Analysis Of Rational Cognitive Behavior Therapy

While we all desire to reach or release our full potential, we often face deep internal struggles with perfectionism, excessive self-doubt, lack of persistence, self-depreciation and procrastination. Here's a Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy approach that may help.

Published earlier this year in a special issue of the Journal of Rational-Emotive Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, Michael Neenan has provided a succinct guide to Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) for coaches. His goal was ". . . to increase their [the coaches'] knowledge of psychological factors that interfere with as well as promote change" (p. 53). Given the assumption that coaches don't have an extensive psychological background, there's a lot here for everyone interested

So much time can be wasted through procrastination that you might believe you have several lives to lead instead of only one. People who become increasingly frustrated about their procrastination habits fear that they are wasting their lives yet avoid doing what would help them to make more productive use of their time. This is what Knaus (1998, p. 7) calls the fundamental procrastination paradox: ‘When we try to buy time by procrastinating, we condemn ourselves to running out of time.'" (p. 54).

The cost of procrastination - "an extremely disabling psychological condition"
Neenan's clinical perspective documents the costs of procrastination; costs that have been clearly documented in the blog to date as well. He writes,

"Chronic procrastination can have high costs: It has been associated with depression, guilt, low exam grades, anxiety, neuroticism, irrational thinking, cheating and low self-esteem. As a result, procrastination probably accounts for much of why many never realize their full potential and so it can be an extremely disabling psychological condition" (p. 55)

The ABC's of REBT
Neenan notes that all procrastinators suffer one similarity - a clear-cut emotional problem. In order to release this emotion, clients need to identify the irrational beliefs that sustain it through the ABCs of REBT. In Neenan's