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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.

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
Many
Notion
Reread
Years
View
Disillusioned
People
Events
Psychoanalysis
Views
Proposed
Started
Reminded
Philosophy
Disturbed
Happen
Applied
Happens
Clients
Epictetus

More quotes by Albert Ellis

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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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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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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.
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Eating is always a decision, nobody forces your hand to pick up food and put it into your mouth.
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Freud had a gene for inefficiency, and I think I have a gene for efficiency. Had I not been a therapist, I would have been an efficiency expert.
Albert Ellis
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There are three musts that hold us back: I must do well. You must treat me well. And the world must be easy.
Albert Ellis
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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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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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If I had been a member of the academic establishment, I could have done other experiments.
Albert Ellis
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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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When people change their irrational beliefs to undogmatic flexible preferences, they become less disturbed.
Albert Ellis
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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.
Albert Ellis
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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.
Albert Ellis
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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.
Albert Ellis
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In fact most of what we call anxiety is overconcern about what someone thinks of you.
Albert Ellis
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I don't recommend that people speak their minds to their bosses or to somebody who's directly over them. You need to know when to speak your mind and what the penalty will be for doing so. Sometimes it's worth it, and often it's not!
Albert Ellis
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The goal of all life is to have a ball.
Albert Ellis
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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.
Albert Ellis
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There's no evidence whatsoever that men are more rational than women. Both sexes seem to be equally irrational.
Albert Ellis
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I'm very happy. I like my work and the various aspects of it - going around the world, teaching the gospel according to St. Albert.
Albert Ellis