I haven't read this yet, but was recently directed to a list included in this book on page 76 of distorted thoughts, or cognitive distortions, that people make:

1) All-or-nothing thinking: You look at things in absolute, black-and-white categories.
2) Over-generalization: You view a negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.
3) mental filter: You dwell on the negatives and ignore the positives.
4) Discounting the positives: You insist that your positives don't "count."
5) Jumping to conclusions: (a) Mind-reading--you assume that people are reacting negatively to you when there's no definite evidence for this; (b) Fortune-telling--you arbitrarily predict that things will turn out badly.
6) Magnification or minimization: You blow things way out of proportion or you shrink their importance inappropriately.
7) Emotional reasoning: You reason from how you feel--ex. "I feel like an idiot, so I really must be one," "I don't feel like doing this, so I'll put it off."
8) Should statements: You criticize yourself or others with should's, shouldn't's, must's, ought's, and have to's.
9) Labeling: You identify with your shortcomings; instead of telling yourself, "I made a mistake," you tell yourself, "I'm a jerk, a fool, a loser."
10) Personalization and blame: You blame yourself for something you weren't entirely responsible for, or you blame other people and overlook ways that your own attitudes and behaviors contribute to a problem.

These are all habits we can easily identify in others, but what if we made more of an effort to see and break these habits within ourselves? A feast for thought.

Преди десетина години случайно попаднах на най-ключовата книга на Дейвид Бърнс - Да се чувстваш добре - и така се отвори един нов свят пред очите ми, светът на когнитивно-поведенческата терапия. За мен това си остана единствената що-годе полезна книга при случаите на лека и средна депресия. Чела съм много ръководства и мемоари, но никъде нещата не са предадени по този систематизиран и достъпен начин.

В The Feeling Good Handbook доразвива идеите си и ги допълва с повече примери и упражнения. Не е четиво за свободното време за любопитни, а по-скоро е ръководство за хора с тези проблеми как да преодолеят негативните мисли, които според д-р Бърнс са истинската причина за депресиите и тревожността. Оттогава възникнаха и залязоха много теории и обяснения за депресиите и тревожността, но си мисля, че все още може да се извлекат полезни навици от прочетеното. Интересна ми се видя главата и за преодоляването на прокрастинацията и перфекционизма.

Слагам три звезди, защото на места добрият доктор леко дразни с арогантността си, но това си е лично впечатление. Може би и корицата е малко виновна за това впечатление, защото този човек за мен има от т.нар. punchable faces.

Като заключение само искам да спомена, че при тежки депресии, тежки суицидни мисли и т.н. са нужни мерки, различни от четенето на тази книга. За останалите по-леки случаи бих я препоръчала като едно много добро начало, макар и доста едностранчиво.

من کلی کتاب خودشناسی و انگیزشی خوندم
کا انگیزه میدن و بعد از یه مدت تو ذهن کمرنگ میشن
اما این کتاب تمرین داره و عالیه
و لازم میشه بعد ها هم بهش مراجعه کنی

this book practically reprogrammed my mind and the way it works, it made me feel life is easier than I thought. can it help everyone who are struggling with sadness and anxiety? yes. will it eventually help them to become more aware, logical and feel better about themselves and their lifes? Well... it depends. this isn't a book you can read and read, but this is a hand's on project for improving your mental health, if you want it to be helpful, you need to do it exercises, trust me, training your mind can change your life.

This book changed my life. I am now able to recognize my mental patterns and decide if they're beneficial to me or not, and discard the unproductive, depressing, anxiety creating thoughts in favor of good thoughts or no thought at all. It's a workbook & the exercises must be done to get the full effect.

I recently bought this handbook again because I lost the first one and I realized I'm in need of its way of putting my thoughts on paper and weighing/sorting them out.

I recommend this book to everyone, including you. :)

I am not ashamed of reading self-help books, or of liking them despite the fact that they do not possess the subtlety or nuance or pacing of the classics. "Show, don't tell" kind of disappears: you are being told more often than you are being shown in these sorts of reads about how to deal with feelings and emotions, which can be off-putting to like-minded fiction buffs, but I feel like my readings in fiction led me here. This is in part because I was seeking counseling in my fiction: counseling in sadness, wisdom on relationships, insights into how to stay enriched in life despite how awful life can be. Fiction can do this for sure. But at some point I felt like the slow-drip of self-help for which I was exploiting fiction - and the pressure I was placing on the form of the novel to grant me these answers - was a means by which I was misreading fiction and doing a disservice to myself. It was time to seek the straight-dope answers from the scientists and to cease reading fiction as if I were grabbing it by the neck and demanding it give me the cure. There's no need to browbeat your writers with such presumptuous expectations. Though I don't want to read with only hedonistic motives in mind, trying to cull major life-tips from novel after novel can undercut the effect of pleasure and can sometimes to lead to a flagrant disregard of the writer's intent. I have probably allowed much of the literature I've read to elude me because I entered each piece with such myopic designs. It was time to purge that need out of my system by reading something more transparently grappling with bullet-point Emotional Assistance. Books pertaining to cognitive behavioral therapy and positive psychology are good for this; self-help books about immersing oneself in God are not. So I mean what most people mean when they say they like a certain genre. "I like jazz" means "I like a small fraction of it, but a fraction big enough to say I dig the genre." I am this way with my 3-4 self-help books.

