Rational and irrational beliefs in counselling psychology

Albert Ellis 223to feel anxious, depressed, and worthless. When they believe "Othersmust treat me considerately, lovingly and fairly" and when it appearsthat others do not follow this command, they tend to feel angry, enraged,and vindictive. When people believe "Life should be easy andconditions must provide me with what I need immediately and painlessly,"and when life is harder than what they demand, they oftenfeel intolerant of frustration, self-pity, and depression.Although I formulated the specific RET theory that musturbatorybeliefs significantly contribute to neurotic disturbance in the early1970s, as far as I know, no particular research has been done to specificallysee whether psychotherapy and counseling clients have demands,commands and insistences and whether these actually are correlatedwith their disturbed feelings and behaviors. Knowing I was togive this paper to the British Psychological Society, I decided to makea preliminary study checking on this hypothesis. I monitored 100 ofmy sessions with regular clients, 50 with males and 50 with females,to see what self-defeating feelings they brought up during these sessionsand what musturbatory beliefs they acknowledged as concomitantsof these beliefs.RESULTSThe main findings of my pilot study are shown in Table 1. The threemain self-defeating feelings that are commonly pinpointed duringRET sessions are (1) anger at other people (including hostility, rage,fury, vindictiveness, and violence); (2) anger, low frustration tolerance,and self-pity about discomfort or lack of comfortable conditions;and (3) self-downing or feelings of worthlessness accompanied by (a)inadequacy feelings and/or (b) dire needs for approval. When I checkedthe incidence of irrational musts and absolutist demands acknowledgedmy clients as concomitants of their disturbed feelings, I foundthat my sample of 100 acknowledged 77 musts as concomitants of angerat others, 101 musts as concomitants of discomfort-oriented anger,low frustration tolerance, and self-pity, and 195 musts associated withself-downing and feelings of worthlessness.This was only a little surprising because although I expected virtuallyall my regular clients to bring self-denigrating feelings to theirsessions, I did not predict that the great majority of them would alsobring up almost two anger and/or low frustration tolerance problemsin a single, randomly chosen session.