A Public Masturbator Changed My Life

I guess everyone IS a guru if you're willing to listen...

On a crispy winter morning, my husband and I made our way to the Strand Book Store near Union Square. New York City was full of tourists, and about a quarter of them seemed crammed into this bookstore. We had just moved into a sublet in the East Village after a falling out with someone we thought was a close friend—someone whose love came with fine print. Their support depended on whether we were useful or agreeable enough. In hindsight, their friendship mirrored the way I’d long treated myself: conditionally.

I was looking for a book—I don’t remember which—but I didn’t find it. I ended up on the bottom floor, which, in classic NYC fashion, was 30 degrees Celsius despite it being 2 degrees outside. One of the city’s many charms.

I wandered to the Philosophy section, which, naturally, was lumped in with self-help, religion, spirituality, and foreign languages—because of course these things can’t exist without one another. That’s when a butter-yellow book caught my eye. Did I subconsciously anticipate 2025’s butter-yellow fashion trend? Probably. My mom and I have a sixth sense for these things.

But it wasn’t the color. It was the title: The Myth of Self-Esteem by Albert Ellis. That was enough to make me buy it. Self-esteem has always been elusive for me—and I can't resist a man telling me why I don’t have any.

I took that puppy home and read it in a day. It marked a before-and-after in my life.

A Man of Big Ideas—and Even Bigger Red Flags

Albert Ellis was a man of groundbreaking ideas—and even bigger red flags. In his autobiography All Out!, he openly admits to publicly pleasuring himself by rubbing against women in crowded subways and buses when he was a teenager. Of course he went on to become a psychologist. Honestly, it’s the most on-brand psychologist origin story I’ve ever heard.

You can imagine my disappointment when I found out. Still, I found the teaching of his book profound. It showed me that I could extract wisdom while disapproving of his behavior. And I did.

Ellis was the father of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), the philosophical backbone of the more popular Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).

His thesis? Most people don’t actually have self-esteem. Not even you. What we have is conditional self-esteem—which isn’t really self-esteem at all. We like ourselves when we’re “good,” and loathe ourselves the moment we slip. If you only like yourself when you do yoga, eat clean, meditate, and weigh a certain amount but feel worthless when you binge-drink or skip the gym, sorry, you don’t have self-esteem. You have a rating system.

The Scam of Conditional Self-Esteem

Ellis urges you to take ownership of your emotions. Life doesn’t make you feel bad—your interpretation of life does. Want to feel better? Change your beliefs. That’s the foundation of REBT, and later CBT.

In sharp contrast to the Western ethos of “feel good about yourself!”, his thesis echoes Buddhist teachings about de-centering the ego. In a perfect world, we wouldn’t rate ourselves or our actions—we’d accept who we are, as is. And liking ourselves or feeling good is not a prerequisite for acceptance.

But Ellis admits the difficulty of this task. And if you're anything like me, while you might be deeply connected to Buddhist teachings, you may have also accepted that enlightenment is not for you in this lifetime. I’m going to be needing a yacht vacation through Europe stat to feel actualized and illuminated. So what happens if you must rate the self?

The Radical Notion of Self-Worth That Doesn't Fluctuate

You have to accept yourself—even if you’re fat, ugly, lazy, broke, or loud. And not in a toxic-positivity way. You don’t need to believe you’re secretly a hot, rich genius. You just have to stop thinking those labels change your worth. Your worth is already intact.

Ellis says it’s irrational to rate your entire self based on isolated behaviors. You can and should evaluate your actions—but the self remains worthy regardless.

Difficult? Absolutely. He says it takes years of practice and self-monitoring to silence that cruel inner narrator who insists you're only as good as your latest achievement.

Even more surprising—he also warns against over-celebrating your wins. Ellis draws a sharp distinction between saying, “That was a helpful behavior,” and “I’m a good person because I did that.” The first is rational. The second is ego-inflation—and fragile. Because once your behavior changes (and it will), the inflated self-image crashes.

In Ellis’s terms:
“That was a productive behavior” = ✔️
“I’m proud because I’m being good today” = Slippery slope
“I’m lovable because I did that” = Conditional self-esteem

He coined the term musturbation to describe our irrational, rigid beliefs: “I must do this,” “They must treat me that way,” “Life must go my way.” These thoughts create guilt, anxiety, and shame. The cure? Accept reality—and accept yourself—as is.

Reading this, it occurred to me then that I wasn’t just rating myself—I was also tolerating relationships that rated me. When you live in a constant cycle of proving your worth to yourself, you’ll naturally attract (and accept) people who expect you to keep proving it to them, too. And the worst part? You’ll expect that of them as well. We’re all mirrors, after all.

A Liberated Self, Not a Cured One

So yes, your actions should align with the life you say you want. That means judging them. But here's the trick: you can evaluate your behavior in terms of whether it moves you closer to your goals—without attaching a moral judgment to your entire identity. Those are two very different things.

Here’s what you can do:

Rate your actions, not your self. Ask: “Does this bring me closer to the life I want?”
That’s it. You can reflect with clarity, without spiraling into self-hate or delusion.

And just like that, my self-esteem wasn’t "cured"—but it was liberated.

The Line That Changed My Life

After I digested all these teachings, I picked up a piece of paper and drew an image. On the right: A drawing of Me. Intact. Untouchable. Perfectly flawed.
On the left: My actions, behaviors, habits. Fair game.

I drew a line between the two, and my life was forever changed.

That separation gave me something priceless: objectivity. I could say, “That was unhelpful,” without feeling angst or disgust. I could love myself and still want to grow.

Also, this book didn’t just change how I see myself—it changed how I choose my friendships. I now only try to surround myself with people who practice unconditional self-acceptance (or are actively working toward it).

I’ve seen what conditional self-esteem looks like up close: it flatters when it benefits, abandons when it’s inconvenient, and resents anything that challenges it. When our self-worth is tied to performance, so is our love. Ellis helped me name that. Conditional self-esteem doesn’t just hurt you—it hurts everyone around you. Been there, done that.

So…Albert Ellis, the man who touched himself in public, gave me a gift: an untouchable self.