Now to get to the mechanics of the book itself: The Feeling Good Hanbook definitely reads like David Burns received a lot of feedback about Feeling Good, listened to it, and responded to it. The benefit to this is that his communications chapter and the sections that endorse a benevolent approach to receiving criticism are credible and authentic. These are practices that sound clean theoretically but very messy in practice, but given just how much Burns takes care to account for some of the criticisms given to him, one can tell he does practice what he preaches.

The problem is one cannot necessarily tell from the "real-life stories" listed in the book, because the results are always SO good, and the sessions are always SO spot-on. In every example, the recovery process is expedited, conversations are summarized and filled of unconvincing and ham-fisted exchanges, and the stories all end with dramatic recovery and forever-changed lives. Because the narratives behind the examples seem too simplistic or overwrought, they come off as sounding too unrealistic, and the less credible the specific evidence, the more the reader will resist the thesis.

However, I understand the point of these quasi-fictionalized accounts: they do put the thesis through a digestible and understandable "case study" which aides the reader, and, of course, they beat the salient points into the reader's skull.

The relentless repetition is a necessary evil. First off, it is a book to both be read cover-to-cover and to be referred back to. Passages are repeated verbatim in different sections of the book, but they are passages worth reiterating even as a casual cover-to-cover reader. But most importantly, if it is a pertinent passage to two sections, Burns knows the reader may only refer to one section later. I can tell I will return to the book for guidance, and that is not a bad thing; it is a handbook after all, and a big one at that. Because it's a gargantuan owner's manual for a modern-day mind, it can get fatiguing, and sometimes the overexposure will make the information not stick. But Burns would be making a mistake to not drive some of these points home, especially since some are so counter-intuitive to our instincts or paradoxical in theory.

The communication section is fantastic. The bits about emotional perfectionism - or rather, liberating one's self from the shackles of the pressure of being constantly happy - and emotophobia - needing to be happy because of the fear of being sad and the implications behind sadness - are terrific additions and great corrections to an omission from Feeling Good. I had felt like Feeling Good gave me the tools to manage distorted thoughts but eventually felt like it didn't help tamper a growing obsession with the management itself. It did not give warning that the exercises can get addictive and will not be a panacea. It doesn't really tell you to take the pressure off of yourself to feel good immediately after heeding its advice. My therapist had also said that mood management can become a very unhealthy obsession through which happiness can become more elusive. The Feeling Good Handbook understands that feeling bad often precipitates feeling good. You can feel good about your feelings, even if they're purportedly negative (angry, sad, etc). In other words, Burns took the principle to the next level. I appreciated that a lot, and it helped me catch myself in a bad habit.

It would've taken a really difficult and convoluted series of novels to get these points to remain drilled into my brain. I'm pretty sure, at least.

This is a great book for people with anxiety disorder. Contains some worksheets as well as great tips for making it through panic attacks.

it is extraordinary amazing,usefull& essential.

ده روش برای سالم اندیشی:
1- خطاهای شناختی را بررسی کنید.
2- شواهد را بررسی کنید.
3- روش معیار دوگانه: همان تشویقی که از دوستانتان می کنید مشمول خود کنید. به خودتان اعتماد به نفس بدهید.
4- روش تجربی: آزمون کردن افکار
5- اندیشیدن در سایه های خاکستری: همه چیز صفر یا صد نیست.
6- روش بررسی: آیا دیگران هم همین نظر را دارند؟ انسان بودن هیچ اشکالی ندارد.
7- تعریف کردن واژه ها: به این توجه کنید که چه می توانید بکنید تا بیاموزید و رشد کنید و از آنچه هستید قدمی فراتر نهید. اگر وضع به شکلی که می خواهید نیست از خود بپرسید که چه کاری می توانید انجام دهید.
8- روش علم معانی: به جای باید از عباراتی مانندبهتر است، شایسته تر است، ... استفاده کنید. خود را تشویق کنید و از سرزنش خود بکاهید.
9- دوباره نسبت دادن: نقش خود را در ایجاد مشکل بپذیرید و به جای سرزنش خود از تجربه درس بیاموزید.
10- تحلیل سود و زیان: عزت نفس به شادی، شادمانی، ثمربخشی و صمیمیت می انجامد. من به آن نظامی از ارزش ها معتقدم که عزت نفس را زیاد می کند. عزت نفس به ایمان می مانئ. می تواند کوه ها را تکان دهد.
برگه تحلیل سود و زیان:
امتیازات این باور زیان های این باور

انعطاف پذیر و خلاق باشید. از انواع و اقسام روش ها استفاده کنید تا کذب هر یک از افکار منفی خود را بیابید می توانید اروش پیکان عمودی هم استفاده کنید
روش پیکان عمودی:
مثال: ااگر بیشتر درس نخوانم مردود می شوم
چرا نگران مردود شدنم؟
ممکن است در کل دوره مردود شوم
چرا نگران مردود شدنم؟
آدم شکست خورده ای می شوم و دیگران به من بها نمی دهند.
چرا نگران بها ندادن هستم؟
احساس بدی پیدا می کنم چرا که برای خوشبخت بودن به تایید دیگران نیاز دارم و
....

