COGNITIVE

RESTRUCTURING

Dr. F M Sahoo
XIM, Bhubaneswar
 Major Proponents

Ellis’s Rational Emotive Counselling

Beck’s Cognitive Approach

Basic Aim
To eliminate the wrongheaded beliefs of
disturbed people through a rational
examination of them
 Nature of People
▣ People are neither good or bad

▣ Yet humans may harbor irrational, self-defeating

beliefs; they need to be taught other wise

▣ Irrational thinking leads to self-hate, which

leads to self-destructive behaviour and
eventually to hatred of others, which in turn
causes others to act irrationally towards the
individual and thus to begin the cycle again.
 The Cycle
X engages in
irrational
thinking

Others react X hates himself /

irrationally towards X herself

X hates others X engages in self-

destructive behaviour
 The Principle
People hold tenaciously to their beliefs, rational or not.
Consequently the counsellor vigorously attacks the
irrational beliefs in an attempt to show employees how
illogically they think. Using the Socratic method of
questioning and disputing, the counsellor takes a verbally
active part in the early stages of counselling by identifying
and explaining the employees’ problems. If counsellor
guesses correctly, which often happens, they argue with
and persuade the employee to give up the erratic view and
replace with a new, essentially useful orientation.
Ellis suggests that, to the usual psychotherapeutic
technique of exploration, ventilation, and interruptions,
the rational counsellor adds techniques of confrontation,
indoctrination, and reeducation.
 Counselling Process
Step 1 : To show clients that they have incorporated
irrational beliefs

Step 2 : To demonstrate that irrational beliefs lead to

disturbed behaviour

Step 3 : To dispute irrational beliefs

Step 4 : To help client develop practical philosophy

of life
 Some Techniques

▣ Rational-emotive imagery

▣ Role playing

▣ Shame-attacking exercise

▣ Use of force and vigour

 Beck's Modification

Use of persuasion in the place of disputation

(confrontation)
 Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT)
▣ CBT is the most preferred mode in to-day’s
world.
▣ It includes:
1. Albert Ellis’s Rational Emotive Behaviour
Therapy (REBT)
2. Arron Beck and Judith Beck’s Cognitive
Therapy
3. Donald Meichenbaum’s CBT
 Common Features
▣ Premise that distress is basically the function of
cognitive disturbances
▣ Focus on changing cognitions to produce
desired behaviour
▣ A present-centered, time-limited focus
▣ A focus on targeted
 Ellis’s Rational Emotive Behaviour
Therapy
A (Activating Event) 🡪 B (Belief) 🡪 C (Emotional and
Behavioural
Consequences)

D (Disputing) 🡪 E (Effort)
Intervention

F (New Feeling)
 Donald Meichenbaum’s CBT
▣ Self-statements (inner speech) is the key
determinant
▣ Clients must notice how they think, feel and
behave
▣ Changing clients’ self-verbalizations is key
technique for counselling
▣ Steps for changing self-verbalizations
1. Self-observations: Clients’ learning how to observe
their own behaviour
(A kind of self-listening)
2. Starting a new internal dialogue
(Initiating positive internal verbalizations)
3. Learning new skills:
(Telling themselves new adaptive sentences)
 Stress Inoculation Training
▣ Expose clients to novelty
▣ Require clients to evaluate their anxiety level
▣ Teach clients to be aware of their anxiety