would be our last session together (7th), the practitioner and Zara were able to discuss and reflect upon the previous six sessions. Zara cited that “it seems ridiculous now looking back at my previous beliefs”, as well as noting she felt very positive about her archery and was enjoying it a lot more. Whilst, facilitating positive affect is not the primary objective for REBT, it encourages the client to abandon self-rating and self-esteem in its place endorsing Unconditional Self-Acceptance (USA; Chamberlain & Haaga, 2001). USA is defined as “the individual fully and unconditionally accepting themselves whether or not they behaves intelligently, correctly, or competently and whether or not other people approve, respect, or love them” (Ellis, 1977, p. 101). The combination of abandoning self-rating and accepting herself as a fallible human being may explain why Zara’s enjoyment of archery improved. Additionally, in line with the Self Determination Theory (SDT; Ryan & Deci, 2000) Zara’s shift from a ‘have to’ to ‘want to’ can be likened to a transferal from an external regulation towards a self-motivated athlete, the latter being a self-endorsed action manifesting in greater interest, excitement, confidence and enhanced performance (Ryan & Deci, 2000). REBT progressively encourages an active and self-directed client as a result Zara was encouraged to become self-sufficient in managing her emotions and behaviors in any situation. A useful method to gauge and reassert Zara’s understanding of REBT was through ‘Rational Reverse Role-play’ (RRR; Kassinove & Digiuseppe, 1975). Here the practitioner became the client who role-played an athlete with IBs, whilst Zara acting as the practitioner actively elicited, disputed and replaced the IBs with new effective RBs. At the end of the seventh and final session drew to a close it was evident that Zara had made substantial progress verbally reporting that she was increasingly better able to manage challenging situations. Finally, on the seventh session Zara stated she no longer required routine sessions, instead feeling independent and capable of managing from there onwards.
Subsequently, it was mutually agreed that no further sessions would be necessary unless requested otherwise. Whilst communication was maintained with Zara over the following months no further REBT sessions were completed. REBT provides a framework that is in its approach and also re-active towards the client’s needs. In the case of Zara REBT provided a brief therapy (Ellis, 2013), focused on dealing and resolving Zara’s specific issues, in the instance deeper problems exist a longer program can be provided. Structured Intervention To ascertain intervention effects, self-report and performance scores were collected throughout the intervention and at follow-up time points. To provide social validity a semi-structured interview was conducted with Zara at the end of the REBT program (Page & Thelwell, 2013). Questions were orientated around changes in dependent variables, the intervention process and objective archery performance (Hrycaiko & Martin, 1996). To monitor changes in Zara’s IBs the SGABS (Lindner et al., 1999) was administered at pre-, middle, post-intervention and three and six month follow-up time points (see Figure 1). The SGABS reported meaningful short and increases in Zara’s RBs and decreases in IBs. REBT theory posits that RBs and IBs are not bi-polar constructs (e.g., high IBs does not signify low RBs; David, Lynn, & Ellis, 2010). Overlapping with the disputation phase Zara reported increases in RBs simultaneously with decreases in IBs between sessions one to five. The long-term maintenance of these changes supports that REBT successfully guided Zara from an irrational to a rational philosophy. Such a shift was reflected in the following transcript: “I wasn’t convinced at the beginning that you could help. I followed what you said to the letter, slowly I was surprising myself, my mind-set was changing as well as improving my scores as I went along. I wasn’t as anxious when little issues arose I had those little statements which I carried which helped a lot.”