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If Something Is Irrational, That Means It Won't Work. It's Usually Unrealistic.

-Albert Ellis

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If Something Is Irrational,

Albert Ellis

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If Something Is Irrational, That Means It Won't Work. It's Usually Unrealistic.

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More From Albert Ellis

Is Self-esteem A Sickness? That's According To The Way You Define It. In The Usual Way It Is Defined By People And By Psychologists, I'd Say That It Is Probably The Greatest Emotional Disturbance Known To Man And Woman.

The Best Years Of Your Life Are The Ones In Which You Decide Your Problems Are Your Own. You Do Not Blame Them On Your Mother, The Ecology, Or The President. You Realize That You Control Your Own Destiny.

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.

Positive Thinking

People Got Insights Into What Was Bothering Them, But They Hardly Did A Damn Thing To Change.

For That Again, Is What All Manner Of Religion Essentially Is: Childish Dependency.

If The Martians Ever Find Out How Human Beings Think, They'll Kill Themselves Laughing.

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, And I Hope That Rebt Teaches Them How To Do It.

Freudian Therapists Do A Lot Of Listening And Very Little Persuading, And That Was One Of The Reasons I Eventually Gave Up Being An Analyst. You Had To Be Too Passive And Not Speak Up, And You Couldn't Give Homework To Clients. While I Was Still An Analyst, I Wrote Several Articles Criticizing Psychoanalysis, But The Analysts Weren't Listening To My Objections. So I Finally Quit Psychoanalysis After Practicing It For Six Years.

The Goal Of All Life Is To Have A Ball.

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 With Them Because, Again, I Don't Care Too Much What Other People Think.

Freud Had A Gene For Inefficiency, And I Think I Have A Gene For Efficiency.

I Think It's Unfair, But They Have The Right As Fallible, Screwed-up Humans To Be Unfair; That's The Human Condition.

Human Condition

I'm One Of The Best-loved Psychologists In The United States, But I'm Also Probably The Most Hated One.

Worrying About Dying Will Hardly Help You Live.

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.

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.

Eating Is Always A Decision, Nobody Forces Your Hand To Pick Up Food And Put It Into Your Mouth.

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.

Even Injustice Has It's Good Points. It Gives Me The Challenge Of Being As Happy As I Can In An Unfair World.

People Have Motives And Thoughts Of Which They Are Unaware.

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.

Religious Creeds Encourage Some Of The Craziest Kinds Of Thoughts, Emotions, And Behaviors And Favor Severe Manifestations Of Neurosis, Borderline Personality States, And Sometimes Even Psychosis.

Strong Feelings Are Fine; It's The Overreactions That Mess Us Up.

The Individual Is Taught That There Is Nothing That He As A Total Person Is To Feel Ashamed Of Or Self-hating For.

This, Perhaps, Goes To Show That Conditional Self-esteem, As I Have Said For Many Years, Is An Insidious, Real Sickness, So Much So That Even Buddhists Carelessly Sneak It In And Sometimes Encourage Their Clients To Achieve It.

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!

Speak Your Mind

I Regret That I've Been So Busy With Clinical Work That I Haven't Been Able To Spend Much Time On Experiments And Outcome Studies.

There's No Evidence Whatsoever That Men Are More Rational Than Women Or That Men Are More Willing To Surrender Their Irrational Beliefs. Both Sexes Seem To Be Equally Irrational.

Whatever May Be, I Am Still Largely The Creator And Ruler Of My Emotional Destiny.

Being Assertive Does Not Mean Attacking Or Ignoring Others Feelings. It Means That You Are Willing To Hold Up For Yourself Fairly-without Attacking Others.

Happiness Is Experienced Largely In Striving Towards A Goal, Not In Having Attained Things, Because Our Nature Is Always To Want To Go On To The Next Endeavor.

You Have Only To Exist As You Do And To Live Your Life As Best You Can.

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.

In Fact Most Of What We Call Anxiety Is Overconcern About What Someone Thinks Of You.

Unless, Of Course, You Insist On Identifying Yourself With The People And Things You Love; And Thereby Seriously Disturb Yourself.

The Easy Way Out Is Often Just That-the 'easy' Way Out Of The Most Rewarding Lifestyle.

Self-esteem Is The Greatest Sickness Known To Man Or Woman Because It's Conditional.

Life Is Indeed Difficult, Partly Because Of The Real Difficulties We Must Overcome In Order To Survive, And Partly Because Of Our Own Innate Desire To Always Do Better, To Overcome New Challenges, To Self-actualize. Happiness Is Experienced Largely In Striving Towards A Goal, Not In Having Attained Things, Because Our Nature Is Always To Want To Go On To The Next Endeavor.

For That Again, Is What All Manner Of Religion Essentially Is: Childish Dependency. If Something Is Irrational, That Means It Won't Work. It's Usually Unrealistic. People Don't Just Get Upset. They Contribute To Their Upsetness. People Have Motives And Thoughts Of Which They Are Unaware. Rational Beliefs Bring Us Closer To Getting Good Results In The Real World. Self-esteem Is The Greatest Sickness Known To Man Or Woman Because It's Conditional. The Art Of Love Is Largely The Art Of Persistence.

