PsychologyWritten assignmentCognitive behavioral therapy

ABCDE of REBT assignment guide: two mock clients

Two one-line client scenarios and an ABCDE template to complete for each. This guide covers why the belief row carries the marks, how to tell a belief from a consequence, what disputation should actually target, and why a correctly disputed breakup still ends in sadness.

Aug 6, 2026Updated Aug 10, 2026

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Last reviewed · August 6, 2026

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Two one-line scenarios, and the row that carries the marks

The two client scenarios are one line each, and that is deliberate. A 35-year-old woman with depression who recently lost a job for poor performance, and a 22-year-old man whose girlfriend has ended the relationship. Between them those sentences hand you the activating event and, in the first case, the consequence. Everything else — the belief, the disputation, the effect — you have to construct, and the brief says so: you will need to interpret what you think the client's beliefs may be, based on the limited information you have. So the assignment is not a comprehension exercise about the model. It is an inference exercise, and the B row is where all of the marks actually sit. Fill B first and the rest of the template follows from it. Note too that the brief describes viewing mock sessions and then gives you two written scenarios instead; work from what you were actually given and say so if asked.

The most common way the B row goes wrong is that it fills up with feelings. "She feels worthless." "He feels rejected and abandoned." Those are consequences, and putting them in B leaves the template with two C rows and no belief. B is self-talk — a sentence the client says to themselves, written in their voice, and in Ellis's system what makes it irrational is not that it is painful but that it is rigid. Listen for the demand: must, should, have to, ought. "I must not fail at work." "He has to want me back or I am nothing." Demandingness is the core belief in REBT, and awfulising, frustration intolerance and global self-rating are its derivatives — so name which derivative your client is showing as well as the demand itself. That single classification is often the difference between a pass and a strong mark.

Row	What belongs there	The commonest wrong entry
A	The event, described neutrally	The event plus a judgement about it
B	Rigid self-talk in the client's voice	An emotion — that is C
C	The emotions, graded in intensity	Behaviour with no emotion named
D	A challenge aimed at the demand	"What is the evidence?" aimed at the fact
E	The new rational belief and the healthier emotion	"She feels better"

The brief's own worked example tells you what disputation should target, and it is easy to read past. It offers the evidential challenge first — prove it, what evidence do you have that he does not love you — and then explicitly goes further, to what Ellis calls the elegant solution: whether the father loves him or not is beside the point, because the irrational belief is the need to be loved rather than the wish to be. Your D rows should do the same thing. Challenging whether the girlfriend really was the right person, or whether the performance review was fair, argues about the activating event. Challenging the demand — that she must not have left, that he must not have failed — is the intervention the model is for. The evidential challenge is not wrong, it is just not the end of the row.

The E row is the one that is most often written as a mood improvement, and REBT is quite specific that this is wrong. Disputing a rigid belief does not remove the negative emotion; it replaces an unhealthy negative emotion with a healthy one. The 22-year-old who has genuinely lost a relationship should end up sad and disappointed, not cheerful and not indifferent — sadness is the rational response to a real loss, and depression is what the demand was generating. Write E as a pair: the new flexible belief in the client's voice, and the emotion that now follows from it, named specifically. Cheerfulness in the E row of a breakup template is a misunderstanding of the model, not a successful outcome. The same applies to the first client: after disputing, remorse and disappointment are appropriate, and their absence would be the odd result.

One more distinction, specific to the first client. She lost her job for poor performance, so the activating event contains a negative evaluation that is, as far as you know, accurate. REBT does not dispute the fact, and a template that tries to talk her out of having performed poorly is arguing with reality. What it disputes is the leap from a judgement about behaviour to a judgement about the person — I performed poorly, therefore I am worthless — which is the global self-rating derivative. Keeping that separation visible in her D and E rows is the single clearest way to show you understand the model rather than the template, and it is what distinguishes a strong submission from a completed one. It is also the point at which the model stops being a worksheet and starts being an intervention you could actually deliver.

Likely learning objectives

Inferred from the brief — check these against your own rubric.

