guide within a single volume.
While again there would be little repetition within each part of the book,
you would again waste much valuable therapy time moving from one part
to another.
The third approach I could have taken and which, in fact, I decided to
take involves having a separate Client’s Guide and reproducing this guide
in the Practitioner’s Guide. In taking this tack, I present the material so that
you have access to it when and where you need it. You do not, therefore,
have to go from book to book or from one part of a single book to the
other part. While this necessitates repetition of salient material, I believe
that this is a price worth paying to facilitate use by practitioners.
In the present book, then, I reproduce the Client’s Guide and at salient
points, I discuss issues that may come up in therapy when you use the
Client’s Guide with your clients and show how best you can address these
issues. The material that I have written for practitioners in this book is in
a different typeface to the Client’s Guide so you can easily find it.
In the Client’s Guide (which is reproduced in this book), I begin with
outlining the foundations of emotional problems from an RECBT
Preface vii
perspective. I then devote one chapter to each of the eight emotional
problems and use a similar structure in each chapter. I start by helping
clients to understand the emotional problem in question, discuss what
they disturb themselves about when they experience the emotion, and
outline what largely determines the emotion and how they tend to act
and think when they experience it. I show clients how to deal with the
emotional problem in question. I help them to identify the themes in
the emotion, detail their behaviour and thinking when they experience it
before encouraging them to set appropriate emotional, behavioural and
thinking goals. Then, I help them to identify, challenge and change the
rigid and extreme beliefs that account for their emotional problems and
to develop the flexible and non-extreme beliefs that will enable them
to achieve their goals. Next, I show clients what they need to do to
strengthen their conviction in their rational beliefs so that they become
less prone to the emotional problem. I then deal with a number of
additional issues relevant to the emotional problem in question before
finally outlining a number of world views that underpin each emotional
problem and its healthy alternative.
The common chapter structure that I employ in Chapters 2–9 of
the Client’s Guide is to ensure that all relevant issues are discussed for
each emotional problem. It is unlikely that clients will be prone to
all eight emotional problems, but they may be prone to two or three. The
view of emotional problems that I am taking in this book states that while
there are common features among the eight emotions, there are also
features that are distinctive to each emotion. This is reflected in Chapters
2–9 of the Client’s Guide and they will need to bear this point in mind
when they read these chapters or a selection of them.
The same is the case in this Practitioner’s Guide. There are common and
distinctive features that are relevant when helping clients deal with the
eight emotional problems. To help you use this Practitioner’s Guide, I
produce common features in each of the eight chapters and the distinc-
tive features where relevant. I have decided to organise this book in this
way to help you get the most out of the relevant chapter when working
with a client’s chosen emotional problem. While this means that certain
issues are repeated throughout the book, as I mentioned above, it also
means that the relevant material is there when and where you need to
consult it.
Windy Dryden
London and Eastbourne
1
Emotional problems: foundations and
healthy alternatives
In this book, I am going to discuss some common emotional problems and
show you how to deal with them. The book is structured as a workbook so
that you can implement the skills that I teach you in a step-by-step manner.
It is worthwhile stressing to your clients that the order of these
steps is indicative and not set in stone. Over time and with
increased experience, different clients will use the steps in different
orders.
In this opening chapter, I am going to cover some important material that
I regard as foundations to your understanding of the eight emotional
problems that I discuss in this book and their healthy alternatives.
WHAT ARE THE EIGHT EMOTIONAL PROBLEMS?
I have been practising in the field of counselling and psychotherapy since
1975 and have worked in a variety of different settings. In that time, I have
seen many people suffering from one or more of the eight emotional
problems that I cover in this book. They are:
anxiety
depression
guilt
shame
hurt
unhealthy anger
unhealthy jealousy
unhealthy envy.
You will note that I have put the adjective ‘unhealthy’ in front of anger,
jealousy and envy. I have done this to distinguish the unhealthy version of
2 Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner’s guide
the emotion with its healthy version. I will discuss healthy alternatives to
the eight emotional problems in the next section.
Unfortunately, we don’t have agreed language for emotional prob-
lems. It is better to use the terms with which your clients resonate
than to impose on them terms such as those above that are used
in the RECBT literature. When you have agreed a term for an
emotional problem with a client, make a clear note of it in the
client’s file.
HEALTHY ALTERNATIVES TO THE EIGHT
EMOTIONAL PROBLEMS
1
Adversity is unfortunately a fact of life. None of us can say that we have
lived a life untouched by adversity. An adversity is a negative event. So
when you are looking for a healthy alternative to an emotional problem in
the face of adversity, it is not realistic for you to select an emotion that is
positive or neutral.
Problems with positive emotions as healthy
alternatives to the emotional problems
If you want to feel a positive emotion about an adversity, you will have to
convince yourself that it is good that the adversity happened. Now, I
concede that adversities do have some positive features, but they are
largely negative in nature. As such, the only way you are going to convince
yourself that it is a good thing that an adversity happened is to lie to
yourself and to believe your lie. As you can see, this is unlikely to work in
the longer term and is, thus, not a good strategy.
Problems with neutral emotions as healthy
alternatives to the emotional problems
It is also not realistic to have a neutral feeling about an adversity. If you
want such a neutral response, you will have to convince yourself that it
1 Throughout this book, I will refer to events where you don’t get what you want, or get
what you don’t want, as ‘adversities’.
Emotional problems 3
does not matter to you that the adversity happened. However, that won’t
work since it does matter to you that the adversity happened. Quite
properly, you would have preferred that the adversity did not happen. So
again the only way you are going to convince yourself that it doesn’t matter
to you that the adversity happened is to lie to yourself and to find your lie
convincing. This, again, is unlikely to work in the longer term and is, thus,
not a good strategy.
Problems with living in an emotional vacuum as a
healthy alternative to the emotional problems
If a positive or neutral emotional response to an adversity is ruled out as a
healthy alternative to an emotional problem, what is left? You could say that
when an adversity happens, you don’t want to feel the emotional problem
that you felt.
Harry regularly experiences anxiety about going to see his tutor because he
thinks she is going to criticise his work. When asked what he wanted to feel
instead, Harry replied: ‘I don’t want to be anxious about the possibility of my
tutor criticising my work’.
The problem with this approach is that we don’t tend to live in an emo-
tional vacuum when an adversity has happened or we think that it is likely to
happen. Thus, it matters to Harry that his tutor does not criticise him. We
experience emotions in areas of life that matter to us. Since it matters to
Harry that his tutor does not criticise him, he is going to experience an
emotion about this prospect. Don’t forget that we are looking for a healthy
alternative to the emotional problem of anxiety in Harry’s case, and to all
eight emotional problems in general.
Problems with reducing the intensity of emotional
problems as healthy alternatives to these emotional
problems
People often say when they are asked to nominate a healthy alternative to an
emotional problem that they want to feel a less intense version of the emo-
tional problem. Applying this to our example, when asked what he wants to
feel instead of anxiety about seeing his tutor, Harry says that he wants to feel
less anxious. Now the problem with having a less intense version of an