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.

The Great Majority Of The Things We Now Make Ourselves Panicked About Are Self-created 'dangers' That Exist Almost Entirely In Our Own Imaginations.

It Is Only In Your Mind That You Have To Excel, At Anything Or Everything. Of Course, It Would Be Very Nice To Excel At Most Things. Indeed, We Recommend That You Try And Do Your Best. But Realistically, You Are Entitled To Do The Bare Minimum To Get By. All Your Accomplishments Are Just A Bonus, Something To Enjoy, Not Requirements. You Don't Have To Do Anything To Prove That You Are Worthy Of Existing.

Neurosis Is Just A High-class Word For Whining.

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. In That Sense, Psychotherapy Belongs In The Schools.

Convince Yourself That Worrying About Many Situations Will Make Them Worse Rather Than Improve Them.

We Can Actually Put The Essence Of Neurosis In A Single Word: Blaming - Or Damning.

In A Sense, The Religious Person Must Have No Real Views Of His Own And It Is Presumptuous Of Him, In Fact, To Have Any. In Regard To Sex-love Affairs, To Marriage And Family Relations, To Business, To Politics, And To Virtually Everything Else That Is Important In His Life, He Must Try To Discover What His God And His Clergy Would Like Him To Do; And He Must Primarily Do Their Bidding.

Worry Itself Is One Of The Most Painful Conditions.

I Get People To Truly Accept Themselves Unconditionally, Whether Or Not Their Therapist Or Anyone Loves Them.

If I Had Been A Member Of The Academic Establishment, I Could Have Done Other Experiments.

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.

Around The World

And Just As Two Wrongs Don't Make A Right, Rage Against Offenders Is Probably The Worst Way To Try To Correct Them.

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.

Religious Fanaticism Has Clearly Produced, And In All Probability Will Continue To Produce, Enormous Amounts Of Bickering, Fighting, Violence, Bloodshed, Homicide, Feuds, Wars, And Genocide.

People And Things Do Not Upset Us. Rather, We Upset Ourselves By Believing That They Can Upset Us.

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.

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.

I Thought Foolishly That Freudian Psychoanalysis Was Deeper And More Intensive Than Other, More Directive Forms Of Therapy, So I Was Trained In It And Practiced It. Then I Found That It Intensively Went Into Every Irrelevancy Under The Sun - And That It Didn't Work. People Got Insights Into What Was Bothering Them, But They Hardly Did A Damn Thing To Change.

You Largely Constructed Your Depression. It Wasn't Given To You. Therefore, You Can Deconstruct It.

Clinical Depression

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.

Humans Can Always Accept Themselves Unconditionally.

Whenever You Avoid Alarming Situations, You Almost Always Increase Your Anxiety About Them.

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.

People Don't Just Get Upset. They Contribute To Their Upsetness.

There's No Evidence Whatsoever That Men Are More Rational Than Women. Both Sexes Seem To Be Equally Irrational.

The Best Years Of Your Life Are The Ones In Which You Decide Your Problems Are Your Own.

I Hope To Die In The Saddle Seat.

I Teach People To Be Flexible, Scientific And Logical In Their Thinking And Therefore To Be Less Prone To Brainwashing By The Therapist.

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.

Most Things Worth Having Require Some Sacrifice, Usually More Than You Expect.

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.

The Emotionally Sound Person Should Be Able To Take Risks, To Ask Himself What He Really Would Like To Do In Life, And Then To Try To Do This, Even Though He Has To Risk Defeat Or Failure. He Should Be Adventurous (though Not Necessarily Foolhardy); Be Willing To Try Almost Anything Once, Just To See How He Likes It; And Look Forward To Some Breaks In His Usual Life Routines.

Acceptance Is Not Love. You Love A Person Because He Or She Has Lovable Traits, But You Accept Everybody Just Because They're Alive And Human.

So I'd Better Stop My Whining And Help Myself Cope Better With Even The Worst Adversities.

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.

To Err Is Human; To Forgive People And Yourself For Poor Behavior Is To Be Sensible And Realistic.

My Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (rebt) Was One Of The Very Few Therapies That Was Originated Partly Or Largely Because I Wanted To Be Brief And Efficient. And Therefore Right From The Start I Was Active And Directive. I Tried To Show People Some Central Masturbatory Core To Their Philosophy And To Get Them To Work At Changing It Cognitively, Emotionally And Behaviorally.

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.

Lack Of Forgiveness Of Others Breeds Lack Of Self-forgiveness.

Self Forgiveness

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.

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.

I Had Used Eclectic Therapy And Behavior Therapy On Myself At The Age Of 19 To Get Over My Fear Of Public Speaking And Of Approaching Young Women In Public.

