Long story short(-ish):

I read this book because I am interested in psychology and, several months ago, I came across a glowing recommendation for this book in another psychology book I was reading. I was especially intrigued by the rather implausible-sounding claim that many people have reported significant improvements in their mood and their overall psychological wellbeing simply as a result of reading this book, even if they don't actually follow any of the exercises in the book. I was curious but skeptical, so I read it for myself. It took me a lot longer to read than I had expected, mainly because, immediately after reading the chapter on procrastination, I was inspired to make a to-do list and start working on a whole host of chores that I had been putting off for ages, including some long-overdue spring cleaning. I spent so much time working on these chores that I had little time for reading, but my mood was already starting to improve dramatically, and the more I got done, the better I felt.

I eventually did finish the book, of course, and I must say that it really did live up to the hype. After reading it, I felt happier, more positive, more motivated to get things done, less anxious, and less stressed out. I also became more productive and less of a procrastinator. While I have never, to the best of my knowledge, suffered from clinical depression, like most people, I do on occasion feel a bit overwhelmed by the stresses of life, which can put me in a bad mood from time to time. I have also long struggled with lethargy and a lack of motivation, coupled with excessive self-criticism and self-doubt, which can make it difficult for me to accomplish the things I want or need to do in life. This book has taught me techniques for coping with these challenges, which not only puts me in a better mood but also makes it much easier for me to motivate myself to get things done. I'm not saying that this book is some sort of "magic bullet" that will instantaneously cure your depression and anxiety and grant you perfect psychological wellbeing for the rest of your life. You're going to have to work at it, and you will still face challenges and setbacks from time to time. But this book will teach you proven techniques that you can use to help improve your mood, your motivation, your emotional resiliency, and your overall satisfaction with life.

I truly believe that everyone can benefit from the techniques taught in this book. They are especially valuable for anyone who might be struggling with depression, anxiety, or some other mental health issue, but even if you are fortunate enough not to have any of those problems, I still think you will find this book helpful. It will teach you how to improve your mood, how to overcome procrastination, and how to better cope with the stresses of life. We could all use that. In fact, I might even go so far as to recommend that this book be put on the required reading list for all high school seniors and college freshmen, because no one is more in need of developing effective coping skills, emotional resiliency, and self-motivation than an adolescent who is leaving home for the first time. I certainly wish that I had read this book when I was much younger.

Anyway, get it; read it; use it. You'll be glad you did.

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Short story long (for those whose eyes haven't already glazed over):

I find psychology fascinating. So much so, in fact, that I have even given serious thought to going back to school and pursuing a degree in the field. My primary areas of interest are social and political psychology (since I already have degrees in political science and sociology), but I am also fascinated by cognitive psychology, biological psychology, and abnormal psychology, as well as various other subfields within the discipline. And while I have no real desire to pursue a career in clinical psychology myself, I am interested in learning as much as I can about the methods that clinical psychologists and psychiatrists use to diagnose and treat their patients.

In particular, I want to learn as much as I can about cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which has been shown to be one of the most effective methods of treating all sorts of psychological problems—from depression to phobias to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and beyond. One of the reasons that I am so interested in CBT (and similar therapeutic approaches, such as Viktor Frankl's "logotherapy") is that I firmly agree with the core principle that they are founded on: That you can learn how to take control of your own psychological wellbeing and develop the emotional resiliency to cope with the stresses of life rather than being a passive victim of circumstances beyond your control. You can't control what happens to you, but you can learn to control how you think about and how you react to the uncontrollable events in your life—and this can make all the difference. (I should note that this is essentially what the ancient Greco-Roman Stoics taught, which is one of the main reasons I find CBT so appealing, given my fondness for Stoicism. You can even think of CBT as applied Stoicism, updated for the 21st century.)

