Stop Whining & Make Yourself Happy — Albert Ellis’s Controversial Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT)

Albert Ellis was a prolific writer, with sixty-eight books published for the public reader listed on his Wikipedia page. Ellis’s 1999 self-help book How to Make Yourself Happy — And Remarkably Less Disturbable (upon which this article is based) joins the parade with titles like Homosexuality — It’s Causes & Cures, The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Manhunting, Sex & The Liberated Man, and How to Live with a Neurotic.

Ellis prepared How to Make Yourself Happy to provide a high-level overview of his Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT) modality, which he adamantly asserts was created before the now much more popular Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) developed by Aaron T. Beck. The book provides a summary of the origins of the modality, Ellis’s A-B-C approach to altering limiting thoughts and behaviors, and practical suggestions and case studies demonstrating the efficacy of REBT.

Ellis’s old-world, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps approach to self-actualization comprises the totality of modern multiculturalist therapy’s criticism of theoretical psychology. But in the post-mental-health-awareness movement era, is REBT’s focus on placing responsibility for wellness on the client (as suggested by the wording of the book title “How to Make Yourself Happy”) just what we need?

The ABCs of REBT

Ellis begins by providing the origin story of REBT, telling the story of himself as a young man searching for the key to happiness in the philosophies and religions of the world. He read the Greek philosophers, the Stoics, and Eastern thinkers from Buddhism and Daoism (p.29). Modern thinkers from the existential humanist movement, such as Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, are called out in Ellis’ work. Ellis also nods to Fritz Perls (acknowledging how Perls’ approach embodies the non-dualist perspective of the also included in REBT) and Albert Bandura (whose theories about behavior modeling Ellis absorbs into REBT’s assertive communication training). How to Make Yourself Happy gives the impression that Ellis is widely read and has formed a comprehensive generalist perspective of human psychology, one that he has reduced to an easily accessible and implementable set of guidelines for moderating distressing emotions and maladaptive behaviors.

Ellis reduces mental wellness to a simple mnemonic — A-B-C. He breaks this down on page 22 of How to Make Yourself Happy:

“A” stands for an Activating Event or Adversity,

“B” refers to a Belief that, in contrast with the activating event, causes mental distress to the client

“C” refers to the Consequences of this friction (usually in the form of intense emotion or maladaptive behavior).

Ellis makes clear the distinction — adverse circumstances and life events do not cause long-term depression or anxiety. Rather, it is self-defeating beliefs and cognitions that lead to mental unwellness. Therefore, Ellis says, it is the client’s responsibility to interrupt and reframe the beliefs about life’s challenges to make themselves happy.

For example, if a client wants to succeed in a romantic relationship and fails (Activating Event) this could be followed by a destructive belief such as “I have to find a partner”, “I can’t be happy without one”, “I’m not desirable”, “I’m not good with women/men”, “I can’t just keep trying and failing”, etc. The result of this kind of inelegant language in the mind, if left unchecked, is psychological suffering (Consequence) in the form of depression, anxiety, repeated failure based on shame and insecurity, withdrawal from opportunities to find a partner, or limitation of enjoyment as a single person.

Ellis acknowledges that emotional responses to Adverse Events are healthy and normal, but that they do not lead to clinically significant psychiatric disorders. The latter are caused by the maladaptive Beliefs that occur in response to Adverse Events. Thus, Ellis places the responsibility for wellness squarely in the lap of the sufferer by asking them to use more philosophically sophisticated internal language.

Avoiding Absolutist Language & Dichotomous Thought

Fundamental to Ellis’ perspective is Eastern Philosophy’s illusion of the self. The self-concept can become rigid, making interaction with the world frictive. In the attempt to know ourselves, we humans often create concrete storylines about our intrinsic nature; cognitive delusions that we cling to despite the evidence drawn from interaction with our interpersonal environment. This can lead to framing distressing life events as negative interpretations of our fundamental character, personality, or self and result in depression, anxiety.

Ellis even warns that thinking of oneself as a “good person” is an irrational cognition that will undoubtedly meet with contrary evidence in our daily activities. If you think you are good, you can also think that you are bad, a black-and-white perspective that can lead to socially dangerous arrogance on the one hand and shame on the other.

Ellis cites the American psychologist George Kelley who demonstrated that human cognition tends toward dichotomous categorization of the world (p.108). However, our entropic world is not categorizable, despite our best attempts — even those of the scientific method to formalize and quantify a chaotic and disordered system that defies objectification. Similarly, linguistic cognition fails to adequately communicate the complexities of life. In the reciprocal language-thought reflex, unsophisticated language yields dichotomous thought which, in turn, leads to frustration when we attempt to fit our daily experiences into static worldviews and their1 accompanying internal narratives.

Acknowledging the potential for this human situation to cause mental anguish, Ellis recommends using elegant and moderate language in our internal monologues, avoiding absolutist words like “can’t”, “always”, “never”, and “must” (the overuse of which Ellis humorously refer to as “musturbation”).

A summary of the main points in the final chapter of the text gives the flavor of Ellis’ thinking. Notice how Ellis carefully uses language to moderate and acknowledge paradox when directing therapeutic self-talk for his reader:

“I shall try to avoid extremism — to refuse to see things as all good or all bad. I shall try to avoid extreme optimism or extreme pessimism. A more balanced, more realistic approach will be my usual goal. But even that goal I shall not take to extremes” (p.192).

