Rating: 
Summary: A Waste of Time!
Review: "Mind Over Mood" is rather easy to ready and has many helpful tools. While the tools are somewhat easy to understand it is the implimenting of them, initially,and the practice of using them that is the challenge...and yet via using and working the "mind" tools IS what makes the good and helpful differences.I used this in conjunction with a therapist AND a group. It's been over a year that I left the group, but I still ocassionally use these "mental tools" This IS a keeper ! Good luck to you readers in helping improve and turn around your life or the life of a loved one. - Greg in Minneapolis, MN
Rating: 
Summary: It turned my life around !
Review: "Mind Over Mood" is rather easy to ready and has many helpful tools. While the tools are somewhat easy to understand it is the implimenting of them, initially,and the practice of using them that is the challenge...and yet via using and working the "mind" tools IS what makes the good and helpful differences. I used this in conjunction with a therapist AND a group. It's been over a year that I left the group, but I still ocassionally use these "mental tools" This IS a keeper ! Good luck to you readers in helping improve and turn around your life or the life of a loved one. - Greg in Minneapolis, MN
Rating:
Summary: powerful, easy tools conquer depression/anxiety
Review: After years in therapy and various methods (Freudian, Jungian, etc.), it was finally Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) that helped me stop the negative, worrying (a facet of anxiety) voices that blared incessantly in my mind.
I can not recommend this book enough. Its simple exercises will have you seeing the fallacy of your thoughts, which are what determine your mood. The book (and CBT's) superbly simplistic idea is that your THOUGHTS are what control your MOODS. Control your thoughts, and you control your moods. But before we can do this, we have to slow down enough to take the time to see where our thoughts are coming from. This book and its exercises help us find where we are simply WRONG in the thoughts we have about ourselves which lead to depressed or anxious mood.
These exercises will help you determine your "hot thoughts," (automatic thoughts you hold about yourself that are linked to depressed/anxious mood), will help you examine evidence for and against your thoughts, and then help you use this evidence to create NEW THOUGHTS which ought to in turn help you create NEW MOODS.
These techniques are amazingly simple but also incredibly powerful. If you feel stuck in "talk therapy" analysis and can not seem to change the way you think about yourself, this book is for you! However, you should also seek a trained COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPIST to teach you the techniques to literally CHANGE your thought process.
Anxiety and depression are more and more common in our society, and much of what causes these mood disturbances is our incorrect/unfounded thoughts about ourselves. Once we learn to manage our thoughts, we learn to change our mood. This book and what it teaches is life-changing.
Rating: 
Summary: A Pearl
Review: Authors Greenberger and Padesky in their Prologue use the analogy of an oyster creating a pearl out of a grain of sand. In response to an irritation, the oyster encases the particle in a smooth, protective coating, thus providing itself both relief and a thing of value. So too this book will assist anyone with a mood disorder to create relief and their own emotional pearl. This cognitive workbook helps the anxiety sufferer alleviate mood problems as well as reduce stress, solve problems, and improve self-esteem. It does this by helping the reader identify thoughts, moods, behaviors, and physiological reactions; test usefulness of those responses; and change thinking patterns which are ineffective or dysfunctional. However, because there is less information on how cognitions, emotions, behaviors, and physiological reactions relate to anxiety or depression than might be useful for greater self-understanding, I think this good book is, in many instances, better as an adjunct to psychotherapy than as a strictly self-help vehicle.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book giving you lifetime thinking skills
Review: Ben is 71 years old; he aches all over. His golfing buddy just died and his wife is recovering from breast cancer. His children and grandchildren don't seem to need him anymore. Ben has given up, "I feel half dead already."
Marissa, age 36, has gone through her second divorce. Both of her hus-bands were abusive alcoholics. Her father, starting at age 6, had sexually molested her. She feels worthless. "I'm no good," "I'm a failure," I'm never going to get better," "My life is hopeless," "I may as well kill myself." She has one child, age 18.
Linda, age 29, is a competent professional. She was offered a promotion as a regional supervisor; a promotion involving frequent flying. Just the thought of flying leaves her in a cold sweat, with her heart pounding and gasping for breath. She has had several panic attacks each week. But why, Linda asks? "I support myself, I've managed to buy a small condo, I have good friends and a supportive family, I don't drink or use drugs, I've always lived a good life-why is this happening to me?"
Vic is a 49 year old recovering alcoholic with anger management problems. He feels he has to be perfect. His anger, his perfectionism and his alcoholism are destroying his relationship with his wife, Judy.
These are the four individuals whom you will meet in this workbook. Ben and Marissa suffer from depression, Linda is struggling with panic attacks, Vic is dealing with alcoholism, anger management problems and perfectionism. These individuals want to change, but they don't know how to break out of the thinking patterns that are destroying their lives. The authors of this workbook give them the means to do just that, to learn and automatize new thinking methods. It is fascinating to watch Ben, Marissa, Linda and Vic learn to challenge their old thinking patterns, learn healthy thinking methods and improve their lives.
