Rating: 
Summary: An Excellent Book If You Want to Work at Changing Your Life
Review:
If you are truly interested in working at changing your life you will find this book outstanding.
The title should not mislead. The authors do not suggest that your anxiety, procrastination, depression, or other emotional turmoil can be resolved permanently in just three minutes. Rather, the authors Dr. Edelstein and Dr. Steele take a realistic approach and explain that human beings naturally incline toward irrational, demanding, and often self destructive thinking. If you want to feel and act significantly better and work your way out of various types of emotional pain and turmoil - you have to keep working at it. In this reviewer's opinion, most people who want to work on these things do not know how to work at it. What tool do you use to tackle common naturally occurring emotional problems like depression, anxiety, or procrastination? Enter Three Minute Therapy. The outstanding thing about this book is that the authors provide an extraordinarily useful tool - a simple three minute exercise that can be applied to vitually any area of emotional pain and turmoil that can be used time and time again throughout your life. This outstanding book provides both immediate help and long term benefits to people who take its message seriously. Once the reader understands the method and how to apply it, the analysis and correction of faulty, self-destructive thinking, requires just a few minutes as the need from time to time arises in life. This is a serious book that provides indispensible tools that will help you change your thinking and improve your life. I have twice paid out of my own pocket and purchased the book for friends.
Rating: 
Summary: too many stories and not enough substance
Review: Dr. Edelstein has written a simple, straightforward and very helpful book here. REBT made easy. There's gold here folks! I recommend not only the book, but also Dr. Edelstein as a therapist. One of the things I've learned from him and his wonderful book is how to get control of my unhealthy eating habits and to start exercising. I've lost 40lbs so far, and I am continuing to lose. To get help losing weight was the reason I started therapy with him, but I got so much more out of it. I only wish I had discovered this way of thinking 20 years ago. But as I have learned, it is never too late to turn your life around. In addition to this book, I also highly recommend Albert Ellis's "A Guide To Rational Living". Thanks Dr. E for all the help and for writing this book!
Rating:
Summary: Changed my life for the better from the first chapter.
Review: For economic reasons, I practice self help whenever I can, so self-help books appeal to me. I have lots of them, but not often do I read a book like Three Minute Therapy which began to help me from the first chapter. Reasonable thinking lies at the heart of this therapy. The simplicity of the author's technique fit right into my busy life in that I did not have to wait weeks or till midway the book to comprehend Dr. Edelstein's technique or start getting obvious results.I have compulsive shopping and anxiety, family disputes and job tensions. I started using Dr. Edelstein's simple, down to earth, rational therapy and already become aware of positive improvements in my life. I talk to my mother more affectionately now thanks to this book because I learned to accept her and not require she become my ideal. I find my work more enjoyable because of changed expectations and reduced anxiety about having to be perfect. I find play more fun, and started again on creating an office manual, now that I understand it need not be the ultimate, most perfect one. I like the new feelings I am still obtaining from this book. Socially, I feel less of a need to have absolute approval from friends, and this freedom has given me a great deal of comfort. I say feeling because my new reasonable thinking actually has benefited my emotions. These improvements I am sure came from contact with this Three Minute Therapy book. I would like to recommend it to everyone I know. Cliff Cin, San Francisco
Rating:
Summary: Building Mental Muscle
Review: Having been trained as a therapist during the golden days of the growth movement in the 70s, and experiencing the last 20 years in business, I very much appreciate the clear methodollogy of resolving the tendency to create "optional suffering". By drilling down on the demands you make of yourself and others, and shining a bright light on them, you can then following the exercises to build a new set of mental muscles that over time will overcome the tendency we all have to create pain for ourselves. Simple. Elegant. Clear.
Rating:
Summary: Great comfort
Review: I continue to find great comfort in this book. Just last night I started reading it again, after feeling anxious about a personal problem (receiving notice that someone is suing). The part about separating the Practical Problem from the Emotional Problem is
great advice, all by itself. So, it's back to ABCDEF (acronym for the steps of the Three Minute exercises) for me. Thanks for the very helpful book.