Taking Responsibility for Mental Anguish

Ellis’ commentary speaks to the individual struggling to find peace within the limits of their existing environment and imbues the reader (with the pure energy of his suggestion and copious use of exclamation points!) with confidence that they can greatly increase their happiness by altering the way they think. Ellis does not indulge in the empathy of traumatological perspectives common in modern therapy culture that emphasize how dynamics of power and influence upon disempowered individuals influence their psychic landscape. As a result, if not used carefully, REBT could fail to create an atmosphere of safety for individuals suffering from the symptoms of post-traumatic stress. For example, notice this rather jarring passage that, if tweeted in 2024, would certainly get Ellis “canceled”:

“Actually, nothing can be 100% bad, because it invariably could be worse. If you are raped and killed, that is bad, but not 100% bad, because several of your loved ones could also be raped and slaughtered, and that would be worse.”

There is a victim of childhood sexual abuse in the room, Ellis. They do not feel safe.

But is Ellis right? When do modern traumatological perspectives reach the point of diminishing returns? Must not all trauma, after being given life and breath in the safety of the therapeutic chamber, return to sleep again in the client’s transcendent acceptance? For traumatized clients, perhaps an introductory phase of psychodynamic or traumatological treatment could be used first to heal neurological wounds before implementing Ellis’s confrontational techniques.

Ellis also suggests a perspective on mental health diagnosis that contrasts modern therapy culture dialogue. Ellis warns against the absorption of a mental health diagnosis into the self-concept in the following passage:

“Be careful with labeling yourself with some aspects of your disturbances. You have, perhaps depressed feelings — at certain times and under certain conditions. But if you therefore conclude ‘I am depressive’, you encourage yourself to practically always feel depressed under many conditions. This is one of the dangers of our medical tradition — that we often label people as depressives and thereby discourage them from trying to change.” (p.64)

Thank you, Ellis.

The mental health awareness movement appears to have forgotten that the brain is plastic and that mental health diagnoses are not brain diagnoses. Effective psychotherapy changes the structure and function of the brain. Additionally, mental health assessment measures are confounded by the client’s subjective self-report error and the limits of the practitioner’s clinical objectivity. Modern psychiatry and psychotherapy must embrace neuroscientific instruments (and perhaps develop better technologies for measuring brain activity) to test the brain for biological and neurochemical markers of disorder and perform such measures regularly, to avoid allowing a diagnosis, reinforced by the influence of the clinician's authority over the client, cauterizing a diagnosis in the client’s self-concept such that it becomes an obstacle to brain and behavior change.

While the embrace of the so-called neurodivergent by society is well-intentioned, most who leverage such a label in their social environment do not have material evidence of a non-normative neurological condition. An individual who exists in society and identifies with non-normative behaviors and cognitions (the neurodivergent) ought not to be compelled by society to lean upon a clinical diagnosis. Paradoxically, those who refuse to do so may find that their ongoing struggle for understanding of both self and social group facilitates psychological (and neurological) complexification and moves them toward an individuated and empowered state sans reliance on pseudoscientific labels.

Making REBT Inclusive

How to Make Yourself Happy was written to a mostly upper-middle-class American audience with common mid-late 20th-century challenges to psychosocial wellness resulting from the movement of society away from norms of the earlier part of the century. Despite Ellis’s out-of-touchness with the current multi-culturalist ethic, his insights on the interface of individual psychology and societal forces remain sound. If a practitioner takes the time first to understand the values, cultural assumptions, motivations, and frustrated goals of a client, they can then use REBT to determine where the client’s beliefs contribute to their mental suffering.

This is especially important given REBT’s confrontational style. If the non-majority client enters the therapy room with existing prejudices against clinical authority, the infrastructural power of the counselor, or the gender or race of the counselor, the counselor must ensure adequate rapport is established before performing directive REBT therapy. For example, How to Make Yourself Happy is outspoken about the limitations of religion and politics and their impact on individual mental health. The modern multi-culturalist therapist must be more sensitive to the explosivity of such topics in our era and the checkered reputation that Western academic and scientific psychology has earned over the years.

Personal Reflections

Ellis wrote in a fixed world and encouraged his readers not to set their sights on large-scale social change, but to be flexible in their interpretation of their situation. Ellis’s writing greatly contrasts with popular appeals to narcissism (public broadcast of a categorical self-identity) fomented by social media, and passionate social justice movements that attempt to alter authoritarian infrastructures rather than the perspectives of its subjects. As a result, I believe that Ellis’ stingy empathy and confrontational you-can-do-it style would not be palatable to the modern progressive reader.

That being said, after smirking at both the cover art of this 1999 release and Ellis’ glaringly outdated rhetorical style, I found myself subtly invigorated by my reading of How to Make Yourself Happy. Reading Ellis was like receiving a lecture from an exuberant grandfather. Ellis passionately desires to bring hope to his readers and clients. And according to Ellis (and the evidence base), REBT works — for most people, most of the time. I have already noticed some of my own irrational beliefs over the past few days, and thought to myself “What would Albert Ellis say?” It has been mostly helpful, most of the time.

I’ve even caught myself repeating in my mind the refrain of an ironic song that Ellis would perform with his guitar at his group sessions and seminars to lighten the mood:

“I cannot have my wishes fulfilled –

Whine, whine, whine

I cannot have every frustration stilled –

Whine, whine, whine

Life really owes me the things that I miss,

Fate has to grant me eternal bliss!

And since I must settle for less than this –

Whine, whine, whine”

References:

Ellis, A. (1999). How to make yourself happy and remarkably less disturbable. Impact Publishers.