Change Your Thinking: Overcome Stress, Anxiety, and Depression, and Improve Your Life with CBT

Edelman's book is one of the best self-help CBT books I have come across. Edelman begins by providing an overview of the principles of CBT, namely the thoughts-feelings-behaviours link, and how anyone can apply this knowledge to common human problems. Edelman assigns a chapter to each "problem area" such as depression, anxiety and self-esteem, and provides a methodical and easy-to-understand description of activities one can do to combat the negative thinking that is often at the heart of these problems. Edelman's book contains worksheets, diagrams, activities and quotes to help people understand CBT, apply it to everyday life and combat their problems. It is a great self-help book for those finding it difficult to cope with psychological issues and also a useful book for students.

As a clinical psychologist, I am a strong believer in the impact of thinking on emotions, and thus many of my interventions with my own clients are cognitive in nature. The premise of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) is that the way we think determines the way we feel, and this book Change Your Thinking, is a self-help manual designed to address stress, anxiety, depression, and other emotional concerns through the use CBT. At the heart of CBT is the ability to recognize faulty thinking. The author describes the typical thinking errors which were originally identified by Aaron Beck in his ground-breaking book Cognitive Therapy of Depression; these include polarized (black-and-white) thinking, overgeneralizing, personalizing, filtering, jumping to (negative) conclusions, mind reading, blaming, labeling, predicting catastrophe, and comparing. After Edelman has coached the reader in becoming adept at increasing awareness of negative thinking patterns, she moves on to the process of disputing negative and irrational beliefs; she then applies the disputation techniques to various types of concerns. Throughout the book, Edelman offers exercises to help readers apply the concepts which she has presented. Although Edelman borrows from the work of various giants in the field of psychology, she presents this information in a manner that is extremely accessible to the average reader and that is also appropriate to a self-help format. Given this, I highly recommend Change Your Thinking as a means for the general reader to apply the principles of CBT to their own lives.

Normally I don't think books like this are very helpful, but Change Your Thinking is really helping me to change my life. When I started reading it, I immediately felt like I could get back in control and actually improve what I had accepted as the status quo. The author gives a lot of simple tips that WORK, and the exercises are a big help. This is something that you need to commit to, but if you read this book and make even a tiny effort to pay attention to your thoughts you'll notice a difference. I HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone with depression or anxiety (I suffer from both).