The Feeling Good Handbook
Make life an exhilarating experience! With his phenomenally successful Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, Dr. David Burns introduced a groundbreaking, drug-free treatment for depression. Now in this long-awaited sequel, he reveals powerful new techniques and provides step-by-step exercises that help you cope with the full range of everyday problems. * Free from fears, phobias, and panic attacks • Overcome self-defeating attitudes • Discover the five secrets of intimate communication • Put an end to marital conflict • Conquer procrastination and unleash your potential for success With an up-to-date section on everything you need to know about commonly prescribed psychiatric drugs and anxiety disorders such as agoraphobia and obsessive-compulsive disorder, this remarkable guide can show you how to feel good about yourself and the people you care about. You will discover that life can be an exhilarating experience.
Stats for nerds
14recommend
20mentions
17people
2010–2022years
75% recommend25% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Another vote for CBT. CBT has made a big difference for me, helping me to find my way out of some very negative patterns of thinking, and allowing me to feel real joy, despite a number of ongoing difficult circumstances in my life. I'd recommend it to just about anyone, at any age.
I didn't go through CBT with a therapist. I just read the first few chapters of The Feeling Good Handbook, then tried to establish a habit of confronting my negative feelings, and the thoughts that were feeding them by identifying the distortions in those thoughts.
YMMV, but it may be worth a try.
- Mine is comorbid with being bipolar. The only thing that helped was medication and then…
- Learning CBT from a book with the help of a therapist to guide me. https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-Handbook-David-Burns/dp/... The core of it is in the first few chapters. Never read the later ones once I got the concept.
- Learning how to have realistic expectations about what I can do day after day.
- Prioritize self-care and optimize for long-term performance over short term success. This includes going to bed earlier than I want. :(
- Working with my manager to have the proper accommodations. In my case, strict 40-hour work week, no work interruptions outside of that, and time off as needed.
I’ve needed accommodations less since things have evened out, but I’ll never be able to do on-call.
- It is possible to learn it from a book on your own. I recommend The Feeling Good Handbook by David D. Burns. https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-Handbook-David-Burns/dp/...
This is the book my therapist had me read as part of my “homework” between sessions.
While this is completely anecdotal, it’s helped a number of people I’ve recommended it to and they have recommended it to others, who also have been helped. Learning what emotions are, what they mean, and how to recognize them is empowering.
- Burns's "Feeling Good" book led me to a breakthrough in my mood management. Now I keep a copy of the Feeling Good Handbook for quick reference beside my desk at all times.
- Someone here recommended David Burns' "The Feeling Good Handbook" and it was a very, very good read. I'm not going to say it turned my life around, but it taught me how to spot and disarm all kinds of cognitive distortions, defeat laziness, better align my expectations of others, assess my self worth positively...
It's also well written, fast paced, and sometimes even funny. It includes lots of exercises that are practical and easy to do.
- For what it's worth, CBT was hugely helpful for me. I read The Feeling Good Handbook (kind of the CBT bible, a new edition of Feeling Good). CBT is definitely a tool that you want on your tool belt if you're struggling with anxiety/depression. It may not be the be all end all, but I like that it puts control and responsibility into the person's hands, namely the thesis that thoughts precede emotion. It's helped me reframe my mind to give me more control over what I think and feel, to separate the true reality of life ("that person and I didn't talk for long", "I haven't heard from a friend in 24 hours", "I'm not currently doing anything on this saturday night") from the normative, subjective spins your mind can put on reality ("that person didn't like me", "I have no friends", "I'm a loser with nothing to do").
There's definitely a discussion about whether CBT should always be the therapy of choice. Personally, I think you need to be at the right spot for CBT to be effective. For me, I was a functional person who could somewhat identify what I didn't like about my mental state and was very open to trying to improve. I'm guessing CBT is probably not as effective if you're experiencing severe mental health problems or breaks in reality, or if you have milder symptoms but don't want help/change. Sometimes when I'm really down, CBT essentially feels like "you're sad because you're too stupid to be happy!" At the same time, I imagine every therapy works better if a person is at an okay spot and open to change. And CBT can probably help people all over the spectrum to various degrees.
If you're experiencing mental health problems, give The Feeling Good Handbook a try! It's a large workbook where you read and work through written exercises. Very helpful to me so I try to evangelize it when I can (and give out copies to people I know who struggle). I never tried in person therapy but that'd also be immensely helpful too. The great thing about CBT is how simple it is though, so reading a book (aka bibliotherapy) for a self-motivated patient can do the trick. Indeed, he spends the first chapter reviewing studies that claim bibliotherapy is just as successful as in person therapy. (Not sure what I think of that... I imagine book readers are more self-motivated than the average in-person patient but they were experimental studies so I'm sure that's already controlled for... nevertheless, bibliotherapy was good for me.
About me: I lost my dad in high school, my mom in college, and my sister to suicide after graduating. Pair that with an interesting childhood (alcoholic mom, bipolar sister) albeit a financially comfortable childhood. It was (and still can be) an incredibly hard stretch of time. At the same time, I was exceptionally gifted at school and really looked up to my teachers so I was and am very lucky and traditionally successful. If you're struggling, get help! Take responsibility! Your mind CAN change in small but subtle ways in how you frame your life and the daily happenings of it.
