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When people change their irrational beliefs to undogmatic flexible preferences, they become less disturbed.

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
Disturbed
People
Preference
Flexible
Irrational
Beliefs
Belief
Less
Become
Preferences

More quotes by 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.
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The goal of all life is to have a ball.
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Worry itself is one of the most painful conditions.
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Reality is not so much what happens to us rather, it is how we think about those events that create the reality we experience. In a very real sense, this means that we each create the reality in which we live.
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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.
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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.
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Whenever you avoid alarming situations, you almost always increase your anxiety about them.
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The attitude of unconditional self-acceptance is probably the most important variable in their long-term recovery.
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The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own.
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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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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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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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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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The individual is taught that there is nothing that he as a total person is to feel ashamed of or self-hating for.
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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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Thinking rationally is often different from positive thinking, in that it is a realistic assessment of the situation, with a view towards rectifying the problem if possible.
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People don't just get upset. They contribute to their upsetness.
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We can actually put the essence of neurosis in a single word: blaming - or damning.
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People are terrified of other people or difficult projects because they tell themselves that they could fail or be rejected. Failure can lead to sorrow, regret, frustration and annoyance-all healthy feelings without which people couldn't exist.
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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.
Albert Ellis