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If you would stop, really stop, damning yourself, others, and unkind conditions, you would find it almost impossible to upset yourself emotionally - about anything. Yes, anything.

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
Find
Blame
Really
Conditions
Would
Stop
Impossible
Almost
Damning
Hate
Unkind
Others
Emotionally
Anything
Upset

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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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You never truly need what you want. That is the main and thoroughgoing key to serenity.
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I had a great many sex and love cases where people were absolutely devastated when somebody with whom they were compulsively in love didn't love them back. They were killing themselves with anxiety and depression.
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For that again, is what all manner of religion essentially is: childish dependency.
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People have motives and thoughts of which they are unaware.
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The trouble with most therapy is that it helps you feel better. But you don't get better. You have to back it up with action, action, action.
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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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I get people to truly accept themselves unconditionally, whether or not their therapist or anyone loves them.
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People could rationally decide that prolonged relationships take up too much time and effort and that they'd much rather do other kinds of things. But most people are afraid of rejection.
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I teach people to be flexible, scientific and logical in their thinking and therefore to be less prone to brainwashing by the therapist.
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Beginning in the 1960s, many studies showed that people who hold what we call irrational beliefs are significantly more disturbed than when they don't hold them, and the more strongly they hold them, the more disturbed they tend to be.
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When people change their irrational beliefs to undogmatic flexible preferences, they become less disturbed.
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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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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 January 1955 later I used the term rational emotive. Now I call myself a rational emotive behavior therapist. But from the start, I always included philosophic techniques as well as experiential, emotional and behavioral techniques.
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In fact most of what we call anxiety is overconcern about what someone thinks of you.
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Worry itself is one of the most painful conditions.
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Even injustice has it's good points. It gives me the challenge of being as happy as I can in an unfair world.
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Much of what we call emotion is nothing more or less than a certain kind - a biased, prejudiced, or strongly evaluative kind - of thought.
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