New PN: How to Control Your Anxiety
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Before It Controls Youby Albert Ellis, PhD |
“I better not have a Pollyannaish philosophy and be absolutely certain that everything will happen for the best and life will be an ecstatic ball. Such an unrealistic outlook will relieve my anxiety temporarily, but will probably lead me to panic and depression when things turn out badly.”ALBERT ELLIS |
FROM THE BOOK“Best of all, perhaps, Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), which I created in 1955, and Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), a similar form of therapy which followed REBT in the 1960s, are probably the most efficient forms of self-help therapy that have been devised.
Hundreds of books and materials have used REBT, or something very similar to it, to show readers and listeners how to help themselves overcome their serious feelings of depression, anxiety, rage, self-downing, and self-pity. This is because this self-help therapy can be put in simple terms so that almost anyone can understand it, and it can be used by almost any determined person who will take pains to apply it to his or her own personal disturbance. It works!
From my own experience, then, and from the experience of tens of thousands of people who have used the main elements of REBT and of CBT, I am quite sure that you, the reader of this book, can control your anxiety before it controls you. There are no guarantees, of course, that if you use REBT or CBT it will help you remove your anxiety. But there is a high degree of probability that you can succeed if you really work at it. I did it myself, without much help, and without over fifty years of research and practice that have now been added to it and that make it more effective today than ever.
Do you tend to be anxious on many occasions and about several things? Yes, practically all people are. Can you work and think differently to minimize your anxiety? Yes, practically all people can. Will you use the thinking and action that I have used to minimize whatever anxiety you do have? Try REBT and CBT and see for yourself!”
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Brian's Notes
Psychology Today says that “No individual—not even Freud himself—has had a greater impact on modern psychotherapy” than Albert Ellis.
You may be wondering: How is that possible?
It’s because Albert Ellis basically founded the cognitive behavior therapy movement. Technically, he called his approach “Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy” (REBT) and Aaron Beck modified that to “Cognitive Behavior Therapy” (CBT) but it all started with Ellis.
Ellis was born in 1913. To put that in perspective, Joseph Campbell was born in 1904 and Abraham Maslow was born in 1908. (Exercising my curiosity muscles, I just looked up Will Durant (1885) and Yogananda (1893) as well.)
He founded REBT in 1955 when he was 42. He wrote this book in 1998 when he was 85.
In addition to being brilliant, he’s also very irreverent and funny. He reminds me of my Yoda, Phil Stutz. Although he doesn’t drop f bombs like Phil does with Jonah Hill in the Netflix documentary Stutz, he has the same iconoclastic attitude and sense of humor.
It’s a winning combo to make studying topics like how to control your anxiety more fun. :)
This is the second Note on one of his books I’ve created so far. Check out the first one: A Guide to Rational Living. I read a couple other of his books during that 101 books in 101 days ultra-book-reading-marathon last year. We’ll be covering them soon.
The book is PACKED with Big Ideas. I’m excited to share a handful of my favorites and help you APPLY that wisdom to your life TODAY so... Let’s get to work!
P.S. Without boring you with the details, scientists like to think of CBT as evolving in three “waves.” The first wave was primarily focused on behaviors (think, B.F. Skinner). Then Ellis and Beck came in and added the cognitive side of things in the second wave. Then, in the third wave, we see the evolution of CBT to include applications like Stephen Hayes’s Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Marsha Linehan’s Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR).
We have a TON of Notes to help you get more (practical!) wisdom in less time on all those approaches. Check out our Notes on: Get Out of Your Mind & Into Your Life by Stephen Hayes, Building a Life Worth Living by Marsha Linehan, Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn, plus The Happiness Trap and The Confidence Gap by Russ Harris.
Big Ideas
01: MEET YOUR GUIDE
02: ANXIETY
03: UNCERTAINTY
04: IRRATIONAL BELIEFS
05: SELF-ACCEPTANCE
“Instead of saying, ‘I don’t like myself for having this behavior or trait,’ I will say, ‘I don’t like having this behavior or trait. What can I do to improve it?’”ALBERT ELLIS |
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