Rational-Emotional Behaviour Therapy (REBT) is a psychotherapeutic direction based on the sensitivity to the fact that a person experiencing psychological discomfort relies on irrational judgments in his thoughts and actions. The elimination of these judgments is predominantly portable in psychological intervention. The main task of REBT is to change emotions as a result of influencing the content of thoughts. Emotions in a given situation depend on how a person interprets the event. Thus, not external events and people cause negative feelings in a person, but thoughts about these events. As it is mentioned in the course’s presentation of chapter six, REBT uses many valuable techniques and techniques: rational, irrational, and emotional. Unconscious attitudes arise in traumatic situations and cause a person to experience negative feelings. And this is what spoils the mood, lowers self-esteem, and ultimately changes behavior. Therapy is aimed at preventing these behavioral problems of patients. REBT helps to understand how a healthy and normal reaction to psychological trauma becomes debilitating and protracted.
The REBT work is practically performed in three stages. The first one is the definition and awareness of irrational attitudes. The second is the confrontation with these attitudes. The last is forming and consolidating new rational (flexible) attitudes. The reconstruction of irrational attitudes occurs at the cognitive level, the level of imagination, and the level of behavior – direct action. REBT has been successfully used in the treatment of various disorders: neurotic, depressive, anxiety and personality disorders. Therefore, the main task of Rational-Emotive-Behavioral Therapy is not to remove patients’ emotions but to make these feelings adaptive, such that these will help to react to various situations more adequately.