Book from Dr. Albert Ellis and Robert A. Harper
Excellent stuff!!
Certain negative emotions seem especially to aid to survival. Thus, if you did not feel displeased, sorry, regretful, annoyed, irritated, frustrated, or disappointed when you suffer hunger, injury, or defeat would you feel motivated to keep out of harm's way and to continue your existence?
Many emotions add appreciably to human health and happiness. Your joy at hearing a beautiful piece of music, watching a lovely sunset, or successfully finishing a difficult task doesn't exactly preserve your life but an existence bereft of feelings like these would indeed seem drab and nonrewarding. Anyone, therefore, who attempts to control human emotions out of existence tackles a goal of dubious value.
Succeeding at such a task helps dehumanize men and women and makes their lives meaningless. The ancient philosophers who wanted humans to achieve a state of pure "soul" or pure intellect, devoid of all "crass" emotions actually asked us to behave like super robots. If we achieved this "superior" state, we could, like some of our modern electronic computers, effectively solve certain problems but would not feel any pleasure or satisfaction. Would you want such a superhuman existence?
Using rational philosophy, you first choose to accept yourself with your feelings -- even the crummy ones of depression and hatred. You can say to yourself: "How fascinating I find it (instead of "How awful!") that a basically intelligent person like me keeps acting so damned foolishly and negatively." You can see that you choose to change them if you really want to work at doing so. You can also discriminate your appropriate (self-fulfilling) from your inappropriate (self-damning) feelings. You can see the difference between your healthfully feeling displeased with your acts and your unhealthfully feeling horrified about them.
Meds, yoga, and breathing techniques may have a beneficial effect but they largely consist of diversion, since they help people to focus on their bodies rather than on the nutty thoughts with which they tend to plague themselves. They bring palliation (alleviate without cure) rather than cure, help people feel better instead of get better. They produce a limited effect.
We particularly encourage people with disturbances to help themselves and not rely too much on what others (chemists, physicians, or physiotherapists) can do for them. The less dependent they remain on drugs or physical apparatuses, the better. Our rational emotive methods of persuading them to think for themselves ideally lead to independence. Once they learn and persistently practice rationality for a while, they require little or no further outside assistance.
We're responsible for feeling continually sad and for making ourselves depressed. This kind of sustained negative emotion we needlessly fabricate results from our own false and stupid beliefs about what should occur. You may therefore eliminate it by straighter thinking. If sustained negative emotion results from your own thinking, you may have a choice as to what you can think and how you can emote. That remains one of the main advantages of your humanness: you can choose usually, to think one thing or the other, and if you make your goal living and enjoying, one kind of thinking will aid this goal while another kind of thinking can sabotage it. Naturally, you'd better pick the first rather than the second kind of thinking.
Many sustained negative thoughts and feelings help you preserve and enjoy yourself. Others do not. Learn to discriminate the former from the latter and act accordingly. If sustained feelings usually result from your conscious or unconscious thinking (especially from your internalized sentences), you rarely feel glad or sad because of the things that occur from the outside. Rather, you make yourself happy or miserable by your perceptions, attitudes, or self-verbalizations about these outside events.
Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did!
Excellent stuff!!
Certain negative emotions seem especially to aid to survival. Thus, if you did not feel displeased, sorry, regretful, annoyed, irritated, frustrated, or disappointed when you suffer hunger, injury, or defeat would you feel motivated to keep out of harm's way and to continue your existence?
Many emotions add appreciably to human health and happiness. Your joy at hearing a beautiful piece of music, watching a lovely sunset, or successfully finishing a difficult task doesn't exactly preserve your life but an existence bereft of feelings like these would indeed seem drab and nonrewarding. Anyone, therefore, who attempts to control human emotions out of existence tackles a goal of dubious value.
Succeeding at such a task helps dehumanize men and women and makes their lives meaningless. The ancient philosophers who wanted humans to achieve a state of pure "soul" or pure intellect, devoid of all "crass" emotions actually asked us to behave like super robots. If we achieved this "superior" state, we could, like some of our modern electronic computers, effectively solve certain problems but would not feel any pleasure or satisfaction. Would you want such a superhuman existence?
Using rational philosophy, you first choose to accept yourself with your feelings -- even the crummy ones of depression and hatred. You can say to yourself: "How fascinating I find it (instead of "How awful!") that a basically intelligent person like me keeps acting so damned foolishly and negatively." You can see that you choose to change them if you really want to work at doing so. You can also discriminate your appropriate (self-fulfilling) from your inappropriate (self-damning) feelings. You can see the difference between your healthfully feeling displeased with your acts and your unhealthfully feeling horrified about them.
Meds, yoga, and breathing techniques may have a beneficial effect but they largely consist of diversion, since they help people to focus on their bodies rather than on the nutty thoughts with which they tend to plague themselves. They bring palliation (alleviate without cure) rather than cure, help people feel better instead of get better. They produce a limited effect.
We particularly encourage people with disturbances to help themselves and not rely too much on what others (chemists, physicians, or physiotherapists) can do for them. The less dependent they remain on drugs or physical apparatuses, the better. Our rational emotive methods of persuading them to think for themselves ideally lead to independence. Once they learn and persistently practice rationality for a while, they require little or no further outside assistance.
We're responsible for feeling continually sad and for making ourselves depressed. This kind of sustained negative emotion we needlessly fabricate results from our own false and stupid beliefs about what should occur. You may therefore eliminate it by straighter thinking. If sustained negative emotion results from your own thinking, you may have a choice as to what you can think and how you can emote. That remains one of the main advantages of your humanness: you can choose usually, to think one thing or the other, and if you make your goal living and enjoying, one kind of thinking will aid this goal while another kind of thinking can sabotage it. Naturally, you'd better pick the first rather than the second kind of thinking.
Many sustained negative thoughts and feelings help you preserve and enjoy yourself. Others do not. Learn to discriminate the former from the latter and act accordingly. If sustained feelings usually result from your conscious or unconscious thinking (especially from your internalized sentences), you rarely feel glad or sad because of the things that occur from the outside. Rather, you make yourself happy or miserable by your perceptions, attitudes, or self-verbalizations about these outside events.
Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did!