One of the things I like most about cognitive behavioral therapy is that you don't have to suffer from mental illness in order to benefit from it. Anyone can use the techniques of CBT to improve their psychological wellbeing. CBT can teach you how to better manage your moods so that you feel happier, more motivated, more hopeful, more patient, less anxious, less angry, less critical (of self and others), and less stressed out. It can also teach you how to better manage your motivations and habits so that you are more self-disciplined, more productive, and less lazy. It can even teach you how to break bad habits and overcome irrational fears. And all of this can be done with simple, easy-to-use, yet highly effective techniques that you can do on your own, without the need to go see a therapist (unless, of course, you are dealing with very serious mental health issues, in which case, you really should see a qualified psychiatrist or clinical psychologist who is trained in CBT and can help you work through your problems—but most people can benefit greatly from CBT without the need to seek professional help, simply by reading books on the subject and trying out the techniques for themselves). The single biggest obstacle that prevents most people who know about CBT from reaping its benefits is their unwillingness to give it a try, usually because they don't believe it will work (or at least they don't believe it will work *for them*).

As you might expect, given my interest in the field of psychology, I am always on the lookout for good books on the subject. And while I don't generally read a lot on clinical psychology (I am far more intrigued by experimental psychology), I do occasionally read books about cognitive behavioral therapy and similar therapeutic methods. (This is due as much to my interest in Stoicism as it is to my interest in psychology, given the Stoic roots of CBT.) So when I first heard about this book, I knew that I would have to read it.

Technically speaking, what this book teaches is not CBT—it is cognitive therapy. Cognitive behavioral therapy is a combination of cognitive therapy and behavioral therapy. Cognitive therapy is about helping you learn how your thoughts affect your feelings and how to change the way you feel by changing the way you think, whereas behavioral therapy is about training you to change your habitual patterns of behavior and helping you get accustomed to doing things that fall outside your comfort zone. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) uses both of these methods in combination to help you overcome a wide variety of psychological and behavioral problems. This book focuses on the cognitive side of things, teaching you how to improve your mood by learning how to think more clearly and more realistically about your problems so that you aren't constantly plagued by unhelpful thoughts that serve no purpose other than make you miserable. (If you want to learn about the behavioral side of things, I would recommend the book 'Don't Shoot the Dog' by Karen Pryor.)

While I have read other books that explain the principles behind CBT and similar therapeutic methods, this is the first "self help" book I have ever read that actually teaches you how to use the techniques of cognitive therapy to improve your own mood. And I was absolutely stunned at how well it worked for me. Although I don't suffer from clinical depression, I do struggle from time to time with lethargy and lack of motivation. Yet after reading only the first five chapters of this book, I felt inspired to get up and start working on things that I had been putting off for ages, and I was amazed at how good it made me feel. I certainly haven't put all of the techniques taught in this book to good use yet, and I've still got quite a way to go before I'd be willing to say that I'm a completely "cured" of all my bad habits, but the improvement I've seen thus far is undeniable. I feel better than I've felt in years. And while I can't guarantee that it will improve your mood as much as it has mine, I suspect that you will see at least some benefit from reading this book if you approach it with an open mind and a willingness to help yourself get better.

But self-improvement isn't the only reason to read this book. You can also learn a lot from it. For example, the last few chapters of the book discuss what is known (or at least what was known in 1999) about the biological causes of depression and about the safety and effectiveness of various antidepressant medications. While at least some of this information is certain to be outdated, since it is now two decades old, much of it is still quite useful. The information in the final chapter about the price of various antidepressants and the availability of generic forms of these drugs is certainly long out of date, but the information about their potential side-effects and how they can interact with other medications is most likely still quite valid. I should note that the author, David Burns, MD—who is a practicing psychiatrist as well as a professor of psychiatry—firmly believes that, while antidepressants are useful for some patients, they aren't for everyone and should never be used alone, but only in conjunction with some form of therapy, such as cognitive therapy or CBT. The decision of whether a patient should use an antidepressant, and which one they should use, will depend on the severity of the depression, the preferences of the patient (and how likely they are to actually use the medicine as prescribed), what other medications they are taking, how well they can tolerate the side-effects, and how well they are responding to therapy (many patients are able to overcome their depression with therapy alone, without the need for an antidepressant). He also believes that antidepressants should only be used for a limited time—three to twelve months—until the patient's depression has improved enough to taper off of them. He firmly rejects the view that patients who take antidepressants will need to stay on them indefinitely in order to prevent a relapse. As long as patients have learned the sorts of coping techniques taught in this book, they should be able to avoid a relapse (and if they do have a relapse, they can always go back on the meds for a short period of time until it passes). In his view, antidepressants should only be used as a temporary aid to therapy, not as a long-term substitute for it.

