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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.

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
Change
Unless
Wishes
Must
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Anxious
Mean
Goal
Demands
Needlessly
World
Wish
Desires
Preferences
Desire
Prefer
Grandiose
Means
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Persuade
Keep
Absolutely
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Others
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Preference

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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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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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If the Martians ever find out how human beings think, they'll kill themselves laughing.
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Strong feelings are fine it's the overreactions that mess us up.
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Most things worth having require some sacrifice, usually more than you expect.
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Worrying about dying will hardly help you live.
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People don't just get upset. They contribute to their upsetness.
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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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For that again, is what all manner of religion essentially is: childish dependency.
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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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Convince yourself that worrying about many situations will make them worse rather than improve them.
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You have considerable power to construct self-helping thoughts, feelings and actions as well as to construct self-defeating behaviors. You have the ability, if you use it, to choose healthy instead of unhealthy thinking, feeling and acting.
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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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Unless, of course, you insist on identifying yourself with the people and things you love and thereby seriously disturb yourself.
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People don't just get upset. They contribute to their upsetness. They always have the power to think, and to think about their thinking, and to think about thinking about their thinking, which the goddamn dolphin, as far as we know, can't do. Therefore they have much greater ability to change themselves than any other animal has.
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We can actually put the essence of neurosis in a single word: blaming - or damning.
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People and things do not upset us. Rather, we upset ourselves by believing that they can upset us.
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You never truly need what you want. That is the main and thoroughgoing key to serenity.
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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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Let's suppose somebody abused you sexually. You still had a choice, though not a good one, about what to tell yourself about the abuse.
Albert Ellis