Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #281798 in Books
• Published on: 2004-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 153 pages

Synopsis
There are things you can do to start feeling better about your struggle with compulsive checking.

Customer Reviews

An extremely well-written book
I simply have to write a review of this book. I can't believe more people haven't reviewed it yet, compared to the number reviewing similar books.

What the book covers:
It starts off explaining what OCD is (and isn't), why it occurs, traditional treatments, related mental health issues, et cetera. It then explains the main forms of checking in relation to OCD, providing plenty of examples.

There is then a self-assessment section, involving industry standards such as two Yale-Brown scales and checklists.

Next is a detailed explanation of the type of treatment advocated by the author (a clinical psychologist with 30+ years of experience with treating OCD). The treatment in question is a form of exposure therapy, which is referred to as ERPA (Exposure, Ritual Prevention, and Awareness therapy).

There are then three separate sections concentrating on exposure exercises for the three main categories of checking OCD. These are:
1) Safety fears (i.e. checking in the home - taps, locks, etc - and checking of motor vehiles)
2) Fear of harming others (i.e. fear of having run over pedestrians, hurting people)
3) Fear of embarrassment (i.e. having to re-read text over and over, fear of miscommunication, fear of poor personal hygiene)

After this is a section on how to go forward.

Why this book is different:
I can only compare this book to one other: Brain Lock. The three main differences I see are:
1) The actual form of treatment. Whereas this book focuses on deliberately exposing yourself to your OCD triggers and overcoming them by prevention from performing rituals / compulsions, Brain Lock wants you to not focus on the fear but instead ignore it until your panic receeds. For me, that doesn't sound like tackling the problem, but more like side-stepping it. What is quite strange is at the end of Brain Lock is a little section which advocates the use of exposure therapy - shame the book didn't focus on it until two pages at the very end!
2) Length. Brain Lock is novel-size whereas this book is arguably thinner. When I first got this book I was a little disappointed, expecting more for my money (it's nearly 150 pages). However, this really isn't the case. It's concise and so well laid-out you have no problem finding any passage.
3) This book focuses purely on checking compulsions (although it does explain the other main areas of OCD and notes that they are sometimes not mutually exclusive). Focusing purely on checking makes it seem a lot more focused on the specific problem.

Conclusion:
The actual type of treatment (ERPA) is explained so clearly and backed-up with reason that you cannot argue with the method. In saying that, the hard work is still down to you, but then no book is a miracle cure. This arms you with so much decent information that it can only help, both to understand the condition and to arm you with a method to tackle it.

I would recommend this to any checking sufferer as well as to family members who want a concise yet thorough understanding of the condition. It actually has sections for family members, telling them what helps the sufferer and what not to do.

5 stars is too few. Seriously, if you're even semi-interested, buy this book, read it twice, and then review it yourself.