Healthy Living Books Books
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Books : Overcoming Low Self-Esteem Self-help Course - 3 parts (Overcoming S.) .
Rating: 
- A really helpful, life changing book
This book is based on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), which basically sets out to help you become aware of where you are thinking unrealistically (or just plain wrongly), and to replace these thoughts with helpful and more realistic ones.
I was really scared for a fair while that this book wouldn't help me, but actually it has, and loads. By about half-way through, I was daring to believe people actually loved me, I was approaching groups of people and joining in with the conversation, and being open about who I am - and starting to enjoy doing so, and not assuming everyone disliked me.
However, you need to know that this book is sometimes difficult to read, and to change will be hard. This is not a book that you "read". This is a book where you read a section, then you have to do the exercise - sometimes daily, for a couple of weeks - more like a "workbook". If you read this book cover-to-cover, it will have little discernable effect on your life. However, if you put the time in, you will notice real changes fairly soon.
I have to confess by being really confused and a little upset for some of the people who gave this very negative reviews - it doesn't advocate simplistically thinking "positively" in the face of all the evidence. To the contrary, it helps you set up experiements to discover what the truth actually is, and what you can do about it, and helps you examine the evidence from your experiments in a more rational way.
Finally, you can only do this if you *want* to change - yes, this book is aobut changing quite fundamental thoughts you may have about yourself, which you may have clung to for years like a safety blanket and not want to believe actually aren't true. And it will be hard! However, for me it's been really worthwhile. Good luck!!
Rating: - Really helpful book
I have really enjoyed reading this book. Having suffered with several anxiety disorders over the years I decided to look at the cause rather than the symptoms. I have read many self help books but this is the only one that has had a significant effect. I think maybe some readers have missed the point of the book, it is really about accepting yourself, flaws and all, but also trying to focus on the positive rather than negative, obviously this isn't an easy task but this book sets you on the right track. Personally to me self esteem is all about acceptance, it's not about doing things perfectly, or looking a certain way, or even relying on other people to boost it - that's why I'm a bit confused over some of the other reviews. There are lots of different tasks to follow to help you understand your thinking patterns etc., and the author does explain at length the reason for undertaking each one. All in all I would say this is a really useful book if you suffer with self esteem issues. My only complaint would be that although she gives us several examples of people with low self esteem at the beginning, she does seem to focus on the same person throughout the majority of the book. It would have been nice to see different examples throughout.
Rating:
- Confused and badly structured
While I found I could identify with much of the symptoms and causes of symptoms in this book I found it badly written and unstructured to the extent of being almost unreadable in parts. Also, the self-help program was based on the assumptions that situations that are affected by your low self esteem have TANGIBLE and OBSERVABLE outcomes which is not generally appropriate to myself. I don't mean to knock this book outright - I found it useful in helping identify certain causes of my social-anxiety and can see that it could be very helpful for certain anxieties. Unfortunately however, not for me.
Rating:
- A waste of time...
I bought this book because I have always had low self esteem about my appearance, ever since days of name calling, ridicule, teasing in my school days about how I looked.
This book is as much use as an inflatable dart board if you suffer low self esteem because you are self conscious and feel negative about parts of yourself.
It gives an example of 'Karen', the girl who is overweight and her self esteem is ruined when she weighs herself and sees she has put on weight.
Her way to overcome this is to believe she is attractive, think of her qualities and even if she feels fat she should go swimming.
What a load of rubbish.
What about Karen's negative self image? What about Karen being self conscious over her weight and believing if people see she is fat that they will judge her negatively and ugly. What about Karen's beliefs that she is fat and ugly and believing no guy would be interested in her? What about Karen's beliefs that fat means ugly? What about when Karen looks in the mirror and sees she is fat and thinks negatively of herself? You cannot just believe 'Oh I am attractive' when you don't believe it.
This book does not tackle people feeling self conscious.
The book does however describe what self esteem is very well and shows some nice diagrams on how low self esteem reflects in low self confidence and anxiety.
But this book is basically a dud. The only people this book will help is people who just lack a bit of belief in themselves.
Throughout the book its funny that it gives examples on mainly 2 examples - someone who believes they are not good enough because his Dad said he wasn't and someone who believes they are bad because her step dad raped her. Your typical self esteem victims eh? It doesn't give examples of Karen who believes she is fat and ugly. Why? Because the writer knew that she hadn't a clue how to tackle such a problem.
Absolute waste of time. I could write a better book than this.
Rating: - Definitely the first step in tackling low self-esteem
I was given this book by my Clinical Psychologist at the beginning of my therapy for depression, anxiety and low self-esteem. Nearly every page that I read shows me where I have been going wrong with my thought process. The book explains clearly why you have been thinking the way you have and how to reassess those negative thoughts. And she manages to do all this while making complete sense.
This book has been as important in my therapy as the sessions have been with the Clinical Psychologist.
