Reality Therapy Quotes

“Finding out how bad the past was does not help unless the person can learn better and more responsible ways to behave now and in the future.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“We accept no excuses for irresponsible acts. Students are held responsible for their behavior and cannot escape responsibility on the plea of being emotionally upset, mistreated by mother, neglected by father, or discriminated against by society.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“When a man acts in such a way that he gives and receives love, and feels worthwhile to himself and others, his behavior is right or moral.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“Never say no when you mean yes,”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry – The Classic Bestseller on Fulfilling Needs Through Present-Focused Responsibility

“we learn responsibility through involvements with responsible fellow human beings, preferably loving parents who will love and discipline us properly, who are intelligent enough to allow us freedom to try out our newly acquired responsibility as soon as we show readiness to do so.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry – The Classic Bestseller on Fulfilling Needs Through Present-Focused Responsibility

“Regardless of past circumstances, the psychiatric patient must develop the strength to take the responsibility to fulfill his needs satisfactorily. Treatment, therefore, is not to give him understanding of past misfortunes which caused his "illness," but to help him to function in a better way right now.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“If there is a medical analogy which applies to psychiatric problems, it is not illness but weakness.While illness can be cured by removing the causative agent, weakness can be cured only by strengthening the existing body to cope with the stress of the world, large or small as this stress may be,”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“All aberrant behavior is either an attempt to evade or an inability to take the responsibility of doing right, of fulfilling our basic needs.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“In Reality Therapy, therefore, we rarely ask why. Our usual question is What? What are you doing - not, why are you doing it? Why implies that the reasons for the patient's behavior make a difference in therapy, but they do not. The patient will himself search for reasons; but until he has become more responsible he will not be able to act differently, even when he knows why. All the reasons in the world for why he drinks will not lead an alcoholic to stop.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“In Reality Therapy emotions and happiness are never divorced from behavior. Gaining insight into the unconscious thinking which accompanies aberrant behavior is not an objective; excuses for deviant behavior are not accepted and one's history is not made more important than one's present life.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“Because the patient must gain responsibility right now, we always focus on the present.
[...] The present, the right now, is the critical task, not the easy job of recounting his historical irresponsibility and looking for excuses. Why become involved with the irresponsible person he was? We want to become involved with the responsible person we know he can be.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“Sessions which do not bear directly on the patient's problems are not as wasted as long as they relate to his growing awareness that he is a part of the world and that perhaps he can cope with it. When values, standards, and responsibility are in the background, all discussion is relevant to therapy.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“As part of becoming involved the therapist must become interested in and discuss all aspects of the patient's present life. [...] We are interested in him as a person with a wide potential, not just as a patient with problems. In fact, one of the best ways not to become involved is to discuss his problems over and over.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“Happiness occurs most often when we are willing to take responsibility for our behavior. Irresponsible people, always seeking to gain happiness without assuming responsibility, find only brief periods of joy, but not the deep-seated satisfaction which accompanies responsible behavior.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“The patient rather than the therapist must decide whether or not his behavior is irresponsible and whether he should change it. [...] If a man thinks it is all right to overeat and be fat, no obesity treatment will work.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“[W]aiting for attitudes to change stalls therapy whereas changing behavior leads quickly to a change in attitude, which in turn can lead to fulfilling needs and further better behavior.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“Therapy is a special kind of teaching or training which attempts to accomplish in a relatively short, intense period what should have established during normal growing up.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“[P]atients, no matter what their psychiatric complaint, suffer from a universal defect: they are unable to fulfill their needs in a realistic way and have taken some less realistic way in their unsuccessful attempts to do so.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“In essence, we gain self-respect through discipline and closeness to others through love. Discipline must always have within it the element of love. "I care enough about you to force you to act in a better way, in a way you will learn through experience to know, and I already know, is the right way." Similarly, love must always have an element of discipline. "I love you because you are a worthwhile person, because I respect you and feel you respect me as well as yourself.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“Our job is not to lessen the pain of irresponsible actions, but to increase the patient's strength so that he can bear the necessary pain of a full life as well as enjoy the rewards of a deeply responsible existence.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“The skill of therapy is to put the responsibility upon the patient, and after involvement is established, to ask him why he remains in therapy if he is not dissatisfied with his behavior.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry