Thoughts and Feelings: Taking Control of Your Moods and Your Life Paperback – January 2, 2021

My therapist suggested that I get Thoughts and Feelings, and so I did. It's a workbook based on cognitive behavioral therapy, which it briefly discusses in the opening chapter. Its 21 chapters are dedicated to different emotions and gives readers ways to confront their thoughts and emotions, understand them, and work through them for a positive outcome. I think it's very useful either for people who adhere to the tenents of this school to psychology or for those who don't know anything about it. For example, the chapter Coping with Panic begins with describing what this disorder is. Then, the chapter moves through several phases: Symptom Effectiveness, Time for Mastery, and Insructions divided in four steps. The four steps take the reader through understanding what panic is, learning how to use breath control to reduce panic, learning how to "restructure" thoughts through examing probability outcomes (a work chart is used for this process), and desensitizing oneself to overcome the problem (again, charts are used to follow the process). Throughout the chapter several examples are used so that readers can better understand the exercises and outcomes. Finally, the chapter concludes with "Special Considerations" in case the reader has difficulties during the exercises and afterward. Each chapter is structured in the same way and methodically takes the reader through the process of identifying and overcoming the problem presented. I've never worked with a book like this, but I think it's a valuable tool to accompany therapy sessions, giving, in a sense, homework that reinforces what is learned or discussed in sessions. It would also be a useful tool for someone to use independently because of its clear explanations along the way, the tight structure of the chapters' exercises, and the examples related to each process. The language throughout is down-to-earth, not "psychobabble," and not speaking over the readers' heads. The writing style is crisp and clear, and people will have no trouble understanding anything discussed along the way. Although I don't wholeheartedly subscribe to cognitive behavioral psychotherapy, I believe that it's a useful method for gaining insight into how one thinks and why and how one can make positive changes in thinking and feeling. I'd highly recommend the book for anyone seeking help with troubled thinking, either as a companion to therapy or as a tool to work with alone.

Great tools in here to help rethink or rewire your thoughts and feelings if you will, as you are the only one in control!

I love this book. It gives information that is easy to understand and is broken down nicely.

Thoughts & Feelings is a fantastic, easy-to-read self-help workbook utilising the principles of cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT). CBT is a type of psychotherapy that has been extensively researched and validated for a range of mental health problems and is considered to be the treatment of choice for many disorders, such as depression and anxiety.Thoughts & Feelings contains chapters dedicated to common problems such as coping with panic, worry control, depressive thinking, overcoming phobias, controlling anger and relaxation techniques, such as mindfulness. Each chapter is dedicated to a specific topic and contains some useful background information plus loads of exercises to help the reader deal with the problem. The workbook contains activity pages that the reader can write on to undertake the activity or exercise.I would recommend this workbook for anyone wanting to overcome the specific problems that are the central features of this book, namely depression, anxiety, phobias, worry, anger, stress and panic.I would also recommend this book to CBT therapists to use with their clients as the authors use jargon-free and easy-to-read language that clients with no prior knowledge of CBT would easily understand. As such, the workbook will aide therapists in explaining the CBT model to cleints. Furthermore, the activities are great at tackling the core thoughts that are believed to maintain common client problems such as depressionn or anxiety.

This is a great, and very practical, introduction to Cognitive Behavior Therapy, but one should get the latest edition (4th?) rather than the older ones. The first four chapters covering the foundation of CBT are the same, but the newer editions also contain many more techniques, including some that are based on Buddhist meditation practices. The key idea behind CBT is that "our thoughts cause our feelings" and most of the time our thoughts are generated automatically by our subconscious. The practices described in this CBT manual provide a way of relating more thoughtfully to our subconscious in a way that allows it to be more accurately perceptive of our lives. I think of this as educating our intuition! Anyway, this book has some great ideas and most, if not all of them, have been validated as effective for the treatment of a wide variety of mood disorders from depression to anxiety, phobias to procrastination. I'm telling all my friends and family to look into this book!

This is an awesome book in more ways than one. First, it is doesn't have a lot of technical language in it which makes easy for anyone to understand and read. Second, you don't have to sit down and read the whole book to get what you need out of it. All you need to do is read through the first chapter, which is a short chapter, then decide what you feel you need with. For example if you need help with anxiety it will tell you what chapter/s you need to read. I think this book could also be used by counselors as homework for thier clients. This is a good book and I recommend it to anyone.