A Practical Guide to CBT: From Stress to Strength

by Clair Pollard

Overcome fears, manage negativity and improve your life with A Practical Guide to CBT . Change can often seem like an impossible task, but this practical book will help you put it into perspective. Using the same tools employed by Cognitive Behavioral Therapy practitioners, this book is full of activities to challenge you, stories to provide perspective, and a clear framework to guide you. The expert authors' friendly and supportive approach will help you learn to manage recurrences of negative thinking and behavior, and to develop strong coping strategies, so that you can think more positively, act more calmly, and feel better about yourself. A Practical Guide to CBT incorporates the latest therapies and research, including ACT and mindfulness, and explicitly addresses problem areas like insomnia and depression.

Genres: Self Help, Psychology

224 pages, Paperback

Published August 2, 2018

Reviews

[Kim Merino · Rating 3 out of 5]

Self help books are like marmite, you either love em or hate em, i am not personally a fan but recognise that they can helpful. There isn't a one size fits all approach to dealing with Anxiety and Depression etc but one thing that usually crops up is recommendations to try CBT.
This is the second CBT book I've tried the first one was massive and ended up not being finished due to its overwhelming proportions. This one was slightly better and a bit more streamlined. It is a bit wordy and dry in places which led to me drifting off at times but for the most part I can see the logic behind the exercises.
It's not going to magically make everything better but I think sometimes you need a little reminder to be kinder to yourself. There are a few coping strategies that i will try to use going forwards, mostly to stop being so hard on myself. The additional resources section at the back is really helpful, with recommendations for where to seek further help if needed.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not was I was hoping for, Very basic though and well put together. Need a book about making the right decisions to affect the people around me. Especially my wife.

[Pierre Jacomet · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book starts very well, but then seems to get complicated. In the first chapters, the historical part of CBT which is very good and especially the description of how cognitive and behavioral therapies fused into CBT. The author has a personal history on this, which makes it exciting. The section of ABCs of CBT is also very good.

Going further into the book, things seem to get unnecessarily complicated, or possibly I could say that it gets easy to lose track of what was explained in the initial chapters and get lost in the forest. Possibly the book would benefit from regularly referring back to the concepts initially laid out such that readers (like me) don't get lost later on in the book.

Note, that I could fix things, by going and re-reading the initial chapters, but then again not everyone has the time or the inclination to re-read things. In sum, I have read other CBT books and the material is presented in them in a more actionable/effective way than in this book. This book however is still good.