Stress Counseling: A Rational Emotive Approach

Abstract

Stress Counseling: A Rational Emotive Approach Albert Ellis, Jack Gordon, Michael Neenan, and Stephen Palmer. New York: Springer Publishing Company, 1998, 200 pp. Softcover, $32.95 (U.S.), $36.80 (outside the U.S.). Website: www.springerpub.com Albert Ellis's vastly influential Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) has been around for some 40 years and is one of the best-known psychological theories: Hundreds of articles and books have described REBT, and virtually all counselors and psychologists trained in the United States have been exposed to the theory in courses, books, and videos. This state of affairs can constitute quite a hurdle for the aspiring REBT author: What ground is left to cover? While Stress Counseling casts REBT within a stress counseling framework, many of the ideas and techniques elaborated in this book can indeed be found in many other works such as A New Guide to Rational Living (Ellis & Harper, 1975) and The RET Resource Book for Practitioners (Bernard & Wolfe, 1993). Given the popularity of REBT, however, a book that details the theory should be judged not on the newness of the material but on how it succeeds in engaging and educating. On this score, Stress Counseling delivers. After a preface by Ellis, Stress Counseling begins with a chapter that describes the stress process from a REBT perspective. Human beings are said to create most of their own stress by what they tell themselves about events. Perception, beliefs, and ineffective behaviors are said to be the key elements in stress. In effect, then, stress is recast as "distress," the emotional consequence or "C" (in Ellis's "ABC" rubric) of holding irrational beliefs. This gives the authors an opportunity to spend most of the remainder of the book elaborating on counseling within the REBT framework. In this theory-as chapter 1 illustrates and as most of us know-it is not the environmental activating event (A) that causes the distressing emotional consequence (C), but rather our beliefs (B) about the event. Irrational beliefs lead to undue emotional distress and self-defeating or ineffective behaviors; rational beliefs lead to appropriate emotion and effective coping. Elevation of our preferences about ourselves, others, and the world into implicit "shoulds," "oughts," and "musts" is said to cause most human distress. For example, when the preference "I prefer that people like me and treat me fairly" becomes elevated into the irrational belief "People must like me and treat me well at all times or they're evil and deserving of punishment," unhealthy emotions and ineffective behaviors occur. Learning to recognize and dispute these irrational beliefs and to replace them with rational beliefs leads to emotional balance and effective action. Chapter 1 proceeds to detail specific emotions connected with the three major types of irrational beliefs, and ends with a rather lengthy case vignette that is used to illustrate various REBT principles and interventions. Although chapter 1 offers little or nothing "new," it offers a well-organized, lucid, and readable depiction of distress and REBT. Later chapters of Stress Counseling are equally clear and engaging in their depiction, respectively, of assessment; the beginning, middle, and final stages of stress counseling; additional REBT counseling techniques; brief psychotherapy with crisis intervention; "How to Deal with Difficult Clients;" and "Occupational Stress and Group Work." The book ends with a listing of organizations that provide additional training in REBT. Appendixes contain several very useful forms and techniques whose applications are detailed in the text. Stress Counseling is likely to be particularly useful to the practicing counselor or psychotherapist. For instance, the text depicts specific techniques or procedures such as "inference chaining" (p. 20), "the 13 steps of the counseling sequence" (p. 41), and the "money example" for teaching clients about REBT (p. …