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

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Humans can always accept themselves unconditionally.
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By honestly acknowledging your past errors, but never damning yourself for them, you can learn to use your past for your own future benefit.
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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. In that sense, psychotherapy belongs in the schools.
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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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Happiness is experienced largely in striving towards a goal, not in having attained things, because our nature is always to want to go on to the next endeavor.
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We'd better work hard on getting rid of that must - Other people must do what I want them to do! It's what makes people hostile, nasty, mean and combative, and it leads to feuds, wars and genocide. We'd better do something about that.
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People don't just get upset. They contribute to their upsetness.
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We teach people that they upset themselves. We can't change the past, so we change how people are thinking, feeling and behaving today.
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I'm very happy. I like my work and I like the various aspects of it - going around the world, teaching the gospel according to St. Albert - I like that. And seeing clients, doing group therapy, writing books.
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You never truly need what you want. That is the main and thoroughgoing key to serenity.
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Religious creeds encourage some of the craziest kinds of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors and favor severe manifestations of neurosis, borderline personality states, and sometimes even psychosis.
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I would have liked having children to some degree, but frankly I haven't got the time to take the kids to the goddamn ballgame. So it would have had more disadvantages than advantages for them.
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Being assertive does not mean attacking or ignoring others feelings. It means that you are willing to hold up for yourself fairly-without attacking others.
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I thought foolishly that Freudian psychoanalysis was deeper and more intensive than other, more directive forms of therapy, so I was trained in it and practiced it.
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Many psychoanalysts refused to let me speak at their meetings. They were exceptionally vigorous because I had previously been an analyst and they were very angry at my flying the coop.
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I would like to be remembered as one of the individuals who founded, ideologically and practically, cognitive behavior therapy and who pioneered multimodal or integrated therapy.
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The goal...is not to change your desires and wishes but to persuade you to stop demanding that you absolutely must have what you wish-from yourself, from others, and from the world. You can by all means keep your wishes, preferences, and desires, but unless you prefer to remain needlessly anxious, not your grandiose demands.
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If something is irrational, that means it won't work. It's usually unrealistic.
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