Customer Reviews

The Cognitive Behavioral Workbook for Anxiety: A Step-by-Step Program

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I had been suffering with panic attacks and generalized anxiety for a few months. I tried therapy, meds, ect and found them all to be not for me. I was pointed to Cognitive Behavior Therapy by a college counselor, and bought this book. I LOVE it. It is set-up very well, has charts to write in, and has really reduced my anxiety. I have been doing a chapter (about 8 pages) a week for about 8 weeks and have really noticed a change. I highly recommend this book!

I purchased this book to help me with anxiety issues and found it to be a very good self help tool. The exercises and action plans really helped me to see I can view anxiety differently and stop letting it control my life so much. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes self help programs. I haven't even finished the book yet but by using what I have learned so far I am able to approach circumstances that cause anxiety in a much more positive manner.

I had been struggling with anxiety all my life and I didn't even know it. It got out of hand 6 years ago during my final year in university. I just had these crazy thoughts, that freaked me out and didn't make any kind of sense and I couldn't handle them.

I took medication and things settled down a little only to come back with a vengeance when I started a job I didn't really like. Well, as things would have happened, I got fired, but I decided it was time to take this problem into my own hands. I stumbled upon this book by accident. Reading books is the only thing I had not tried yet, I went to doctors, psychologist, psychiatrists and I took medication...so what did I have to lose.

This book opened my eyes. It gave me so much information on my problem that I just couldn't figure out on my own because I was so anxious and tensed. It really feels like you have your own little doctor talking to you in each page and everything is explained so clearly. It took me three months to read it cover to cover and I noticed some changes in the first weeks of starting the program.

Now, I read through it every month and I have reduced my medication, without any complications so far. If all goes well, in three months time (because I'm taking it slow) I should be off medication for good. My anxiety still makes cameo appearances in my life from time to time, but, I can control it now. These are my thoughts, and I am not gonna let them rule over me anymore, thanks to this book.

Both this, and the other workbook in the series, "Cognitive Behavior Workbook for Depression", are excellent. I consider them essential in my helping clients. As combination workbook-textbooks for my clients it saves clients money on not having to neelessly spend additonal money for other supplimentary bibliotherapy resources. This is the only book clients will need to cover a complete course of therapy. Thw workbbok covers everything in fine detail. I have used these books for the last five years with very favorable results. The only difficulty I have encountered is that the authors do assume those who read the books have some basic familiarity with CBT concepts. Other then that I have found this book to be the best workbook available, or for that matter, the best client centered textbook, for helping clients in better understanding and managing their anxiety. I would also add the best price available is at Amazon.

This book is very helpful and it really gives you some excercises which helps with parasitic anxiety.

Professionals:

Coming as it does from the New Harbinger stable, one might expect Knaus's book to include an in-depth review of mindfulness-based, experiential techniques along with CBT. One would be wrong.

Knaus is solidly rooted in Albert Ellis's rational emotive behavioral therapy, as well as the old-school exposure therapies of the '70s and '80s (think "Edna Foa"). But in this book (published well into the MBCT era in 2008), the "radical acceptance" and progressive self-awareness techniques that mark the MBCT's like acceptance and commitment therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, and self-talk identification, questioning and revision, are not discussed.

Those whose anxiety and panic are fundamentally the products of left hemisphere dominance and irrationality may derive a lot of useful information and method here. But those whose anxiety and panic are essentially the products of right hemispheric hyper-emotionality (e.g.: hysteric borderlinism) should not expect much help... or, at least, not the "complete package."

Put in terms of personality theory, this might be a good book for people with DSM Axis II Cluster A traits, but probably not for those with traits from Cluster B. And in terms of neuropsychology: Those with over-myelinated downlinks from an over-thinky neocortex seem likely to do better with this than those with little neurological governance of their limbic systems.

Moreover, if the patient's anxiety is a function of dissociated terrorizing and complex PTSD, New Harbinger offers other workbooks more likely to help the patient acquire the skills base he or she will need to get some affective comfort. Among them: the Blocks' =Mind Body Workbook for PTSD=, Marra's =Depressed & Anxious=, Follette & Pistorello's =Finding Life Beyond Trauma=, and Hayes & Smith's =Get Out of Your Mind & Into Your Life=.

That said, the two pages on "A Case of Managing Panic" distills some of the most useful and artful translation of Selye and Wolpe I have thus far run into in a mass market volume. I wish I had understood overrunning the General Adaptation Syndrome and shipwrecking the autonomic nervous system as well as those notions are portrayed in those two pages a decade and a half ago.

RG, Psy.D.

I am "counseling pastor" with nearly 40 years of pastoral practice, during which I have sought supervision and additional education to guide this aspect of my work. I generally restrict my counseling to behavioral issues and refer after a few sessions, if therapy is needed. The Cognitive Behavioral approach for depression, anxiety and other issues has commended itself to this level of engagement for some time, although my preparation was limited to reading about it. A member, who was on several medications and under the care of a psychiatrist for anxiety disorder, was not getting the benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy. When placed in the client's hands and with on-going conversation with me, a nearly 40 year dependence of drug therapy was ended (with the psychiatrist's concurrence and blessing) and a new life begun.

This can be the right resource if, it is done in conversation or supervision with someone at least somewhat familiar with the approach. I have since directed others to the workbook, with positive, if not as dramatic results.

bought this for my girlfriend and she wasn't to enthused about reading it but as she read it more her anxiety got better.
so I give it five stars for functionality.