Rating: 
Summary: some what Excellent
Review: I wanted to give 3 stars to this, but I couldn't just because I believe therapy is a bag like a bag of tricks sometimes certain therapies work for certain ppl while others will work for other ppl. REBT while very practical pretends that what you ahve gone thrue, you personal history is of very little importance and what matters only is the here adn now. IT has a high emphasis on rationality. Big problem, most human beigns aren't pure rationalists, if they were there wouldn't there woulnd't be any problems in the first place. Besides cutting out the heart from life and depending on pure rationalism is cutting yourself off from real life.
Rating:
Summary: some what Excellent
Review: I wanted to give 3 stars to this, but I couldn't just because I believe therapy is a bag like a bag of tricks sometimes certain therapies work for certain ppl while others will work for other ppl. REBT while very practical pretends that what you ahve gone thrue, you personal history is of very little importance and what matters only is the here adn now. IT has a high emphasis on rationality. Big problem, most human beigns aren't pure rationalists, if they were there wouldn't there woulnd't be any problems in the first place. Besides cutting out the heart from life and depending on pure rationalism is cutting yourself off from real life.
Rating:
Summary: Don't be fooled by the cheesy title or jacket design!
Review: I've just finished the book cover-to-cover, and despite the seemingly frivolous title (kind of like "Six Minute Abs") and cheap jacket design, the book is exceedingly well-written, well thought-out, and very instructive. Basically, the idea behind a lot of our troubles (fears/worry, procrastination, overeating, anger, etc.) stem NOT from "not thinking positive enough" (the author quickly dispels this useless adage), but because we think too negatively; rather, we cling to irrational, or at least unfounded and detrimental, ideas and beliefs and "trick" ourselves into believing them. Three-minute therapy involves identifying these irrational beliefs, actively challenging them, and then reinforcing the rational counterparts over and over again, for, you guessed it!, 3 minutes a day. I have to say that for me, personally, it has helped me start to overcome my procrastination and overeating habits. I have yet to fully extend the philosophy to the rest of my life, but I'm anxious to do so. Edelstein makes a few controversial statements (among them, that AA is a bunch of hogwash for alcoholics, and so is suppressed childhood trauma as the source of present-day emotional trouble), but overall he makes a strong case for a form of therapy that seems practical and highly effective. The book is written in an informal style, and even imparts some humor. I really liked his list of some of the more ludicrous worries that some of his patients have had!!!
Rating:
Summary: This book saved my sanity!
Review: I've read lots of books in many areas of psychology...from hypnosis to narrative to cognitive behavioral..and I think Edelstein hits it right on the nose. Cogent, concise writing and laser beam precision on how to solve the daily problems of living and thinking...The book is PRACTICAL with step by step processes that are easy to understand. Definitely saved my sanity... Highly recommend this one.
Rating:
Summary: depresssion to elation
Review: The human condition head on! Finally psychological help is finding it's way to people! After forty years, cognitive therapy, and specifically, Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy, are proving to be the most effective means to solve depression problems beyond par. Three Minute Therapy clearly teaches how to do it. Many other cognitive books have broken through, Three Minute Therapy takes off of their foundation. Only three minutes? Michael Edelstein clearly reemphacizes that repeated work is required. But not to be daunted! He shows three minute excercises that can be done by anyone, provided they are a person seeking the truth, with willingness to consistently perform the excersices on a daily basis. And they only take three minutes. The severest depression is lifted, the severest anxiety relieved, the most violent anger assuaged. I have been so depressed that I could not get out of a chair. Congitive therapy changed all of that. Now my life is filled with problems that are predominantly practical, which I enjoy addressing. Three Minute Therapy makes it crystal clear how to do it. As the years go by these methods will become recognized as the most efficient, effective and humane to employ in all people's emotional problems. More power to Edelstein for leading those who suffer away from the doldrums of psycho-babble, into the realm of practical and joyful living. Get it. Do it. Your world will be a better place. Mick Berry
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