Transcription
Hello everybody. I am Dr. Steve Johnson and I want to welcome you all to today's um webinar in uh and that is entitled are we disputing the wrong thing inferences beliefs and clinical patterns in REBT.
First I would like to thank all of you who are attending especially those who are members and who have joined the channel that your your support um by showing up and participating and even financially is greatly appreciated and allows me to uh look at aspects of RBT and integration with other models that I typically don't have time to to do. So I thank you. Thank you so much.
So, let's get on it. Um, when um I like really like to focus on um what you think about something that sounds technical but is actually clinically decisive. The difference between inferences and uh beliefs. Most of us trained in REBT are very very comfortable identifying irrational or what some of us call unhelpful beliefs. We look for demandingness and awfulizing or catastrophizing, frustration, intolerance and global negative rating about the self, others life, world, and as Wendy Dryden says even about our own psychological processes. And that sounds good. That is essential uh to do within within our model that is a very very powerful very very powerful model but over the years I've noticed something that I think is easy to miss even for those of us who are seasoned clinicians who have practiced maybe for decades and I'd like to dig into that something that we sometimes we correctly dispute the belief but we fail fail to notice the what I would call recurring inference that is predictably associated with that particular belief and across domains of the client's life whether that's professional spiritual interpersonal um economic uh educational whatever the domains of life they may uh cross those domains. When that happens, we remain event focused um and we risk missing a more complete view of the client or the person, maybe even ourselves. So, let's uh slow this down together and dig a little more deeply.
When a client says something like, "She didn't respond to my email. She probably thinks I'm utterly incompetent." Pause for a moment. What is that within the RBT framework? Well, that's clearly an inference. An inference is an interpretation of an event or a situation or a state of affairs. It's a prediction and it's a conclusion about uh reality. All very important things. Now, if the client says if she thinks I'm incompetent, then that's horrible. That's terrible. I can't stand that. She mustn't think that way about me. Well, now we've moved from the inference into belief territory. And REBTt is very very clear about this distinction because it's an important important distinction. Inferences are interpretations about what is happening. Beliefs are evaluations about what must or must not be with respect to what has happened.
But here's the refinement that I want to focus on. And I think it's a very important refinement. It's not a deviation from REBT. We're still holding to the REBT model, the ABC model within REBT. Nothing of that has changed. It is a refinement to help us to become a bit more efficient and helpful. In clinical practice, certain inferences and certain beliefs become linked. Not once, not even occasionally, but habitually those are linked. Let's consider a brief case so that we can kind of see it in action here. Okay. Um, a client says, "My supervisor didn't respond to my email. She probably thinks I'm incompetent. And if she thinks that, that's awful. I I can't I can't stand being seen or evaluated in that way." Pause. What's the inference? She thinks I'm incompetent. What are the beliefs? She must not think that. It would be terrible, horrible, awful. I couldn't stand it if she thinks that way. It proves that I am utterly incompetent. Now, here's the question I want you to consider. If we dispute the belief, and we should, we are we finished or does this client perhaps habitually generate this inference in ambiguous situations? Think about that.
Let's widen the lens. Friend doesn't respond quickly. They're upset with me. Partner seems quiet. They're withdrawing. Colleague critiques a draft. They don't respect me. Different events, same inference pattern, same belief pairings, same emotional consequence or responses. That's not episodic. That's a life theme and behavioral response tied to that life theme. If we treat each activating event as isolated, we practice what I call reactive REBT event, belief, dispute, relief. But the person, none of us is a series of disconnected events. The person organizes experience in pattern ways. And if we only address the belief in that moment, we may calm the storm, I guess, but we haven't addressed the climate. That distinction matters clinically. It matters sizably because otherwise therapy becomes repetitive. It becomes you know we keep disputing similar beliefs triggered by similar inferences across domains of life whatever those domains happen to be.
Now this refinement is consistent with what we know about the brain and the functions of the brain. The brain is a pattern detection system. It economizes, it generalizes, it builds shortcuts for efficient behavior. If interrupting an if interpreting ambiguity as rejection once helped someone and it may have helped may have helped them to prepare or protect themselves that inference belief paired pairing may become automates automatic efficient fast unfortunately rigid And the brain prefers patterns. But psychological health requires us to be flexible. So when we see recurring inference, beliefs, pairings across domains, we're not just seeing irrationality or unhelpfulness. We are seeing neural efficiency that has become unfortunately maladapted. Our task as therapists is not merely to dispute the belief. It's to help the client see that pattern of the connection of the inference with the belief that becomes rigid and invariant and dysfunctional.
So what changes in practice? What changes in practice? Instead of asking only what is the irrational or unhelpful belief here in this situation, we also ask what kind of inference does this client habitually generate? And further is this inference habitually connected with the same belief across multiple areas of life? You see what we're doing? about what I'm focusing on here. When we do that, therapy shifts and it shifts in a very important way. It moves from event focused correction to pattern level intervention shifts from event focus to pattern recognizing intervention. we begin to address the situation, the individual in an interpretive style, not just momentary disturbance. This mean this is remains fully consistent with REBT. We are still targeting rigid beliefs, but we're doing so with pattern awareness across domains of life.
I'd invite you to think about a current case you may be dealing with. Just take a minute. Is there a recurring inference your client tends to make? Disapproval, abandonment, disrespect, failure, humiliation, and does that inference tend to activate a particular belief theme? If so, you're looking at more than a single ABC. You're looking at a pattern system. We're taking a wider lens in helping the client in that way. And that system is clinically important. Classic REBT gives us extremely powerful tools. It's a huge advancement in psychotherapy. This refinement that I'm talking about today, which many of us practice, simply invites us to widen the lens. If we only work at the level of isolated events, we practice kind of what I call reactive REBT. It's not bad, but we could go more deeply. If we examine recurring inference belief pairings that are habitual across domains, we begin practicing what I think of as more structural REBT. And that shift can deepen our work quite considerably. I'd encourage you in your next session with a client to listen not only for the belief but for the recurring inference that precedes that belief. Much more awareness we may discover a life theme organizing far more than you initially may have thought.
Thank you for thinking this through with me and I hope you have a great day and I'd love to hear from you. Email me, u message me, whatever. And um and I would appreciate even other topics that we could address very quickly that have um a lot of impact upon our therapy. Thank you so much and I hope you have a wonderful day.