Give it try. It should be the first thing you try to beat low self-esteem.
- A really helpful, life changing bookThis book is based on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), which basically sets out to help you become aware of where you are thinking unrealistically (or just plain wrongly), and to replace these thoughts with helpful and more realistic ones.
I was really scared for a fair while that this book wouldn't help me, but actually it has, and loads. By about half-way through, I was daring to believe people actually loved me, I was approaching groups of people and joining in with the conversation, and being open about who I am - and starting to enjoy doing so, and not assuming everyone disliked me.
However, you need to know that this book is sometimes difficult to read, and to change will be hard. This is not a book that you "read". This is a book where you read a section, then you have to do the exercise - sometimes daily, for a couple of weeks - more like a "workbook". If you read this book cover-to-cover, it will have little discernable effect on your life. However, if you put the time in, you will notice real changes fairly soon.
I have to confess by being really confused and a little upset for some of the people who gave this very negative reviews - it doesn't advocate simplistically thinking "positively" in the face of all the evidence. To the contrary, it helps you set up experiements to discover what the truth actually is, and what you can do about it, and helps you examine the evidence from your experiments in a more rational way.
Finally, you can only do this if you *want* to change - yes, this book is aobut changing quite fundamental thoughts you may have about yourself, which you may have clung to for years like a safety blanket and not want to believe actually aren't true. And it will be hard! However, for me it's been really worthwhile. Good luck!!
Rating:
- Really helpful bookI have really enjoyed reading this book. Having suffered with several anxiety disorders over the years I decided to look at the cause rather than the symptoms. I have read many self help books but this is the only one that has had a significant effect. I think maybe some readers have missed the point of the book, it is really about accepting yourself, flaws and all, but also trying to focus on the positive rather than negative, obviously this isn't an easy task but this book sets you on the right track. Personally to me self esteem is all about acceptance, it's not about doing things perfectly, or looking a certain way, or even relying on other people to boost it - that's why I'm a bit confused over some of the other reviews. There are lots of different tasks to follow to help you understand your thinking patterns etc., and the author does explain at length the reason for undertaking each one. All in all I would say this is a really useful book if you suffer with self esteem issues. My only complaint would be that although she gives us several examples of people with low self esteem at the beginning, she does seem to focus on the same person throughout the majority of the book. It would have been nice to see different examples throughout.
Rating:
- Confused and badly structuredWhile I found I could identify with much of the symptoms and causes of symptoms in this book I found it badly written and unstructured to the extent of being almost unreadable in parts. Also, the self-help program was based on the assumptions that situations that are affected by your low self esteem have TANGIBLE and OBSERVABLE outcomes which is not generally appropriate to myself. I don't mean to knock this book outright - I found it useful in helping identify certain causes of my social-anxiety and can see that it could be very helpful for certain anxieties. Unfortunately however, not for me.
Rating:
- A waste of time...I bought this book because I have always had low self esteem about my appearance, ever since days of name calling, ridicule, teasing in my school days about how I looked.
This book is as much use as an inflatable dart board if you suffer low self esteem because you are self conscious and feel negative about parts of yourself.
It gives an example of 'Karen', the girl who is overweight and her self esteem is ruined when she weighs herself and sees she has put on weight.
Her way to overcome this is to believe she is attractive, think of her qualities and even if she feels fat she should go swimming.
What a load of rubbish.
What about Karen's negative self image? What about Karen being self conscious over her weight and believing if people see she is fat that they will judge her negatively and ugly. What about Karen's beliefs that she is fat and ugly and believing no guy would be interested in her? What about Karen's beliefs that fat means ugly? What about when Karen looks in the mirror and sees she is fat and thinks negatively of herself? You cannot just believe 'Oh I am attractive' when you don't believe it.
This book does not tackle people feeling self conscious.
The book does however describe what self esteem is very well and shows some nice diagrams on how low self esteem reflects in low self confidence and anxiety.
But this book is basically a dud. The only people this book will help is people who just lack a bit of belief in themselves.
Throughout the book its funny that it gives examples on mainly 2 examples - someone who believes they are not good enough because his Dad said he wasn't and someone who believes they are bad because her step dad raped her. Your typical self esteem victims eh? It doesn't give examples of Karen who believes she is fat and ugly. Why? Because the writer knew that she hadn't a clue how to tackle such a problem.
Absolute waste of time. I could write a better book than this.
Rating:
- Definitely the first step in tackling low self-esteem I was given this book by my Clinical Psychologist at the beginning of my therapy for depression, anxiety and low self-esteem. Nearly every page that I read shows me where I have been going wrong with my thought process. The book explains clearly why you have been thinking the way you have and how to reassess those negative thoughts. And she manages to do all this while making complete sense.
This book has been as important in my therapy as the sessions have been with the Clinical Psychologist.
Give it try. It should be the first thing you try to beat low self-esteem.
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