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This, perhaps, goes to show that conditional self-esteem, as I have said for many years, is an insidious, real sickness, so much so that even Buddhists carelessly sneak it in and sometimes encourage their clients to achieve it.

Albert Ellis

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Albert Ellis
Age: 93 †
Born: 1913
Born: September 27
Died: 2007
Died: July 24
Behaviour Therapist
Cognitive Scientist
Non-Fiction Writer
Psychologist
Sex Educator
Pittsburg
Pennsylvania
Sickness
Shows
Encourage
Self
Buddhist
Carelessly
Many
Esteem
Buddhists
Sometimes
Perhaps
Conditional
Real
Achieve
Insidious
Even
Goes
Sneak
Much
Clients
Years
Show

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The more sinful and guilty a person tends to feel, the less chance there is that he will be a happy, healthy, or law-abiding citizen. He will become a compulsive wrong-doer.
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Even when people act nastily to you, don't condemn them or retaliate.
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Strong feelings are fine it's the overreactions that mess us up.
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As a matter of fact, as a result of my philosophy, I wasn't even upset about Hitler. I was willing to go to war to knock him off, but I didn't hate him. I hated what he was doing.
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I get people to truly accept themselves unconditionally, whether or not their therapist or anyone loves them.
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Convince yourself that worrying about many situations will make them worse rather than improve them.
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If human emotions largely result from thinking, then one may appreciably control one's feelings by controlling one's thoughts - or by changing the internalized sentences, or self-talk, with which one largely created the feeling in the first place.
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Reality is not so much what happens to us rather, it is how we think about those events that create the reality we experience. In a very real sense, this means that we each create the reality in which we live.
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People got insights into what was bothering them, but they hardly did a damn thing to change.
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To err is human to forgive people and yourself for poor behavior is to be sensible and realistic.
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Whining about your own, others', or the world's failings is a main element in what we usually call neurosis.
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I wrote several articles criticizing psychoanalysis, but the analysts weren't listening to my objections. So I finally quit after practicing it for six years.
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I regret that I've been so busy with clinical work that I haven't been able to spend much time on experiments and outcome studies.
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Worry itself is one of the most painful conditions.
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Unless, of course, you insist on identifying yourself with the people and things you love and thereby seriously disturb yourself.
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We can actually put the essence of neurosis in a single word: blaming - or damning.
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Self-esteem is the greatest sickness known to man or woman because it's conditional.
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I'm one of the best-loved psychologists in the United States, but I'm also probably the most hated one.
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Freud had a gene for inefficiency, and I think I have a gene for efficiency.
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I think the future of psychotherapy and psychology is in the school system. We need to teach every child how to rarely seriously disturb himself or herself and how to overcome disturbance when it occurs.
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