Mind Over Mood: Change How You Feel by Changing the Way You Think

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Workbook -- A supplement to cognitive self-help
Review: The greatest thing about this book, in my opinion, is it's clarity and simplicity. The ideas sound overaly simplistic and revolutionary: To get rid of your depression and anxiety you don't need to prod your old childhood memories, you don't have to get in touch with your inner child. You are not concerned with the root, however interesting it might be, you are working with symptoms. All you have to get in touch with is your buzzing thoughts. YOu have to deligently walk around with a notepad, pay close attention to your thinking, write out your daily negative thoughts, rewrite them so that they are more positive. According to Cognitive therapy, you don't have to speak years in analysis. You can do it yourself if you are dedicated enough in 4 months.

I was skeptical, as you might imagine, but I've seen the the research and it clearly says that Cognitive Therapy works. During the day I would collect all my automatic thoughts (I learned to listen to my brain noise, so to speak) in the past I would never even noticed the dialog that went on in mind unnoticed. I would specifically recognize and analyze pessimistic, catastrophic and black and white thoughts and patterns of thinking.

Cognitive therapists noticed that depressed individuals have numerous errors of judgement. If someone rejects them, they think this is the beginning of endless years of non-stop rejection. If they get burnt once on a hot stove, they will religiously avoid anything with heat.

I would rewrite them in a structured way. I worked about 15 minutes automatic thoughts on the paper (saying outloud did not work). I was amazed of how my moods were affected by my own negative thoughts and now unrealistic and perfectionistic they were. Your mind is like a little child, and yourself is like a patient father who corrects use-less reaction. After about a month or so, amazingly my moods brightened up little by little. After a while, you become real good at challenging your own demons and finding patterns of faulty thinking.

One drawback: it requires motivation a difficult task when you are depressed and un-motivated to begin with, however, if you find the power within you, coupled with a belief, that depression is not an inherent part of your personality, but instead a learned reaction that can be un-leanred,

You really need to be sick and tired of feeling this way to succeed. The other great book on the subject is Feeling good Workbook (workbook by itself is fine). I found that it has much more application that this book.

Good luck!

Rating:
Summary: extremely helpful for a variety of disorders
Review: The workbook gives patients structured assignments betweeen sessions so that progress continues outside of the appoitments. It also is very helpful for a variety of disorders, something most self-help books are limited in doing

Rating:
Summary: For those who want to actively work at healthier thinking
Review: This book came recommeded by a counselor I hold in high regard. It has been beneficial to me and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to actively work at having a healthier outlook on life and bettering their relationship with others, the workplace and, above all, themselves.

Rating:
Summary: A Waste of Time!
Review: This book continuously insults the reader's intelligence. It describes situations and terms in such painfully obvious ways and then repeats them several times so the reader will remember them. I spent half my time flipping past pages upon pages of repeated text until I just couldn't take it anymore and I closed the book forever.

Rating:
Summary: It Helped Me to Change my Life
Review: This book helped give me exercises to learn how to deal with my depression and anxiety. It's important to slowly do the exercises and complete the entire book. I feel like a new person in control of my thoughts and feelings. I recommend it highly.

Rating:
Summary: It Helped Me to Change my Life
Review: This book helped give me exercises to learn how to deal with my depression and anxiety. It's important to slowly do the exercises and complete the entire book. I feel like a new person in control of my thoughts and feelings. I recommend it highly.

Rating:
Summary: A Must for Depressives
Review: Together with a counsellor, this book did very well for me, getting me out of my depression in less than a month. Even without a counsellor, I think the book alone would have brought me back to real life and happiness. Health authorities with long waiting lists should hand this out while patients wait to see a shrink - then they might not need the shrink.