Deliberate Practice in Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy

A free training from Sentio University, co-authored by Mark D. Terjesen, Kristene A. Doyle, Raymond A. DiGiuseppe, Alexandre Vaz, and Tony Rousmaniere.

Rational emotive behavior therapy is built around a small, well-defined set of moves: identifying the client's irrational belief, disputing it with empirical, logical, or pragmatic challenges, and helping the client construct a more effective alternative belief. The structure looks clean on paper. Performing it under the rhythm of a live session, with a real client whose disturbance is also about being disturbed, is another matter. Disputation is a clinical skill that has to be rehearsed, not just understood. Deliberate practice closes that gap by isolating each move and rehearsing it under feedback until it becomes reliable. This webinar, led by senior REBT trainers Mark D. Terjesen, Kristene A. Doyle, and Raymond A. DiGiuseppe alongside series co-editors Alexandre Vaz and Tony Rousmaniere, walks through the structured exercises that make these foundational moves trainable.

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What you will learn

The webinar demonstrates core REBT skills broken down into rehearsable units:

  • Identifying the client's irrational belief during the session
  • Disputing irrational beliefs using empirical, logical, and pragmatic challenges
  • Differentiating healthy negative emotions from unhealthy ones, such as concern versus anxiety
  • Constructing homework that tests a more rational alternative belief
  • Working with secondary disturbance, such as anxiety about anxiety or anger about anger

Watch the webinar

Deliberate Practice in Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, with Mark D. Terjesen, Kristene A. Doyle, Raymond A. DiGiuseppe, Alexandre Vaz, and Tony Rousmaniere. Free to share.

This webinar accompanies the APA book Deliberate Practice in Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy by Mark D. Terjesen, Kristene A. Doyle, Raymond A. DiGiuseppe, Alexandre Vaz, and Tony Rousmaniere, part of The Essentials of Deliberate Practice series. The book contains the full set of exercises that the webinar above demonstrates. Buy on Amazon.

How to use this with peers or supervisors

The webinar is most useful when paired with structured practice afterward. We recommend a two-session model. In the first session, watch the recording with a peer or supervision group and pause at each demonstrated exercise to discuss how it would fit your current caseload. In the second session, run one of the exercises live. One person plays the therapist, one plays the client, and a third observes and offers structured feedback against a specific behavioral target, such as "identify and name the client's irrational belief within five minutes of a presenting complaint" or "deliver one empirical, logical, or pragmatic dispute and check for client uptake." Five to ten minutes of focused rehearsal followed by feedback tends to produce more growth than longer unstructured roleplay. Licensed clinicians who want to take this further can join Sentio's ongoing deliberate practice consultation group, which meets regularly and is open to clinicians worldwide.

Going deeper: Deliberate Practice Supervision

The webinar above demonstrates what deliberate practice looks like inside REBT. Doing deliberate practice supervision well is a separate skill, and one that is hard to acquire from didactic content alone. The method has to be practiced under feedback, the same way the clinical skill itself does. A single weekend workshop tends not to give supervisors enough repetitions to develop the experiential muscle they need. Sentio runs an intensive year-long clinical supervisor training built around this principle. For the longer rationale for that format, see Why One Weekend Supervisor Trainings Fall Short.

About the authors

Mark D. Terjesen, PhD is Professor of Psychology and Assistant Chairperson in the Department of Psychology at St. John's University, where he directs the PsyD program in School Psychology. He is a Fellow of the Albert Ellis Institute, an approved REBT supervisor, and has trained therapists internationally in REBT and cognitive-behavioral practices.

Kristene A. Doyle, PhD, ScD is the Executive Director of the Albert Ellis Institute and a licensed psychologist. She is a core faculty trainer at AEI, founding director of its Eating Disorders Treatment and Research Center, and a Diplomate in Rational-Emotive and Cognitive-Behavior Therapy.

Raymond A. DiGiuseppe, PhD is Professor and Director of the PhD Program in Clinical Psychology at St. John's University and Director of Professional Education at the Albert Ellis Institute. He worked alongside Albert Ellis from 1975 until Ellis's death in 2007 and is internationally recognized for his work on the assessment and treatment of anger.

Tony Rousmaniere, PsyD is the President of Sentio University and Executive Director of the Sentio Counseling Center. He is past-president of the psychotherapy division of the American Psychological Association and the author of over 20 books on deliberate practice and psychotherapy training, including The Essentials of Deliberate Practice book series (APA Books).

Alexandre Vaz, PhD is the Chief Academic Officer of Sentio University and co-founder of the Deliberate Practice Institute. He is co-editor of The Essentials of Deliberate Practice book series (APA Books) and host of Psychotherapy Expert Talks.

Related Sentio resources

Frequently asked questions

What is deliberate practice in REBT? Deliberate practice in rational emotive behavior therapy is the structured rehearsal of specific, high-leverage REBT skills under feedback, rather than general experience-on-the-job. It isolates moves like identifying an irrational belief, delivering a dispute, or constructing a homework experiment, and rehearses them in short repetitive cycles until they become reliable in live sessions.

Who is this training for? The webinar and exercises are designed for licensed clinicians, postdocs, predoctoral interns, and advanced trainees who practice REBT or any cognitive-behavioral approach. Supervisors, training directors, and faculty who teach REBT and CBT will also find the framework directly applicable to their teaching.

Do I need to be Albert Ellis Institute trained to use these exercises? No. The exercises were designed to be useful at every stage of REBT and CBT training, from first exposure through advanced certification. Therapists new to REBT will benefit from rehearsing the foundational moves, and experienced REBT clinicians can use the harder difficulty levels to keep their skills sharp.

Is the webinar really free? Yes. The full webinar is free to watch, free to share with peers and trainees, and free to use inside a supervision group. The companion book by Terjesen, Doyle, DiGiuseppe, Vaz, and Rousmaniere is sold separately by APA Books and contains the complete set of exercises.

How is this different from a standard REBT training? A standard REBT training typically covers the ABC model, the major irrational beliefs, and the structure of disputation. Deliberate practice is a complement, not a replacement. It targets specific in-session skill bottlenecks with focused, behaviorally-defined rehearsal so that the model you learned actually shows up in your live work faster.