Albert Ellis Quotes

Self-esteem is the greatest sickness known to man or woman because it's conditional.

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.

If the Martians ever find out how human beings think, they'll kill themselves laughing.

I think it's unfair, but they have the right as fallible, screwed-up humans to be unfair; that's the human condition.

Much of what we call emotion is nothing more or less than a certain kind - a biased, prejudiced, or strongly evaluative kind - of thought.

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.

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.

We can actually put the essence of neurosis in a single word: blaming - or damning.

If you prefer to perform well and want to be accepted by others, you are concerned that you will fail and be rejected. Your healthy concern encourages you to act competently and nicely. But if you devoutly believe that you absolutely, under all conditions, must perform well and that you have to be accepted by others, you will then tend to make yourself - yes, make yourself - panicked if you don't perform as well as you supposedly must.

The concept of deservingness for one's "sins" implies that certain acts are unquestionably under all conditions "sinful." And this is impossible to prove.

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.

The attitude of unconditional self-acceptance is probably the most important variable in their long-term recovery.

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.

Convince yourself that worrying about many situations will make them worse rather than improve them.

You have only to exist as you do and to live your life as best you can.

The expense of making yourself panicked, enraged, and self-pitying is enormous. In time and money lost. In needless effort spent. In uncalled-for mental anguish. In sabotaging others' happiness. In foolishly frittering away potential joy during the one life - yes, the one life - you'll probably ever have.

Whining about your own, others', or the world's failings is a main element in what we usually call neurosis.

insight will help you very little.

Science is skeptical that the universe includes "deservingness" and "undeservingness" and that it deifies people (and things) for their "good" acts or damns them for their "bad" behavior. It does not have any absolute, universal standard of "good" and "bad" behavior and assumes that if any group sees certain deeds as "good" it will tend to (but doesn't have to) reward those who act that way and will often (but not always) penalize those who act "badly.

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.

Worrying about dying will hardly help you live.

By honestly acknowledging your past errors, but never damning yourself for them, you can learn to use your past for your own future benefit.

Even injustice has it's good points. It gives me the challenge of being as happy as I can in an unfair world.

Too many people are unaware that it is not outer events or circumstances that will create happiness; rather, it is our perception of events and of ourselves that will create, or uncreate, positive emotions.

We had better rate our important parts-our thoughts, feelings, and actions-to see how they helped or hindered us. But-damn it!-we didn't have to rate our self, our being, our essence. Our self or personhood was too complex to be given a global rating. We could say, for practical reasons, it was "good"-meaning it helped us to live and enjoy. Or we could say that it just didn't have to be rated at all. Use our self but not rate it!

Most people would have given up when faced with all the criticism I've received over the years.

People don't just get upset. They contribute to their upsetness.

Whenever you have strong negative feelings because unfortunate things are actually happening to you or you imagine that they might occur, see whether these feelings healthfully follow from your wishes and desires to have better things occur. Or are you creating them by going beyond your preferences and inventing powerful shoulds, oughts, musts, demands, commands, and necessities? If so, you are turning concern and caution into overconcern, severe anxiety, and panic. Observe the real difference in your feelings!

If something is irrational, that means it won't work. It's usually unrealistic.

Stop shoulding on yourself

You can figure out by sheer logic that if you were only - and I mean only - to stay with your desires and preferences, and if you were never - and I mean never - to stray into unrealistic demands that your desires have to be fulfilled, you could very rarely disturb, really disturb, yourself about anything. Why? Because your preferences start off with, "I would very much like or prefer to have success, approval, or comfort," and then end with the conclusion, "But I don't have to have it. I won't die without it. And I could be happy (though not as happy) without it.

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.

If I had been a member of the academic establishment, I could have done other experiments.

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.

So I'd better stop my whining and help myself cope better with even the worst Adversities.

You and many outstanding inventors and writers have striven for the ideal and have thereby helped yourself do remarkably well. REBT, therefore, does not oppose competition or striving for outstanding achievement. It advocates task-perfection, not self-perfection." "What does that mean?" "It means that you can try to be as good, or even as perfect, as you can - at any project or task. You can try to make it ideal. But you are not a good person if it is perfect. You are still a person who completed a perfect project, but never a good person for doing so." "How, then, do I become an incompetent or bad person?" "You don't! When you do incompetent or evil acts, you become a person who acted badly - never a bad person.

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.

I hope to die in the saddle seat.

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.

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.

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.

Whenever you avoid alarming situations, you almost always increase your anxiety about them.

You create severe anxiety when you jump from inclination to musturbation.

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.

Keep my desires and goals in mind. Don't insist that they must or must not be fulfilled. Let me work unfrantically to achieve them. REBT

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.

Having some support and the reassurance that my family, friends, or others will help me when I am anxious will often reduce my anxiety and panic. But because such support and reassurance may not exist or may not continue, I'd better not rely on it solely. I also had better gain self-confidence and self-support. 8.

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.

Men are not disturbed by things, but by the views which they take of them

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.

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.

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.

Worry itself is one of the most painful conditions.

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.

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.

I get people to truly accept themselves unconditionally, whether or not their therapist or anyone loves them.

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.

Evolution is arranged so that a species survives, not so that it will be happy while it survives.

Science, as I pointed out in the previous chapter, is flexible and nondogmatic. It sticks to facts and to reality (which always can change) and to logical thinking (which does not contradict itself and hold two opposite views at the same time). But it also avoids rigid all-or-none and either/or thinking and sees that reality is often two sided and includes contradictory events and characteristics. Thus, in my relations with you, I am not a totally good person or a bad person but a person who sometimes treats you well and sometimes treats you badly. Instead of viewing world events in a rigid, absolute way, science assumes that such events, and especially human affairs, usually follow the laws of probability.

The easy way out is often just that-the 'easy' way out of the most rewarding lifestyle.

The great majority of the things we now make ourselves panicked about are self-created 'dangers' that exist almost entirely in our own imaginations.

Freud had a gene for inefficiency, and I think I have a gene for efficiency.

Most things worth having require some sacrifice, usually more than you expect.

There are three musts that hold us back: I must do well. You must treat me well . And the world must be easy.

Even when people act nastily to you, don't condemn them or retaliate.

You never truly need what you want. That is the main and thoroughgoing key to serenity.

Rational beliefs bring us closer to getting good results in the real world.

Whatever may be, I am still largely the creator and ruler of my emotional destiny.

In fact most of what we call anxiety is overconcern about what someone thinks of you.

Failure doesn't have anything to do with your intrinsic value as a person.