RATIONAL EMOTIVE BEHAVIOR THERAPY
What is REBT all About?
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) is a goal-oriented, interactive approach to therapy that focuses on how your thoughts, beliefs, and expectations shape how you feel and how you act.
Instead of only exploring your past or labeling your emotions, REBT looks closely at the specific patterns of thinking that are keeping you stuck. It’s less about why something happened, and more about what you’re telling yourself about it now and how that’s affecting you.
Beliefs Drive Emotions and Behavior
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy is built on a clear idea: it’s not the event itself that causes your emotional response; it’s what you believe about the event that creates how you feel.
Something happens, and your mind assigns meaning to it, often in the form of automatic, underlying beliefs. Those beliefs trigger the emotional reaction, not the situation itself. For example, it’s not someone canceling plans that makes you feel rejected. It’s the belief that “If they cancel, it means I don’t matter” that leads to that feeling.
This process happens fast, and often without your awareness. You might feel anxious, angry, ashamed, or hopeless without immediately realizing what you’ve told yourself to get there. REBT helps you slow that down and make those internal beliefs visible so you can actually work with them.
The focus isn’t just on surface-level thoughts, but on the deeper rules, demands, and expectations you may be carrying: ideas like “I have to succeed to be worth anything,” or “People should treat me the way I treat them.” These kinds of beliefs, even if unspoken, drive how you feel and behave.
In REBT, we identify and challenge the beliefs that are rigid, extreme, or unrealistic, and work to replace them with ones that are more flexible and grounded in reality. The goal isn’t just to feel better, it’s to develop a mindset that helps you create a life that’s more free, resilient and reflective of the authentic you.
It’s Direct and Solution-Focused
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy gives clarity and direction to the work we do together. It helps us stay focused on your particular priority while you are learning how to make your beliefs, emotions and actions align with your values, goals and reality.
Each session builds on what came before and is shaped by what’s happened in between, outside of therapy, in your real life.
You’ll leave each session with something to reflect on or apply, so therapy isn’t just insightful, it’s actionable.
Why I Use It
I use Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy because it works. It’s evidence-based, highly effective, and designed to create lasting change by getting to the real underlying issues.
It avoids the common pitfall of talk therapy, where people feel better temporarily just by venting but never learn how to interrupt the patterns that keep showing up in their lives. REBT gives you the tools to do something about it.
It’s practical, direct, and grounded in reality; not in vague aspirations or forced positivity. It helps you see what’s driving your emotional responses and teaches you how to respond in ways that work better.
It’s also efficient. The work goes deep quickly without becoming overwhelming or unstructured. You won’t just understand yourself better, you’ll know how to think and respond differently in the moments that matter.
Who This Approach Is For
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy is especially helpful if you’re looking for more than just a space to talk. You want incisive understanding that goes beyond awareness and gives you a way to do something with it.
It’s a good fit if you’ve found yourself stuck in the same patterns, even though you know better. If you tend to overthink, hold yourself to harsh standards or self-sabotage, this kind of therapy helps you get clear on what’s driving those responses, and learn how to respond in ways that work better.
It’s also for people who value a focused, honest approach. REBT isn’t about staying in reflection mode. It’s all about identifying what’s not working, challenging it, and doing something different.
