Quote

The great majority of the things we now make ourselves panicked about are self-created 'dangers' that exist almost entirely in our own imaginations.

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
Things
Exist
Danger
Panicked
Worry
Imaginations
Imagination
Dangers
Almost
Entirely
Self
Anxiety
Great
Majority
Make
Created

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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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Humans can always accept themselves unconditionally.
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Whatever may be, I am still largely the creator and ruler of my emotional destiny.
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When I started to get disillusioned with psychoanalysis I reread philosophy and was reminded of the constructivist notion that Epictetus had proposed 2,000 years ago: People are disturbed not by events that happen to them, but by their view of them. I could see how that applied to many of my clients.
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The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own.
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Spirit and soul is horseshit of the worst sort. Obviously there are no fairies, no Santa Clauses, no spirits. What there is, is human goals and purposes as noted by sane existentialists. But a lot of transcendentalists are utter screwballs.
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I started to call myself a rational therapist in 1955 later I used the term rational emotive. Now I call myself a rational emotive behavior therapist.
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You largely constructed your depression. It wasn't given to you. Therefore, you can deconstruct it.
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For that again, is what all manner of religion essentially is: childish dependency.
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If the Martians ever find out how human beings think, they'll kill themselves laughing.
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In fact most of what we call anxiety is overconcern about what someone thinks of you.
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If people stopped looking on their emotions as ethereal, almost inhuman processes, and realistically viewed them as being largely composed of perceptions, thoughts, evaluations, and internalized sentences, they would find it quite possible to work calmly and concertedly at changing them.
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Worrying about dying will hardly help you live.
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The individual is taught that there is nothing that he as a total person is to feel ashamed of or self-hating for.
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The attitude of unconditional self-acceptance is probably the most important variable in their long-term recovery.
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Attempts to help humans eliminate all self-ratings and views self-esteem as a self-defeating concept that encourages them to make conditional evaluations of self. Instead, it teaches people unconditional self-acceptance.
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The emotionally mature individual should completely accept the fact that we live in a world of probability and chance, where there are not, nor probably ever will be, any absolute certainties, and should realize that it is not at all horrible, indeed—such a probabilistic, uncertain world.
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