Theories and Practices in Counselling
and Professional Ethics
Lecture 5
Cognitive Behavioral Approaches
Oct 3, 2024
People are disturbed not by things, but by the
view which they take of them.
~Epictetus
Behavioral Therapists’ viewpoints
“Introspection forms no essential part of
behavior therapy methods”
~John Watson
“Behavior is a function of its
consequences.’
~Skinner
Stimulus Organism Response
Stimulus Response
Common Attributes of CBT
Collaborative relationship between client
and therapist
Psychological distress is largely a function
of disturbances in cognitive process
Time-limited and educational treatment
focusing on specific target problems
Draw from a variety of cognitive and
behavioral strategies to bring about
change
Cognitive Behavioral Therapies
Albert Ellis’ Rational Emotive Behavior
Therapy (REBT)
Aaron T. Beck’s Cognitive Therapy (CT)
Albert Ellis
Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy
View of Human Nature
Humans as neither inherently good nor
inherently bad
Humans are born with a potential for both
rational (“straight”) and irrational (“crooked”)
thinking
Unfortunately humans have a strong tendency to
think in crooked, mistaken and irrational ways,
and this is the primary source of human misery.
REBT (Cont’d)
View of Emotional Disturbance
Humans learn irrational beliefs from significant
others during childhood
We create irrational dogmas and superstitions by
ourselves
We actively reinforce self-defeating beliefs by
autosuggestion and self-repetition
Blame is at the core of most emotional
disturbances
Examples of irrational ideas
It is an absolute necessity for an adult to have love
and approval from peers, family and friends
You must be unfailingly competent and almost
perfect in all you undertake
It is horrible when people and things are not the
way you would like them to be
You should feel fear or anxiety about anything that
is unknown, uncertain or potentially dangerous
The past has a lot to do with determining the
present
“I said many years ago, that masturbation
is good and delicious, but musterbation
(absolutistic thinking or dogma) is evil and
pernicious.” (Ellis, 1987)
Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy
Five bedrock components of therapy:
People dogmatically adhere to irrational ideas
and personal philosophies
These irrational ideas cause people great
distress and misery
These ideas can be boiled down to a few basic
categories
Therapists can find these irrational categories in
their clients’ reasoning
Therapists can teach clients how to give up
their misery-causing irrational beliefs.
A-B-C Theory of Personality
A B C
D E
A: Activating Event
B: Beliefs
C: Consequence (Emotional and Behavioral)
D: Disputing Intervention
E: Effective Philosophy
Disputing Process
Three components
1. Detecting
2. Debating
3. Discriminating
REBT Techniques
Cognitive Methods:
DisputingIrrational Beliefs
Doing Cognitive Homework
Changing one’s language
Using Humour
Emotive Techniques
Rational-Emotive Imagery
RolePlaying
Shame-Attacking Exercises
Aaron T Beck
Aaron Beck’s Cognitive Therapy
Individuals are exposed to a variety of specific
life events or situations, some of which trigger
automatic, maladaptive thoughts
These maladaptive thoughts are characterized
by their faultiness: they’re too narrow, too
broad, too extreme or simply inaccurate
Cognitive Therapy (cont’d)
An individual’s maladaptive thoughts are
usually derived from deeply held maladaptive
core beliefs
These automatic thoughts, core beliefs and
their associated emotional disturbances can
be modified via cognitive therapy- a
procedure that does not require exploration
of a client’s past.
Development of Cognitive Distortions
Biological and Genetic Dispositions
Life experiences
Accumulation of knowledge and
learning
Cognitive Distortions
Arbitrary Inference
Selective Abstraction
Personalization
Dichotomous or Polarized Thinking
Magnification and Minimization
Overgeneralization
Levels of cognitions
Automatic Thoughts
Intermediate beliefs
Core Beliefs
Schemas
Cognitive Therapy Techniques
Eliciting and rating cognitions
Identifiedsituation, time and date
Asked clients to identify and rate their automatic
thoughts and emotions
Determining the validity of cognitions
Guided discovery through skillful questioning and
experiments to test validity of their thoughts
Seeking alternative explanation (Changing
Cognitions)
Techniques to Elicit Automatic Thoughts
(Beck, 2011)
*What was going through your mind just that?
What do you guess you were thinking about?
Do you think you were thinking about ____ or
____? (therapist provides options)
Were you imaging something that might
happen or something that did happen?
What did this situation mean to you? Or say
about you?
Questioning Automatic Thoughts
(Beck, 2011)
1. What is the evidence?
What is the evidence that supports this idea?
What is the evidence against this idea?
2. Is there an alternative explanation?
3. What is the worst that could happen? Could I live
through it?
What is the best that could happen?
What is the most realistic outcome?
4. What is the effect of my believing the AT?
5. What could be the effect of changing my thinking?
6. What would I tell _____ if he/sher were in the same
situation?
Changing Cognitions
Activity Scheduling
Thought Stopping
Diversions
Self-talk
Relabeling and Reframing
Cost-benefit Analysis
Reflections…
What are the similarities and differences
between these 2 approaches?
Role of therapist
Classification of cognitions
Style in changing cognitions