I would certainly recommend this book to everyone—especially to those who are struggling with depression, anxiety, or other mental health issues—but I feel that anyone can benefit from it, since it teaches you how to better manage your moods and how to better cope with the stresses that all of us face from time to time. No one gets through life unscathed. We all encounter our share of troubles along the way. If we live long enough, each of us will have to deal with setbacks of various sorts—the loss of a job, the loss of a loved one, health problems, family conflicts, financial worries, stress at work or at school, etc. All of us could stand to benefit from learning coping skills that will help us get through these tough times without giving up or collapsing under the weight of our troubles. And, as I said above, no one could benefit more from these skills than young people—especially those who have just left the nest, or who soon will be. Adolescence can be tough. No longer a child; not quite an adult. Bodies changing; hormones surging. Peers pressuring; parents nagging. Brains still developing; identities still forming. Full of idealism; lacking in life experience. And right when young people most need the stabilizing influence of friends, family, and familiar routines to keep them grounded, we kick them out of high school and send them off to college or into the workforce, where they will encounter new people, new ideas, and new ways of doing things, as well as a whole new set of expectations and responsibilities. How will they be able to cope? That will depend entirely on their psychological resiliency—their ability to pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and climb right back onto the horse that threw them. Some people may naturally be more resilient than others, but for the most part, resilience is learned. As with most things, the best teacher is experience (though experience tends to be a tough grader), but there are other ways to learn how to better cope with life's difficulties, and this book is one of them.

I would recommend that all high school seniors and/or college freshmen read this book. I would also recommend that they read 'Man's Search for Meaning' by the Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, which should also help them learn to be more resilient. Frankl was a Holocaust survivor whose wife, mother, and brother all died in the camps. In the first part of his book, he talks about his experiences at Auschwitz and other camps, and his observations about how some of his fellow prisoners seemed better able to cope with the brutal conditions they were living under than others were. While some of the prisoners simply gave up and let themselves waste away and die, and others gave in to their worst instincts, treating their fellow prisoners with cruelty or indifference, and even collaborating with the Nazi guards, many were able to endure the horrors of life in the camps without losing their hope or their humanity. Frankl concluded that the ones who were most resilient and never lost their dignity or their sense of self were the ones who felt that they had something to live for—the ones who felt that their life had meaning. Those prisoners who could find a sense of purpose in the midst of their suffering—a purpose that not even the Nazis could take away from them—were able to endure and, if they were fortunate enough to escape the gas chambers and to avoid contracting any of the infectious diseases that quickly spread throughout the camps, had a pretty good shot not only at surviving the camps but at building a decent life for themselves after the war was over—scarred from the experience, to be sure, but still standing tall. In the second part of Frankl's book, he explains his approach to psychology, which he calls "logotherapy", which is based, at least in part, on his experience in the camps. The central premise of logotherapy is that people can endure almost anything as long as they feel that they have something to live for—as long as they feel that their life has meaning and purpose. But without this sense of meaning and purpose, people easily lose hope in the face of adversity. So, the key to helping people become more resilient so that they can better cope with their problems is to help them find a sense of meaning and purpose in their life so that they will feel as if they have something to live for. I think anyone can benefit from the insights found in Frankl's book (if nothing else, it will help you realize that, no matter how bad your problems may seem to be, at least you're not in Auschwitz). I would recommend reading both 'Man's Search for Meaning' by Viktor Frankl and 'Feeling Good' by David Burns, since both will help you learn to become more resilient. But if you are able to read only one of them, I would have to recommend that you read the one by Burns, since it actually teaches you a number of practical techniques that you can use to help yourself (or a loved one) better cope with the sorts of problems that we all face from time to time.

Bottom line: I highly recommend this book. If you are suffering from depression or some other mental health issue, it may help you, and it certainly couldn't hurt. But even if you're not suffering from a mental health problem, you will still learn some valuable things from this book about how to better cope with the stresses of life, how to better manage your moods, and how to motivate yourself to do things that you just don't feel like doing. And you may even learn a thing or two about psychology along the way.

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Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy