A review of Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David D. Burns, M.D

In Feeling good, Dr. David D. Burns, puts forth key tips to healing yourself from anxiety, fear, depression, moods and harsh self-criticism with cognitive therapy. This theory although new, has some similarities to the theory from French psychologist, Emil Coue (1857-1926) who had his patients proclaiming "everyday I'm getting better and better".

Diagnosing your problem

David Burns' "Feeling Good..." is designed to help the person who does not want to be dependent upon psycho-pharmaceutical medicine. It is founded upon cognitive therapy and its main focus is on discovering your moods and changing your thoughts on the way in which you perceive them. You are what you think! Controlling your moods Are you often angry, moody, depressed? If you are, then discovering the reason why you feel that way may be found out by reading Feeling Good. Burns proposes that people who discover the reasons for their moods or depressions are much more likely to recover from them by changing their perceptions and their thoughts on life. How to cope with self-criticism? Another point that he brings is self-criticism. What kind of talks do you hear in your mind? Are they positive or are you always criticising yourself and being unnecessarily hard on yourself for making mistakes, or finding something wrong with the way you did something? Is your own self-criticism your biggest enemy? If so, it is time you started talking back to those negative thoughts. A "feel-good" effect However, one may wonder as regards to the ways in which you achieve that. Burns presents us with a test within the book which helps us to discover the moods that are raging within us. Moreover, he maintains that by beginning to read the book, people began to feel better about themselves.

Book standing in the U.K.

Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy was first copyrighted in 1980. With the revised edition which was updated and published in 1999, more than 3 million copies of the book have been sold. In addition, the sequel, the Feeling Good Handbook has sold over 500,000 copies so far. Of the 94 top bestsellers for depressions in the U.K. Feeling Good is ranked second on the book list according to the standing from the online dictionary of mental health included on their website Human-nature.com.