Ellis Irrational Belief Theory

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founder of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), discovered that people’s beliefs strongly affected their emotional functioning. In particular certain irrational beliefs made people feel depressed, anxious or angry and led to self-defeating behaviors.

When Ellis presented his theory in the mid-1950’s (Ellis, 1962), the role of cognition in emotional disturbance had not been fully addressed by the field of psychology. Ellis developed REB theory and therapy in reaction to what he saw as the inadequate techniques of psychoanalysis and behaviorism. He attributed the deficiency in the two camps’ techniques to their conceptualization of personality and emotional disturbance. Ellis felt that by ignoring the role thinking played in emotional disturbance both psychoanalytic and behavior theory failed …show more content…

So a belief is a thought with an emotional component (conviction) and a factual component (truth, actuality or validity). Beliefs can be either positive or negative. Having a negative belief is not necessarily a bad thing; however, when one believes in something that is false, a negative belief tends to become what Ellis called an “irrational” belief. Irrational beliefs are not friendly to happiness and contentment and are definitely unhelpful for getting one’s basic desires for love and approval, comfort and achievement or success met.

Core Irrational Beliefs

Demandingness or Absolutism – inflexible, dogmatic, extreme beliefs signaled by words such as should, must, have to, and need to (e.g., “I should not be in pain” or “I should be able to do what I used to do”). This is not the kind of should as in “I should go to the store and get some milk,” but rather a should with a capital “S”, a demand.
Demand for Love and Approval from nearly everyone one finds important
Demand for Success or Achievement in things one finds important
Demand for Comfort or nearly no frustration or

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