کتابی بسیار مفید در مورد روانشناختی و خود یاریگری برای درمان انواع افسردگی، اضطراب و سایر بیماری های روانی رایج

‮از آدم «اصطلاحا» نرمالی که با احساس‌های بدی از جمله ناراحتی و خجالت و ترس و اضطراب و حس تحقیر و خشم و ... مواجهه، تا افرادی که تشخیص‌های جدی روانپزشکی دارن و دارو مصرف می‌کنن و حتی سابقه‌ی بستری شدن دارن، هر کسی که اون مرکزیت نسبی فکرشو از دست نداده و قوه‌ی درکش سرجاشه، می‌تونه از این کتاب «در عمل» بهره ببره.
‮موضوع، ممنوع دونستن حس بد نیست. هدف، تقویت هوشیاری و توانایی رصد افکار اتوماتیک و احساساتیه که به دنبالشون میاد. اینکه احساساتمون، نامتناسب با وقایع نباشن.
‮حتی مجموعه نظریاتش رو علاوه بر درگیری‌های ذهنی روزمره و درگیری‌های حادتری که انسان رو واقعا مستأصل می‌کنن و کارش رو به دکتر و دارو و بستری شدن می‌کشونن، در ادامه روی مسائل مختلفی از جمله تنبلی و به تعویق انداختن کارها، مهارت‌های ارتباطی، کارجویی و مصاحبه‌های شغلی هم پیاده کرده.
‮به نظرم، به «ترس از مرگ»، سطحی پرداخته. طبعا واسه منی که تو سال گذشته، «روان‌درمانی اگزیستانسیال» و «مامان و معنی زندگی (داستان «هفت درس پیشرفته در درمان سوگ») » از یالوم رو خوندم، پرسیدن یک سوال ساده و بستن قضیه در چند صفحه، خیلی سطحی حساب میشه. ولی باز هم خارج از منطق محسوب نمیشه.
‮دست به قلم بردن و «انجام» تمریناتش خیلی مهمه. این یه کتاب ِ «فقط خواندنی» نیست. یه ابزار تعاملی هم هست؛ که اتفاقا قدرت تأثیرگذاریش هم توی همین رویکرد عملی‌ش نهفته‌ست.
‮شخصا کتاب‌های فاز مثبت جوگیرانه تو زندگیم خوندم، فاز خودکشی و افسردگی بلندمدت و قرص‌های جورواجور و پرونده درمانی و ... هم کم نداشتم. عملا حس کردم این نظریات، اگه به کار بسته بشن، شعاری نیستن. بی‌توجهی بهش رو تجربه کردم، سه سال نوسان روانی رو با تمام وجود حس کردم، و در مقطعی، عمل کردن بهش رو هم امتحان کردم. به نظرم کتاب خیلی خوبیه.

I found this book extremely insightful. This is a self-help book, usually intended for someone struggling from longstanding and tough emotions and feelings, such as depression, guilt, anger, stress, anxiety, relationship trouble etc. However, I feel this book is a good-read for anyone and everyone who is proactive about mental health and wishes not to become victim of his/her own thoughts. The book points out common distortions in thought that each one of us is vulnerable to in the face of tough situations, societal influences and our own conditioning that we go through as a result of our upbringing and the people we come in contact with. These cognitive distortions are self-defeating and result into suffering and pain.

The book provides multiple practical ways in which one can notice these distortions and replace them with more rational responses. Some of these ways are journaling based where you would note down the thought that is bringing you down, notice the distortion in it and replace it with a rational response. This method over time results into replacing the distorted thoughts with the rational ones and thereby reducing the suffering. Some of the cognitive distortions mentioned in the book are - All or nothing thinking (eg.- My whole effort has gone to waste.), Personalization (eg. I'm responsible for that mishap.), Labelling (eg. I'm a loser.), Emotional reasoning (eg. I feel like a waste, so I must be one.), Should Statements (eg. I should be productive.), Mental Filter (eg. There is no good in the world.) etc. The book is filled with stories about people who have applied these methods and gained substantial result. It also contains, in a very structured and easy-to-implement way, other strategies (such as - disarming other person through agreement, empathy and self-love, sticking to your guns and being assertive in the face of tough conversations, getting to the bottom of the thoughts) that one can implement and thereby find stability in the midst of turbulent and energy-draining emotions.

As someone who has been practicing mindfulness meditation and awareness from few years, I found the book an excellent source of common pitfalls in the usually benign-looking thoughts. This book and the mindfulness practice complement each other for me and provide a more practical way to keep a smile and sanity in this fast-paced, competitive and overwhelming corporate rat-race.

See my review of the book. This is a great handbook and there probably is more info in it. But I would suggest that you don’t need this handbook. I think the book is plenty helpful and only $5 on Amazon. Just my two cents.