Product Description

Draws on the authors' extensive experience as clinicians and teachers of cognitive therapy to help clients successfully understand and improve their moods, alter their behavior, and enhance their relationships.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #735 in Books
• Published on: 1995-05-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 243 pages

Review

"Only rarely does a book come along that can change your life. Mind Over Mood... can be both a vehicle and a road map for people seeking to make fundamental change." - Aaron T. Beck, From the Foreword

From the Back Cover
Ideal for client assignment, this guide draws on the authors' extensive experience as clinicians and teachers of cognitive therapy to help clients successfully understand and improve their moods, alter their behavior, and enhance their relationships. Illustrated with major case examples, the book presents in step-by-step fashion the skills for identifying problems, setting goals, and achieving the desired changes. Accessibly written, it also helps therapists augment their sessions by providing clients with instructions and exercises that will reinforce the skills critical to maximizing therapy effectiveness. Clients in therapy, mental health professionals wanting their clients to learn cognitive therapy skills, and anyone else interested in self-help will be interested in this book.

Customer Reviews

interestingish
Written by two eminent clinical psychologists this book had potential written all over it.However the potential didn't ring true for me as I was left feeling a little perplexed at the books end.

The book itself is clearly written and divided into easily digestible chapters.However the main theme is recognising and changing disruptive thought patterns and the manner in which the authors aim to achieve this appears to me to be rather simplistic and even condescending.Do not buy this publication if you only intend to read through it as there are exercises to be completed in every chapter.Honestly you would have to go to a table factory to find more tables.Also we get to follow the progress of four case studies throughout,now here's the thing they all make a remarkable recovery so can we assume an unprecedented 100% success rate,I don't think so.There's nothing new in this book but if you don't try something you ll never know..........best of luck..

I'm in two minds about this
On the one hand, I didn't really discover anything new by reading this book. Unless this book is literally your first step to getting better, you will probably, on some level, already know everything that's within its pages. But lots of information by itself can be overwhelming and so it's easy to be discouraged about facing up to it. On the other hand, where this book is useful is in breaking down and tackling piece by piece your dysfunctional thinking.

I do also like the IDEA that this book gives you exercises to do so that you are no longer passive in your troubles, but you are active in getting to grips with them. In theory that's good, but in practice I have to admit to skipping over many of them. It's easy to persuade yourself that YOU don't need to do them because you can imagine what they're supposed to teach and you've learned that lesson already -- from another book, your therapist or just because it's so obvious anyway.

These exercises mostly involve filling in tables (like the Thought Record), lists and questionnaires. I particularly liked the Thought Record (which is the central idea and tool of the whole book) and I think I can see myself filling out many of these worksheets as the months go by even if I am not confident that they will produce any lasting benefit. However, doing many of these exercises in this book you do feel a little bit like a baby being spoon-fed. But then again you do probably secretly enjoy it too.

Lastly, it is comforting to be reminded that you are not alone in having psychological problems. So I liked the four or five case histories that the reader follows through the book and through the exercises. You could easily empathise with these people and I saw a little bit of myself in many of their thoughts and their experiences. And I'm also glad that in the epilogue we learn that they all got significantly better. But then again the authors would hardly have picked unresponsive cases to highlight.

very effective self help guide
This is an excellent book to make you realise how your feelings are determined by your thoughts, and how you can positively influence your mood by changing the way you think. Some self-help books don't deliver because they're too vague but this book is also very practical, with many useful exercises. It's no wonder that many people are so enthusiastic about CBT and talking about it as an alternative to medication. I do not suffer from depression and was always a fairly happy person but this book has taught me how to be happier still. I would also recommended Eckhart Tolle's the Power of Now for a slightly different perspective and Steve Taylor's Making Time Making Time: Why Time Seems to Pass at Different Speeds and How to Control It for an invesigation into time and how we can learn to expand time and learn to live in the present.