The Choice

whimpered. From this Seligman concluded that when we feel we have
no control over our circumstances, when we believe that nothing we
do can alleviate our suffering or improve our lives, we stop taking
action on our own behalf because we believe there is no point. is is
what happened at the camps, when former inmates le through the
gates only to return to prison, to sit vacantly, unsure what to do with
their freedom now that it had finally come.
Suffering is inevitable and universal. But how we respond to
suffering differs. In my studies, I gravitated toward psychologists
whose work revealed our power to effect change in ourselves. Albert
Ellis, who founded Rational Emotive Behavior erapy, a precursor to
cognitive behavior therapy, taught me the extent to which we teach
ourselves negative feelings about ourselves—and the negative and self-
defeating behaviors that follow from these feelings. He showed that
underlying our least effective and most harmful behaviors is a
philosophical or ideological core that is irrational but is so central to
our views of our self and the world that oen we aren’t aware that it is
only a belief, nor are we aware of how persistently we repeat this belief
to ourselves in our daily lives. e belief determines our feelings
(sadness, anger, anxiety, etc.), and our feelings in turn inĘuence our
behavior (acting out, shutting down, self-medicating to ease the
discomfort). To change our behavior, Ellis taught, we must change our
feelings, and to change our feelings, we change our thoughts.
I watched Ellis conduct a therapy session onstage one day, working
with a conĕdent and articulate young woman who was frustrated by
her dating experiences. She felt she wasn’t able to attract the kind of
men she wanted to have a long-term relationship with, and she was
seeking advice on how to meet and connect with eligible men. She said
that she tended to feel shy and tense when she met a man she thought
might be a good ĕt, and that she behaved in a guarded and defensive
manner that masked her true self and her true interest in getting to