Describe How the Cognitive Approach Has Been Applied to Rational Emotive Therapy

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Describe how the cognitive approach has been applied to RET The cognitive approach believes that we are information processors. Our thinking and the way we process and interpret events can affect our behaviour particularly our mood. Therefore rational emotional therapy is linked to the approach because its attempts to change the way an individual interprets and thinks about certain events. Ret was devised by albert ellis in the 1950’s. it tries to tackle mustabatory thinking (the thinking that you must be good at everything and like by everyone) by trying to make the patient think more rationally about situations. He came up with the ABCDE model which stands for: A the activating event, B which is the irrational belief e.g. I must be liked, C the unproductive consequence, D which stands for disputing the belief in which there are 3 kinds: logical disputing e.g. does this way of thinking make sense?, empirical disputing e.g. where is proof that this belief is accurate? And pragmatic disputing e.g. how is this belief likely to help me? E stands for effect of disputing which is normally to change self-defeating beliefs into more rational beliefs e.g. moving from catastrophising (no one will ever like me) to a more rational interpretation (my friend was probably thinking about something else and didn’t see me). This in turn helps the patient to feel better, and eventually become more self-accepting. Another part of RET is unconditional positive regard which is basically making the patient feel valued as a human no matter what they say or do or event how they

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