Cognitive Behavioural Therapy: 7 Ways to Freedom from Anxiety, Depression, and Intrusive Thoughts (Happiness is a trainable, attainable skill!) Paperback – December 16, 2016

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is a self-help manual about how to use CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) to deal with anxiety, depression and some phobias. It’s often done with therapists but this book provides a way to do it at home, for those more comfortable in that setting, as well as being a way to touch up on what you’ve already learned at therapy. The book breaks down exactly what CBT is, how it works, and gives the seven main steps needed to do the therapy. It also gives an in-depth look at how to incorporate CBT with various religions or with non-believers, depending on how you feel. One of the parts I found interesting was a section about sin and what it is, how it affects us and how it ties in with CBT. This section is not based so much on religion but how sin can affect us. There is also a list of additional books that can be read for further information and help, if needed or interested. At the back of the book, there is a workbook that goes along with what is discussed in the book. If you read the digital version of the book, as I did, you can always print off the pages needed or set the workbook up on your own. I found this part to be particularly helpful because it gives the reader a little nudge to do the work that the author discusses in the book.I’ve had experience with CBT through a therapist and, to be honest, found it useless. There’s nothing like trying to work through your issues while the therapist subtly looks at her watch constantly. This book allowed me to sit down at my own leisure in a comfortable setting and start to work on CBT. The author writes in a simple and understandable way that makes it easy and interesting reading. He makes it clear that this is not an overnight process and not an easy exercise but it is doable. I liked the fact that the author comes across as likeable and not over my head. He called it achieving a harmony in your mind and that is so true. The workbook is very simple and it is explained throughout the book as to how to do it. There are a lot of helpful quotes from various sources that also provided a lot of insight.I read this on my ereader and it formatted very well. The cover was eye-catching and grabbed my attention. This is truly a worthwhile read!

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is an introduction to the central premise of cognitive behavior therapy (one of the most widely used approached by mental health care practitioners today) to help those in a therapy program or who are looking for a way to address some of their issues using this approach. It is written in an easy to understand manner and gives a step by step process on how to select a problem to work on and how to improve upon the problem in question. The book is written in a seven step approach to addressing problems dealing with anxiety and depression in particular. Also included in this work are several worksheets to assist in working through the steps that are given in the book.The approach of cognitive behavioral therapy is very clearly explained in this book and was perhaps one of the best and easiest to understand volumes I have read about this therapy approach and how it works. The steps it gives are overall easy to follow and clear, becoming a little harder to follow on your own, at least to me, starting at step four when I personally feel a therapist would be more qualified to assist a person than the book. The author discussed something new to me and that is the use of religion in cognitive behavioral therapy which was interesting to read about. I also enjoyed reading about different ways to enhance mood that the author discussed in one of the last steps of the process. There were a lot of ways discussed in regards to troubleshooting the ability to successfully handle a problem using CBT and to improve mood in general.Although it didn’t distract from the message overall, this book could stand a good editing. There were a lot of places were a word or two were missing that made the understanding hard to get at first. I also felt a little bogged down in steps four and six and had to look at what the step was to understand why the research for the chapter was there and how it could be used to solve the problem that was generated in the first chapter. The worksheets were also a little rough and could be a little better developed.Overall this book was very clear and self explanatory with regards to how to deal with a problem using the CBT approach. The information provided is supported with articles in professional journals and very current. This would be a very helpful book for anyone trying to understand CBT, for a patient in a therapy program, or for someone who is looking for a self help book to deal with a problem. The worksheets are really helpful to guide the reader through the steps provided in the book even if they are a little rough looking. The suggestions and research provided are creative and interesting and will be helpful for the reader trying to improve an area of their life.