Public Speaking

Even When People Act Nastily To You, Don't Condemn Them Or Retaliate.

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.

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.

Stop Shoulding On Yourself

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.

The Attitude Of Unconditional Self-acceptance Is Probably The Most Important Variable In Their Long-term Recovery.

If Something Is Irrational, That Means It Won't Work. It's Usually Unrealistic.

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.

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.

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.

We Teach People That They Upset Themselves. We Can't Change The Past, So We Change How People Are Thinking, Feeling And Behaving Today.

There Are Three Musts That Hold Us Back: "i Must Do Well. You Must Treat Me Well. And The World Must Be Easy." And I Sometimes Think That As Long As We Keep The Second Must, Which Is Socially Learned, Then Some Screwballs 100 Years From Now Will Manufacture Atomic Bombs In Their Bathtub And Maybe Annihilate The Whole Human Race Because They Demand That The Rest Of The World Must Agree With Their Dogmas. When We Don't Agree, They May Zap Us.

We Can't Change The Past, So We Change How People Are Thinking, Feeling And Behaving Today.

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.

There Are Three Musts That Hold Us Back: I Must Do Well. You Must Treat Me Well. And The World Must Be Easy.

I Thought Foolishly That Freudian Psychoanalysis Was Deeper And More Intensive Than Other, More Directive Forms Of Therapy, So I Was Trained In It And Practiced It.

By Honestly Acknowledging Your Past Errors, But Never Damning Yourself For Them, You Can Learn To Use Your Past For Your Own Future Benefit.

I'm Very Happy. I Like My Work And I Like The Various Aspects Of It - Going Around The World, Teaching The Gospel According To St. Albert - I Like That. And Seeing Clients, Doing Group Therapy, Writing Books.

You Never Truly Need What You Want. That Is The Main And Thoroughgoing Key To Serenity.

Whining About Your Own, Others', Or The World's Failings Is A Main Element In What We Usually Call Neurosis.

The More Sinful And Guilty A Person Tends To Feel, The Less Chance There Is That He Will Be A Happy, Healthy, Or Law-abiding Citizen. He Will Become A Compulsive Wrong-doer.

Failure Doesn't Have Anything To Do With Your Intrinsic Value As A Person.

Intrinsic Value

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.

The World Consists Mainly Of Love Slobs Who Need Other People's Approval. Most People Don't Live Their Own Lives Very Well.

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.

When I Was 16 I Started Keeping A Diary In Which I Recorded My Disagreements With The Famous Philosophers. I Didn't Insist That They Were Wrong, That I Was Right And I Had To Prevail. I Just Agreed And Disagreed With Them. I Thought There Was A High Degree Of Probability That I Was Right And Some Other Thinkers Were Wrong. But I Wasn't Positive About It.

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.

Rational Beliefs Bring Us Closer To Getting Good Results In The Real World.

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.

Most People Would Have Given Up When Faced With All The Criticism I've Received Over The Years.

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.

Much Of What We Call Emotion Is Nothing More Or Less Than A Certain Kind - A Biased, Prejudiced, Or Strongly Evaluative Kind - Of Thought.

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, Negative Feelings Without Which People Couldn't Exist. But Then They Add, "i Absolutely Must Succeed And Must Be Loved By Significant Persons, And If I Don't, It's Terrible And I'm No Good." Those Are Irrational Beliefs. As Long As People Keep Them, They'll Be Terrified Of Life And Will Put Themselves Down When They Get Rejected.

The Art Of Love Is Largely The Art Of Persistence.

Fat Is A Barrier, A Bellicose Statement To Others That, To Some, Justifies Hostility In Kind. The World Says To The Fat Person, "your Fatness Is An Affront To Me, So We Have The Right To Treat You As Offensively As You Appear." Fat Is Not Merely Viewed As Another Type Of Tissue, But As A Diagnostic Sign, A Personal Statement, And A Measure Of Personality. Too Little Fat And We See You As Being Antisocial, Fearful And Sexless. Too Much Fat And We See You As Slothful, Stupid, And Sexually Hung Up.

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.

You Mainly Feel The Way You Think.

We'd Better Work Hard On Getting Rid Of That Must - Other People Must Do What I Want Them To Do!" It's What Makes People Hostile, Nasty, Mean And Combative, And It Leads To Feuds, Wars And Genocide. We'd Better Do Something About That.

The Freudian Tradition Will Never Completely Die Because It Has A Few Good Points. For Example, People Have Motives And Thoughts Of Which They Are Unaware. Most Of Cognitive Therapy Has Now Adopted A Similar Idea. On The Other Hand, The Relationship Part Of Psychoanalysis - Where You Must Have A Deep, Emotional Relationship With The Client - Will, I Think, Get Kicked In The Teeth One Of These Days.

When People Change Their Irrational Beliefs To Undogmatic Flexible Preferences, They Become Less Disturbed.

Needing Leads To Bleeding - To Almost All Inevitable Suffering.

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