Product Description

This is a guide which is full of real-life examples, intended for people who suffer from low self-esteeem and for those who help them: their friends, families, psychologists, counsellors and doctors. It aims to help you understand how you came to think badly of yourself and change your negative view for one that is more positive and self-accepting. It uses cognitive, behavioural therapy, a treatment of proven effectiveness, in a simple and logical programme for change.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12559 in Books
• Published on: 1999-08-26
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy treats emotional disorders by changing negative patterns of thought. It is now internationally established as a key method of helping overcome longstanding conditions such as panic attacks, depression, anxiety, gambling addictions and some eating disorders.

The first thing that is attractive about this book is the total lack of "technicalese"; this, coupled with its logical construction makes it not only interesting but also easily accessible to the lay reader.

To begin with, a guest author explains the history, meaning and relevance of cognitive therapy. This is followed by Melanie Fennell focusing on "Low Self Esteem" as an introduction to the main body of the book. The reader is then asked to participate in a self-assessment exercise. Having proven to have low self esteem, the reader is shown not only the impact self-esteem can have on their lives, but also many of the resultant issues--physical, emotional and social.

"Having cleared the ground", the author proceeds to explain the importance of and means to identifying triggers to bouts of low self-esteem. This can be as a long-established predilection or as the result of learned behaviour. Once this is achieved, Fennell goes on to advise ploys to overcome these triggers.

There follows a reinforcement to overcoming the triggers by the use of a Daily Action Diary (DAD), where the reader plans their daily routine. Once these "tasks" have been accomplished, they can be ticked off, proving not only self worth by achievement but also acting as a self-distracter.

The book concludes by offering suggestions for "Putting Life Together" and "Planning for the Future". This is done by the use of simple graticules as an easy way of spotting self- critical thoughts and a "Precaution Record Sheet"

This is a very useful book that achieves its stated aims of explaining the nature of low self esteem and self- destructive thinking, providing a complete self-help programme and monitoring sheets and basing its advice on clinically proven techniques of cognitive therapy. -- Peter Kidd, trained Community Psychiatric Nurse

Now Magazine
To set you on the road and to help with your shyness, read
Overcoming Low Self-Esteem by Melanie Fennell.

Dr. Paul Gaffney, The Psychologist
'An excellent publication ... which I highly recommend.'

Customer Reviews

A really helpful, life changing book
This book is based on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), which basically sets out to help you become aware of where you are thinking unrealistically (or just plain wrongly), and to replace these thoughts with helpful and more realistic ones.

I was really scared for a fair while that this book wouldn't help me, but actually it has, and loads. By about half-way through, I was daring to believe people actually loved me, I was approaching groups of people and joining in with the conversation, and being open about who I am - and starting to enjoy doing so, and not assuming everyone disliked me.

However, you need to know that this book is sometimes difficult to read, and to change will be hard. This is not a book that you "read". This is a book where you read a section, then you have to do the exercise - sometimes daily, for a couple of weeks - more like a "workbook". If you read this book cover-to-cover, it will have little discernable effect on your life. However, if you put the time in, you will notice real changes fairly soon.

I have to confess by being really confused and a little upset for some of the people who gave this very negative reviews - it doesn't advocate simplistically thinking "positively" in the face of all the evidence. To the contrary, it helps you set up experiements to discover what the truth actually is, and what you can do about it, and helps you examine the evidence from your experiments in a more rational way.

Finally, you can only do this if you *want* to change - yes, this book is aobut changing quite fundamental thoughts you may have about yourself, which you may have clung to for years like a safety blanket and not want to believe actually aren't true. And it will be hard! However, for me it's been really worthwhile. Good luck!!

Best book I've ever bought!
I bought this book at the aiport whilst making a business trip that I was absolutely dreading, essentially because my self-esteem was so low. This book did change my life, or rather it enabled me to change my life for myself. It is essentially about taking control of your own life and your own thoughts and feelings, and facing situations you have previously avoided.

It is incredibly well-written, and though it is clearly structured and designed to be worked through one chapter at a time, you can still open it at any page and discover some excellent advice. What I love about the book is the friendly, comforting tone in which it is written. The author is full of compassion, and this is important as you learn to have compassion for yourself (instead of putting yourself down), to understand why you may have developed certain unhelpful thought patterns, and to begin to undo all this.

Though it is a cliche, I can honestly say this book changed my life. I wore my copy out and bought a second one. I love books, and have hundreds, but if I had to get rid of them all and keep only one, it would have to be this one.

Confused and badly structured
While I found I could identify with much of the symptoms and causes of symptoms in this book I found it badly written and unstructured to the extent of being almost unreadable in parts. Also, the self-help program was based on the assumptions that situations that are affected by your low self esteem have TANGIBLE and OBSERVABLE outcomes which is not generally appropriate to myself. I don't mean to knock this book outright - I found it useful in helping identify certain causes of my social-anxiety and can see that it could be very helpful for certain anxieties. Unfortunately however, not for me.