When Panic Attacks: The New, Drug-Free Anxiety Therapy That Can Change Your Life Author: David D. Burns M.D. | Language: English | ISBN:
0767920716 | Format: EPUB
When Panic Attacks: The New, Drug-Free Anxiety Therapy That Can Change Your Life Description
Review
“Few truly great books on psychotherapy have been published, and this is one of them. When Panic Attacks tells you how to deal with all kinds of anxiety and with most other emotional problems. It is clearly and charmingly written.”
—Albert Ellis, Ph.D, founder of the Albert Ellis Institute and bestselling author of A Guide to Rational Living
“Another masterpiece from the author who helped millions help themselves with Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy. Dr. Burns’s elegant writing style, compassion, and humor translate powerful psychotherapy methods into accessible, practical, and helpful tools for the vast number of individuals who struggle with anxiety.”
—Henny Westra, Ph.D., associate professor and director of the York University Anxiety Research Clinic
About the Author
david d. burns, m.d. is an adjunct clinical professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine and has served as Visiting Scholar at Harvard Medical School. He conducts lectures and workshops throughout the United States and Canada for healthcare professionals and for the general public and has received numerous media and research awards. His bestselling book, Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, has sold more than four million copies worldwide and is the book most often recommended by American and Canadian mental health professionals to patients suffering from anxiety and depression.
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- Hardcover: 464 pages
- Publisher: Broadway; First Edition edition (May 9, 2006)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0767920716
- ISBN-13: 978-0767920711
- Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 7.6 x 1.3 inches
- Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
It probably sounds somewhat dramatic, but I can only recall two self-help books that had a drastic effect on my life-by giving me a reasonable relief from anxiety and depression. The first one, Mind over Mood, by Greenberger and the second one, Feeling Good Workbook by Dr. Burns. Both of these books are based on solid research, reason and practicality.
Almost 20 years since his workbook, Dr. Burns has finally written another book. To my disappointment and relief, it looks like he has nothing major to report. The good news is that after all these years of cognitive therapy evolution, there are still only 10 types of cognitive distortions. The bad news is that it takes only 10 to manage a perfect job to make you miserable.
Cognitive therapy is based on the premise that our own automatic and often unnoticed thoughts WITHIN us, not the events that happen TO US, scare us to death which in turn create a warped reality providing fertile soil for depression, anxiety, self-doubt, loneliness, and procrastination. Virtually everyone who is depressed or anxious is at mercy of these distorted thoughts. To get a relief, each distorted thought must be noticed and dealt with. As you can't relieve your hunger by just reading a cookbook, you must apply it to your own situation for at least 15 minutes a day 5 days a week. Once learned and practiced, the technique will offer you resilience to life's day-to-day challenges, unlike the antidepressants where the relief exists only while you take them.
Burns lists various applications to become aware, challenge and rewire your thought pattern and beliefs about yourself and the world. There is no magic, no parent-blaming, just common sense stuff dealing with the here-and-now.
Dr. Burns incorporates the last 25 years of research and clinical developments since writing the best-seller FEELING GOOD (strongly recommended as well.) He has written a book which markedly refines and elaborates on FEELING GOOD, rendering the Cognitive Therapy approach found in FEELING GOOD even more effective for quick and long-term relief from distressing emotional conditions, including depression, anxiety, anger, and low-self esteem.
In case you don't know, the book FEELING GOOD has been clinically proven to relieve major depression JUST FROM READING IT and following its instructions. I am confident that a clinical trial on WHEN PANIC ATTACKS would yield similar results for individuals suffering from anxiety disorders. The new book is very readable and far more versatile, and addresses some of the implicit gaps left from the former book.
WHEN PANIC ATTACKS easily stands on its own, and doesn't just address panic attacks, but rather every conceivable type of anxiety, including chronic worrying, phobias, agoraphobia, shyness, public speaking anxiety, writer's block, procrastination, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Body Dysmorphic Disorder. As far as I am concerned, Dr. Burns should win a Nobel Prize for what he has accomplished here. Beginning with the "Daily Mood Log" --a sophisticated yet elegantly simple worksheet for documenting and combating one's emotional pain-- he has developed a veritable "technology" for overcoming even the most disabling of human emotions.
Why do we suffer? We suffer because we hold onto some core self-defeating beliefs (SDB's) that leave us rather vulnerable to painful mood swings. Accordingly, he identifies 23 common SDB's.
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