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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.

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
Beginning
Significantly
Hold
Disturbed
Study
Studies
Showed
Belief
Irrational
Call
Strongly
Many
Beliefs
People
Tend

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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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You largely constructed your depression. It wasn't given to you. Therefore, you can deconstruct it.
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Whatever may be, I am still largely the creator and ruler of my emotional destiny.
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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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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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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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Whining about your own, others', or the world's failings is a main element in what we usually call neurosis.
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And just as two wrongs don't make a right, rage against offenders is probably the worst way to try to correct them.
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By not caring too much about what people think, I'm able to think for myself and propagate ideas which are very often unpopular. And I succeed.
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The world consists mainly of love slobs who need other people's approval. Most people don't live their own lives very well.
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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.
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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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To err is human to forgive people and yourself for poor behavior is to be sensible and realistic.
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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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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.
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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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Needing leads to bleeding - to almost all inevitable suffering.
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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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Eating is always a decision, nobody forces your hand to pick up food and put it into your mouth.
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In the old days we used to get more referrals, because people had insurance that paid for therapy. Now they belong to HMOs, and we can only be affiliated with a few HMOs.
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