Product Description

Brilliant CBT has been specially written to help give readers the insight, tools and confidence they need to understand and use CBT in their own lives. It offers a cohesive approach to this groundbreaking therapeutic technique that unfolds in a wholly logical, accessible and practical manner whilst enabling the reader to personalize the information and apply it to their own unique situation.

Written by an experienced and highly regarded clinical psychologist, Brilliant CBT has a conversational, accessible and personal tone which includes illustrative exercises, personality-style questionnaires and detailed checklists to provide all the information readers will need in a way they will find most simple and useful to put into practice.

Brilliant CBT is the perfect guide for anybody who wants an effective grounding in the theory and range of practical tips and strategies designed to help them achieve authentic, lasting results when applying CBT to their own lives, or for anybody training to become a CBT practioner who wants an accessible, understandable and thorough introduction to the therapy.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1872 in Books
• Published on: 2009-07-13
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

From the Back Cover

CBT – what it is, how it works, and how to use it.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy or CBT delivers powerful tools you can put to work to dramatically improve your life.  

In this book psychologist Dr Stephen Briers clearly explains how CBT works, gives you plenty of exercises to help put the theory into practice and reveals it’s effectiveness through stories from people just like you, who have used CBT to turn their lives around.

 Brilliant Outcomes

• Understand what CBT is, it’s methods and models

• Put CBT to work to improve your mind and your life

• Build practical, step-by-step strategies for tackling any problem

About the Author

Before training as a clinical psychologist, Dr Stephen Briers studied at Cambridge University, where he was later employed in child development research at the Winnicott Unit.

Today Stephen works clinically with both children and adults. His various television appearances include four series of the popular BBC parenting programmes Little Angels and Teen Angels and Make Me A Grown-Up for Channel 4.  He has also been a regular contributor to the Brain and Behaviour column in The Times Educational Supplement.

He lives and works in Brighton with his wife and two young sons.

Customer Reviews

brilliant CBT
This book is upbeat and well-written. So much so, that it is hard not to be excited by the possibility of change. Dipping in (and hoping to avoid any hard work), I found myself reading on without noticing the effort. This is because the author successfully explains the complex principles behind the CBT approach in a way that will be helpful to anyone.

'Brilliant' is the best introductory guide I have read and I strongly recommend this book to everyone wishing to become more familiar with CBT and how to apply it to everyday life.

Useful introduction and more to CBT
Warm congratulations first to whoever was responsible for the look and feel of what is, an unusual beast, an attractive paperback! I picked this off the shelf at a WH Smiths at a Welcome Break on the M4. I was looking for a novel but the tomato red and light grey cover with bold text, combined with the useful engaging "hand-drawn" diagrams within, led me to slip it into the basket with my Guardian and a diet coke. As a coach and someone with a long background in helping with personal change I wanted to find out more about CBT.

Subtitled "How to Use CBT to Improve Your Mind and Your Life" this title comes from Prentice Hall's "Brilliant" series aimed at self learners. It mostly works well as a self help book - pretty substantial and apparently well informed. Alongside the attractive cover I was drawn to it in recognition of the phenomenal rise of CBT as the therapy of choice by much of the NHS and criminal justice sector in the UK. If you go to your GP with depression or are the kind of person who bashes others at pub closing time, you may find yourself on a CBT programme. The results are impressive with many evaluations by governmental bodies and those who promote CBT like the BABCP. Although of course there are a number of detractors - particularly those who see this briefer form of therapy as insubstantial in its failure to address underlining causes of problems.

Stephen Briers is a Clinical Psychologist who has come to be something of a media figure, appearing in a number of television programmes, including those about the parenting of children and adolescence. His experience of communicating to non-experts comes across and the book is very readable. The early section on CBT - why it's so "Brilliant" and "first principles" were excellent and I was left feeling more confident about the approach. The chapters on "thinking traps" and "changing behaviour" I felt were less successful and I found them rather unfocused and to be describing psychological processes which have become part of common parlance. Much of it is stuff of the more in depth and challenging chat show and the sort of advice you'd get off your next door neighbour rather than a professional - and perhaps none the worst for that!

The downside of the self help approach is that you don't get much research or theory back-up to the approaches used by Briers, although I acknowledge that this may be an unfair criticism, given that Briers makes apology for this in the early chapter.

It is during the chapters on various conditions that Briers really get's into his stride. His descriptions of the thinking-behaviour-belief interactions associated with anxiety, depressive and anger disorders are really excellent and those interested expanding their understanding of a non-medical causation of such unhappy events need look no further.

I have found it hard to review the book without critiquing CBT itself. In general I found the focus on the interrelationship between thinking and behaviour (rather than mood) really helpful and interesting and of considerable use in coaching. I was, however, surprised at the orthodoxy of the approach and a reliance on the pathological, "disease model", of mental disorder. In my own work I would prefer to avoid such labelling.

Still a great read though!

A genuinely helpful book if you are prepared to put in the work
I like the 'Brilliant' series because they are well laid out and the consistency of approach across them means that you know what you are getting. This is one of the strongest amongst the series that I've read.

The book provides excellent advice on managing what goes on inside our heads. I have long struggled with my confidence and I tend to take things quite personally, but this book provides a good reminder and some practical exercises for disentangling the situations we face and how we feel about them (and therefore how we feel about ourselves).

The book is also quite a fun read. The author has a light touch and seems to know what I was thinking, e.g. he recognised my scepticism when I felt sceptical! Is the author a psychologist or a psychic!? Some good cartoons which were entertaining but also appropriate too. The book is a good complement to a book on confidence (called 'Confidence' by Rob Yeung).