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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

We can't change the past, so we change how people are thinking, feeling and behaving today.