Hi Kizzie and Marji, thanks for the welcome 
I have zoomed through book and am about to start my 2nd read, tbh I'm likely to find myself doing very much what Marji has done and cycle through it quite a few times. I found it long-winded in parts, but I agree that it is bang on. Although it had a lot of stuff on grieving and getting angry which I haven't felt I've needed to do, which in truth concerns me a bit as suggests I am still in the denial phase emotionally or something...
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But at a general level it was such a relief to get a believable explanation that matched my experience of only having had partial success with approaches like CBT and other general "make yourself well through cognition " approaches. I'm not knocking them as I believe they have their place in the toolbox for good mental health, but I can now clearly see they are just 'a' tool for us to use, not 'the' tool that the can universally help us (an understanding which takes away guilt of "the only reason its not fixing me is I must be doing it wrong" or "I'm not putting in enough effort" etc). I guess its much the same as a hammer is useful for a plumber at times, but he wouldn't get anywhere is all he did was hammer stuff, no matter how much effort he put into using it!
I'd been confused for so long (decades) as to why I could be quite confident socially on one occasion, and be highly anxious a few days later in another very similar situation (even when using the same CBT/thought tools I had done the first time round). Equally, I was confused about the extreme variance in how much negative comments hurt, (could brush them off one day, another day be mortified by similar ones) how badly I viewed myself/mistakes, levels of guilt and catastrophization – also why this variance could last days/weeks but of course, one word clarifies that – Flashback! Thanks Mr Walker! For me that insight was worth buying the book for.
I'll leave it there for now, but I'd also like to say thanks to you admin guys/gals for running this site/forum
, I was really pleased to find it, your time/effort is appreciated and I think it could be an excellent resourse.
I have zoomed through book and am about to start my 2nd read, tbh I'm likely to find myself doing very much what Marji has done and cycle through it quite a few times. I found it long-winded in parts, but I agree that it is bang on. Although it had a lot of stuff on grieving and getting angry which I haven't felt I've needed to do, which in truth concerns me a bit as suggests I am still in the denial phase emotionally or something...
. But at a general level it was such a relief to get a believable explanation that matched my experience of only having had partial success with approaches like CBT and other general "make yourself well through cognition " approaches. I'm not knocking them as I believe they have their place in the toolbox for good mental health, but I can now clearly see they are just 'a' tool for us to use, not 'the' tool that the can universally help us (an understanding which takes away guilt of "the only reason its not fixing me is I must be doing it wrong" or "I'm not putting in enough effort" etc). I guess its much the same as a hammer is useful for a plumber at times, but he wouldn't get anywhere is all he did was hammer stuff, no matter how much effort he put into using it!
I'd been confused for so long (decades) as to why I could be quite confident socially on one occasion, and be highly anxious a few days later in another very similar situation (even when using the same CBT/thought tools I had done the first time round). Equally, I was confused about the extreme variance in how much negative comments hurt, (could brush them off one day, another day be mortified by similar ones) how badly I viewed myself/mistakes, levels of guilt and catastrophization – also why this variance could last days/weeks but of course, one word clarifies that – Flashback! Thanks Mr Walker! For me that insight was worth buying the book for.
I'll leave it there for now, but I'd also like to say thanks to you admin guys/gals for running this site/forum
, I was really pleased to find it, your time/effort is appreciated and I think it could be an excellent resourse.