What are you struggling with in your life? What patterns in thinking have held you trapped over the years? How can you develop and automatize a new way of seeing things that helps get you out of ruts you have maintained over the years? Drs. Padesky and Greenberger give you practice in learning how to make sense of your moods, to identify your own irrational thinking and to base your thinking fully on facts. They even give you a means to challenge old thinking patterns that you developed as a child. I saw Dr. Padesky demonstate these skills at a cognitive therapy conference. I walked away very impressed with her warm, sincere, knowledgeable, creative and rational approach to helping people change. I am delighted to recommend this workbook.
Rating:
Summary: Thinking clearly, feeling better -- it works!
Review: Depression descends like a veil separating the person from the processes of life and creating a dark closet where videotapes of pain experienced and hope lost play continuously. Turning off the mind videos, transitioning from sad to ok, sleeping and eating on a regular schedule, moving from self-criticism to self-acceptance can be difficult on the best of days. Mind Over Mood provides insightful narratives relating the experiences of others to the experiences I was feeling - I could begin to see the authors' cast of characters in my own mirror and begin healing with them. But more than that, Mind Over Mood contributes hands on tools that have started a process of discovery about how I think, what I'm feeling, how I react and how to chart a balanced life course. Drs. Greenberger and Padesky are acclaimed in the book's foreword by Aaron T. Beck, the pioneer of cognitive therapy, for their "vision and innovation" as well as their abilities to teach what they practice. It is probable, however, that their contributions to the lives of their readers will be documented as their greatest success. Acknowledging that "emotions generally enrich our lives, (but) too much emotion can be disruptive", the authors provide a framework to sort automatic thoughts and core beliefs about ourselves, others and the world. Mind Over Mood's worksheets prompt insights in the first chapter at the first reading and guide the reader to developing introspective and comprehensive perspectives about seemingly modest predicaments as well as significant events. Their approach is empathetic and their tools are practical as they help all of us enhance our mental flexibility. As parents struggle to develop well-rounded children, as teachers challenge students to not only think creatively but to think in balanced ways, as managers try to impart emotional intelligence to create agile workers, Mind Over Mood offers an approach appropriate for multiple forums and principles central to improving the quality of all lives. No book is a substitute for the guidance of a qualified and understanding therapist in crisis situations. However, Mind Over Mood clearly provides tools to identify and organize thoughts and moods to feel better and to set action plans that challenge our assumptions, reduce distorted thinking, and establish a solid platform for personal growth and improved relationships. In more basic terms, Mind Over Mood continues to work for me - I carry the concepts with me everyday. I would wish the same comfort for you and your family.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent. Practical. Very effective, esp. with a group.
Review: Helps build diagnostic and effective practical tools for addressing the thinking that leads to depression. Allows the reader to think and practice their way out of difficulty. It was a tremendous aid to a cognitive group therapy session that I took. I never expected to attend such a group, let alone the super results
Rating:
Summary: As a therapist...
Review: I found much of Mind Over Mood to be very helpful. I used this workbook in combination with cognitive-behavioral therapy. The workbook helped to illustrate the treatment plan and explained things better than I could. However, I felt that parts of the workbook "talked down" to the client. I hope that future editions use smarter language.
Rating:
Summary: Very readable and understandable
Review: I have just begun to read this book, which I saw on my therapist's bookshelf. This book is so understandable. It is written in normal English. You don't need a degree to understand it.
Rating: 
Summary: A Disgrunted Customer
Review: I was very disappointed in this book. I thought that this book would help me to change how I feel when difficult times arrive. And it certainly did not impart any useful information, as I read it. It's certainly possible that some people have become disconnected from their own thought process, and the relationship this has on their emotions, that they don't recognize what they're actually thinking, how this is triggering their emotions, and how their thoughts may not be excessive given the contexts. For such people, this book is useful. It has a chart in it where you can write an event, your triggering thoughts over the event, your resulting emotions, and possible response thoughts. If you think that is the help you need, then this is the book for you. But I have no trouble seeing the relationships between my thoughts and emotions. Nor do I have trouble dialoguing with myself, responding to excessive thoughts with responses. I guess I had some idea that this book would have mantras--like affirmations or something--that would enable me to actually make my mood more positive. I agree with the other reviewer that some content of the book is a bit condescending. I think that people who are disconnected from the relationship between their thoughts and emotions are in a valid place and certainly need information. But I think the book engages in some false advertising, because if you have mood problems that are more complex (and even the book's intended audience, after picking up the basic skills, would probably find themselves in this second group) this book is a waste of money. And it isn't a cheap waste of money, either.
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