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😊👍 Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy

🛒 Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

📚 Book Report: 😊 Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David D. Burns

  • 🧠 Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, first published in 1980 by David D. Burns, is a landmark self-help book that popularized cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for a general audience. 💡 It offers practical, scientifically proven techniques to help readers combat depression, anxiety, and negative thinking patterns without relying solely on medication. 🤔 The book emphasizes the profound connection between our thoughts and feelings, asserting that distorted thinking is often the root cause of emotional distress.

🔑 Key Concepts

💬 The core of Feeling Good lies in identifying and challenging “cognitive distortions,” which are irrational and negative thought patterns that contribute to poor mood. ➡️ The book details ten common distortions, providing readers with tools and exercises to recognize and reframe them.

🔑 Key concepts and techniques include:

  • 💭 Thoughts Create Feelings: ✅ The central premise is that emotions are a result of our interpretations and thoughts about events, not the events themselves.
  • 🧐 Identifying Cognitive Distortions: 👁️‍🗨️ Learning to spot common errors in thinking, such as all-or-nothing thinking, overgeneralization, mental filter, and disqualifying the positive.
  • 📝 The Triple Column Technique: ✍️ A practical exercise involving writing down negative thoughts, identifying the distortion, and creating a more realistic and balanced thought.
  • 🗓️ Daily Activity Schedule: 📊 Structuring daily goals and activities to combat procrastination and disrupt depressive cycles, emphasizing that motivation often follows action.
  • 💪 Challenging Negative Thoughts: ⚖️ Evaluating the validity of negative thoughts and replacing them with more rational and helpful perspectives.
  • 🌟 Building Self-Esteem: ❤️ Focusing on self-acceptance rather than solely on achievements.
  • 😡 Managing Anger and Criticism: 🤝 Using empathy and assertiveness to navigate difficult interpersonal situations.

🧑‍⚕️ Author

👨‍⚕️ David D. Burns, M.D., is an American psychiatrist and adjunct professor emeritus at the Stanford University School of Medicine. 🧠 He is a prominent figure in the field of cognitive behavioral therapy and trained under Aaron T. Beck, the founder of cognitive therapy. ✍️ Burns has authored several other bestselling books, including The Feeling Good Handbook and Feeling Great: The Revolutionary New Treatment for Depression and Anxiety. 🗣️ He is credited with popularizing CBT through his accessible writing style and media appearances.

✨ Impact and Significance

🏆 Feeling Good has had a significant impact as a self-help resource and is frequently recommended by mental health professionals. 🌍 It has sold millions of copies worldwide and is considered a cornerstone of self-help CBT literature. 🔬 Research suggests that reading Feeling Good as a form of self-directed bibliotherapy can have a helpful effect on treating depression, sometimes comparable to medication or traditional therapy. 🚀 The book’s emphasis on empowering individuals to understand and change their own thinking patterns has made it a lasting and influential work in the field of mental wellness.

📚 Additional Book Recommendations

💡 Similar Books (Focus on CBT and Self-Help)

  • 📖 The Feeling Good Handbook by David D. Burns: ➡️ A follow-up to Feeling Good, offering more exercises and applications of CBT techniques for a wider range of problems, including anxiety, panic, and relationship issues.
  • 📖 Mind Over Mood: Change How You Feel by Changing the Way You Think by Dennis Greenberger and Christine A. Padesky: 🗂️ Another highly recommended workbook-style approach to CBT, providing structured worksheets to help identify and change negative thinking patterns.
  • 📖 Retrain Your Brain: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in 7 Weeks: A Workbook for Managing Depression and Anxiety by Seth J. Gillihan PhD: 🗓️ A practical workbook designed to guide readers through CBT principles and exercises over a seven-week period.
  • 📖 Feeling Great: The Revolutionary New Treatment for Depression and Anxiety by David D. Burns MD: 🆕 A more recent work by Burns, presenting updated techniques and insights, particularly related to TEAM-CBT.
  • 📖 The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living: A Guide to ACT by Russ Harris: 🧘 Introduces Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), a related but distinct approach that emphasizes accepting difficult thoughts and feelings while committing to values-based actions.

🔄 Contrasting Books (Different Therapeutic Approaches or Perspectives)

  • 👣➡️🌍 Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life by Jon Kabat-Zinn: 🧘 Focuses on mindfulness and acceptance, encouraging readers to observe thoughts and feelings without judgment rather than directly challenging or changing them, which differs from the core CBT approach of Feeling Good.
  • 📖 Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha by Tara Brach: ❤️ Explores themes of self-acceptance and compassion from a Buddhist and psychological perspective, offering a gentler approach to difficult emotions compared to the more direct challenge of negative thoughts in CBT.
  • 📖 The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by Michael A. Singer: ✨ Delves into consciousness and spirituality, focusing on detaching from the ego and observing thoughts from a broader perspective, offering a philosophical contrast to the practical, thought-modification focus of CBT.
  • 📖 Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson: 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 While helpful for understanding relational patterns and their impact on adult well-being, this book focuses more on the dynamics of past relationships than on the in-the-moment thought restructuring central to Feeling Good.

🎨 Creatively Related Books (Exploring Related Concepts or Complementary Practices)

  • 📖 Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself by Kristin Neff: 🥰 Focuses specifically on developing self-compassion as a means of improving emotional resilience, a concept that complements the self-esteem building discussed in Feeling Good.
  • 🫂🤝🗣️ How To Win Friends And Influence People by Dale Carnegie: 🤝 A classic in interpersonal skills and communication, offering practical advice on building relationships that can support overall well-being, an area touched upon in Feeling Good in the context of handling criticism.
  • 📖 Creative Approaches to CBT by Lina A. Sherwood: 🖍️ Provides therapists with ways to incorporate creative activities and exercises, such as art therapy techniques, into CBT sessions, suggesting a more experiential dimension to the cognitive work.
  • 📖 The Creative Cognitive Therapy Method: Combining Traditional CBT with Art Therapy for Real Change by Pamela Hayes Malkoff: 🎨 Directly integrates art therapy with traditional CBT, offering a hands-on, creative approach to identifying and changing negative thought patterns.
  • 🤕🎼🧠 The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk: 🧠 Explores the impact of trauma on the brain and body, highlighting the importance of somatic approaches in healing, which provides a broader perspective on mental health that goes beyond the cognitive focus of Feeling Good.

💬 Gemini Prompt (gemini-2.5-flash-preview-04-17)

Write a markdown-formatted (start headings at level H2) book report, followed by a plethora of additional similar, contrasting, and creatively related book recommendations on Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy. Be thorough in content discussed but concise and economical with your language. Structure the report with section headings and bulleted lists to avoid long blocks of text.

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