01
Distinguish a belief from the emotional consequence it produces.
02
Identify demandingness and its derivatives in a client's self-talk.
03
Direct disputation at the rigid belief rather than at the activating event.
04
Recognise a healthy negative emotion as a successful outcome.

Assignment instructionsQuoted verbatim

Read the full question

Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.

ABCDE) of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (ABCDE) of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy Note: This week, you complete and submit your Assignment before beginning the Discussion. Imagine that a client says during a session, “I don’t think my dad loves me. He certainly never has never shown it. When I was growing up, he worked all the time.” A possible reaction to this statement might be as simple as: “Prove it. What evidence do you have that he doesn’t love you?” The client might be able to provide some evidence, but likely if the father was working too much, he might have been expressing that love through providing financial support. A practitioner of REBT might go even further to suggest what Ellis terms an elegant solution: what matters isn’t whether your dad loves you—maybe he does, maybe he does not—your irrational thought is that you need to be loved by your dad (you want to be loved by him, but you do not need his love). The REBT approach to helping a client understand her/his problem is to teach them the ABCDE framework. This technique can be completed with clients or assigned as homework. Consider the following simple example of how ABCDE can be used to help identify irrational thoughts: Activating event is the event or behavior that causes stress or negative reactions. I hate it when people chew out loud, and especially if they also have their mouths open. Belief is a person’s feelings, interpretations, and self-talk about the event. How brutish and completely disgusting! Am I chewing like that? Can other people hear me chewing? I can’t believe I have to sit next to this person masticating her food like an animal. Make it stop!!! Consequences are the actual emotions that a person feels, which may vary in degree from strongly to weakly felt. Anger, revulsion, annoyance, disgust. Disputation is a counter thought or alternative way of thinking about the situation. Working through this step may involve questioning, reframing, Socratic questioning, humor, rational emotive imagery, or talking the situation through with others. This guides the person to see that his or her belief about an act is the cause of the disturbance and not the act itself. Where is it written that a person shouldn’t chew out loud? I prefer the person not chew so loudly, but her actions are not a reflection of my behavior or character. Emotional Effect represents the more positive beliefs or behaviors that a person is able to have after disputing the irrational belief(s). When a client is able to surrender the irrational belief, he or she will be able to revise or replace them with new emotions. Everyone is different and chewing styles can vary for many reasons, including culture, hunger, and enjoyment of the food. I don’t need to worry about how others chew. For this Assignment, you view mock sessions and complete an ABCDE analysis of each session. As you watch the sessions, look for the activating event(s) and consider what the clients in each session were thinking and saying to themselves. To prepare: Review Dobson Chapter 8, specifically p. 253, and the Ellis article, REBT Self Help Form found in this week’s Learning Resources. Imagine that you are beginning treatment with two new clients with the following issues: (ABCDE) of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy 35-year-old female suffering from depression who lost a job recently due to poor performance 22-year-old male whose girlfriend broke up with him After considering these very brief client scenarios, complete the ABCDE’s of REBT Template for each one. You will need to interpret what you think the client’s beliefs may be, based on the limited information you have. For this Assignment: Complete the ABCDE’s of REBT Template for each mock client scenario. Submit your ABCDE’s of REBT Assignment Templates for each client scenario by Day 3. READINGS Dryden, W., David, D., & Ellis, A. (2010). Rational emotive behavior therapy. In K. S. Dobson (Ed.), Handbook of cognitive behavioral therapies (3rd ed.) (pp. 226–276). New York, NY: Guilford Press. Ellis, A. (1989). Using rational-emotive therapy (RET) as a crisis intervention: A single session with a suicidal client. Individual Psychology: Journal of Adlerian Theory, Research & Practice, 45(1/2), 75–81. Retrieved from the EBSCO databases (Accession No. 9102702). Using Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET) as Crisis Intervention: A Single Session with a Suicidal Client by Ellis, A., in Individual Psychology, Vol. 45/Issue 1-2. Copyright 1989 by University of Texas Press – Journals. Reprinted by permission of University of Texas Press – Journals via the Copyright Clearance Center. Note: You will access this article from the Walden Library databases. Ellis, A. (2000). REBT self-help form. Retrieved from http://www.hypnosisrebt.com/pdf_files/III-13.pdf Shea, D. (2016). Basic tenets of REBT/CBT. Cognitive behavioral approaches for counselors (pp. 21–38). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Cognitive Behavioral Approaches for Counselors, 1st Edition by Shea, D. Copyright 2016 by Sage College. Reprinted by permission of Sage College via the Copyright Clearance Center. (ABCDE) of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy

Two templates, due before the Discussion

01
A completed ABCDE's of REBT Template for the 35-year-old client.
02
A completed ABCDE's of REBT Template for the 22-year-old client.
03
Interpreted beliefs for each, inferred from the limited scenario information.
04
Both templates submitted by Day 3, before beginning the week's Discussion.

Filling A, B, C, D and E without collapsing them

A — the activating event

State each event neutrally, without the client's evaluation folded in.

B — the belief

Write the rigid self-talk in the client's voice and name the derivative it shows.

C — the consequences

Name the emotions and grade their intensity, as the model's own example does.

D — disputation

Challenge the demand, using questioning, reframing or rational emotive imagery.

E — effect

Give the new flexible belief and the emotion that follows from it.

Where demandingness and its derivatives are defined

Recommended databases

Walden University Library
PsycINFO
Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy
Albert Ellis Institute

Search sequence

1.
Read the assigned Dobson chapter section and the Ellis self-help form before drafting, since the template's row definitions come from them.
2.
Look up demandingness and its three derivatives specifically, so the B rows can be classified rather than just written.
3.
Find a source on healthy versus unhealthy negative emotions before writing either E row.
4.
Check the current outcome evidence for REBT if the discussion that follows asks you to defend the approach.

Reference shortlist

These are authoritative starting points, not a ready-made bibliography. A qualified reviewer must confirm that each source fits the assignment and supports the claim beside which it is cited.

Nothing here is cleared for citation until you have read it.

01
50 years of rational-emotive and cognitive-behavioral therapy: A systematic review and meta-analysis
Journal of Clinical Psychology, via PubMed Central · 2018
The outcome evidence base, with the moderators the authors identified. Useful if the discussion that follows this assignment asks you to justify the approach rather than only apply it.
02
REBT in the Context of Modern Psychological Research
Albert Ellis Institute · 2026
The institute's own statement of the theory, including demandingness as the core irrational belief with awfulising, frustration intolerance and global evaluation as derivatives. That structure is what lets you classify a B row rather than only write one.
03
Understanding Emotional Problems and their Healthy Alternatives: The REBT Perspective
Routledge · 2022
Dryden's pairing of eight unhealthy emotions with their healthy alternatives — depression with sadness, guilt with remorse. This is the source for writing an E row that is not simply cheerfulness.
04
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
Psychology Today · 2026
A concise practitioner-facing summary of the ABCDE sequence, useful for checking your row definitions against a second description before you commit to the template.
05
The ABC Model of Positive Feelings: A Preliminary Test
Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, Springer · 2024
Current work testing the model's mechanism rather than restating it. Cite it when you need a recent source and the discussion asks how well the ABC account actually holds up.

Before both templates go in

Common mistakes

Writing emotions in the B row, which leaves the template with two consequence rows and no belief.
Writing the belief in your voice rather than as the client's self-talk.
Recording a belief that is merely negative rather than rigid — no must, should or have to.
Disputing the activating event instead of the demand, which argues with reality.
Treating the evidential challenge as the endpoint when the brief's own example goes past it.
Writing the E row as feeling better rather than as a new belief plus a healthier emotion.
Replacing an appropriate sadness with cheerfulness, which misreads the model's goal.
Trying to talk the first client out of having performed poorly, rather than out of self-rating.

Submission checklist

No emotion words appear in either B row.
Each B row contains a rigid demand, phrased as the client would say it.
The derivative is named — awfulising, frustration intolerance or global self-rating.
Each D row targets the demand, not the event.
Each E row pairs a new flexible belief with a specifically named emotion.
The first client's template separates the behaviour judgement from the self-judgement.
Both templates are complete and submitted by Day 3.

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