A Proven Program of Cognitive Techniques for Assessing

The book arrived on time and was generally as described. However, upon reading it, the pages are now separating from the spine, which to me is a little more than "cosmetic". I have to be careful when opening and reading the chapters. Other than that, it's as described.

This book is wonderful for explaining how and why people do the things they do, intentionally or accidentally, to hurt others. In addition to analyzing an issue, the author has suggestions and exercises to counteract the problem and bring it to a satisfactory conclusion. Great for anyone who has been or is currently verbally abused.

Excellent book teaching you steps to become more aware of your own thoughts, how they influence your self-esteem, and how to work to correct them. A step by step self-help program. Highly recommended.

This book wa very informative. Chalked full of amazing skills, this book teaches you how to live your life in ways you never thought possible. Highly recommend, a greater quality of living awaits through application of taught principles found in this book.

This book is really good for the shrink; however, for the average person looking for self-esteem might want to check out other books. It's a very well written and a very good book. Just not sure if the average person has the patients.

My purchase arrived promptly and I dove into this book. It has already helped me address several issues I struggle with, such as the chapter on "Shoulds". I would definitely purchase from this seller again. Thanks!

Breaking Addiction gives clear and helpful insight into how to help addicts break their patterns of using by identifying​ the trigger feelings when they happen. Every addict that I know suffers from very low self-esteem. This book is very helpful in a practical way.

Kirk Johnson did not write this book. Matthew McKay and Patrick Fanning wrote it. The cover looks nothing like your picture.

The book is very basic cognitive therapy applied to the principles of self esteem. If you read it a little at a time, really take the time to think about it and work it, it will work.

Some one took this book from the hosptial unit the day I brought it there so we could not assess it. Apparently some one saw it as a grabber. It looked good to me but I was very sorry to have ti taken from the psychiatric unit before I could get feedback on it. I might order another one or try to review one before I reorder. Thank you.

GREAT book, I recommend it to both consumers (people currently in therapy and those who aren't or even never been) and providers (therapists; I am one myself).

It starts off with a little background information of low self-esteem causes and also instructions on how to use this book (it sounds silly, but turned out to be very helpful, especially for self-help literature). It introduces the notion of "pathological critic" and that once we learn to identify him/her within ourselves, we've taken the first step to help ourselves lead more fulfilling lives. This book is based on Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) methods, therefore it has specific simple exercises for you to do as you go along in your reading. I can't recommend it enough to ACTUALLY doing them.

This book is printed in a small format, so very convenient to carry around. Get it, IT'S WORTH IT!

This is a very comprehensive self-help book about the nature, cause und treatment of low self-esteem. It is ideal for everyone with low self-esteem and contains many exercises. The authors deal with the following aspects:
- The nature of self-esteem: here the basic concept of the whole book is being introduced: your thoughts determine your self-esteem
- The pathological critic: you explore your inner critic, explore the origin of this critic and get information how to catch your critic
- Disarming the critic: in order to combat your inner critic, you first have to understand its function, then talk back so to make him useless
- Accurate self-assessment: this is one of the highlights of this book. You'll learn the art of accurate self-assessment without using pejorative terms like useless, bad, or inferior
- Cognitive distortions: this chapter deals with the important concept of wrongly perceiving reality and how to combat this tendency
- Compassion: this is one of the most powerful techniques for dealing with low self-esteem. You'll learn ways to better understand, accept, and forgive yourself and others
- Handling mistakes and responding to criticisms: I greatly like the attitude of the authors towards mistakes. There are no mistakes in the world, because all the decisions you chose to make were based on your needs and assessment of the situation. A decision can only be labeled as a mistake with hindsight
- Asking for what you want: this chapter shows how to assert your right without being aggressive
- Visualization and hypnosis
- Building self-esteem in children: the last chapter shows ways how to raise children with high self-esteem by listening to them and validating their feelings. At the same time, it is important to set clear limits and be consistent.
Altogether, this book is full of useful information and exercises. It can be used both as a self-help book and a supplement to therapy.

This work provides practical strategies on how to
identify both constructive and non-constructive
criticisms . People need motivation.
As such, considerable things are achieved
when we have the requisite drive.

The critic tends to serve
our guilt with a heaping of criticism. The authors
provide strategies to anticipate the criticism and
deal with it constructively. According to the authors,
we should seek to unmask the criticism to divine its
purpose. In some ways, critics serve us by solving
the fear of failure. Some say that you cannot do
things. Occasionally, they are proven wrong.

Monitoring the critic will help us sort out the
non-constructive criticism from criticism that
helps to make us better people in every aspect.
According to the author, we should look at the rule
structures which are at the heart of our
critics. Are the rules relevant, fair or topical ?
If they aren't, we have a basis to view the
criticism with skepticism.

The authors also remind us to view ourselves
dispassionately. Try to determine how others see you.
Sometimes, your physical appearance or demeanor are
important. How do you relate to other people?

To get answers to these questions, we must learn to
listen in order to receive quality input. The authors
provide a wealth of very pertinent information helpful
in strengthening every aspect of inter-personnel
relations with a plethora of people around us.
i.e. mentors, peers, friends, relevant others etc.

The book is worth the purchase price for the
significant value of the information contained within.

Self Esteem is a practical book. It's about taking control of your thoughts to take control of your feelings. That's all there is to it.
With inspiring simplicity and logic, McKay and Fanning educate the reader about the causes and effects of strong self-esteem. It also introduces the Critic - the voice in your head that brings you down no matter what you do. Most importantly, it helps you to expose what psychological needs the Critic meets. Once this is figured, one can resolve to meet needs in a healthier manner.
Next, with the reader aware of the needs his or her critic meets, a chart is offered, guiding the reader towards the specific resources mentioned in the book. Some of the written exercises are designed to enhance your awareness. Others are day-to-day activities in which you keep track of your exact thoughts in order to replace them with more realistic ones. In addition, visualization is offered as well, a powerful and simple tool for creating a healthier self-image.
Yet, the authors wisely understand that rebutting old beliefs sometimes isn't enough. As a solution, they offer the technique of hypnosis. The logic behind this is that often the memories that rob us of our worth are not remembered consciously. As a result, many of the exercises in the book will not work, since no memory is there for one to work with. Hypnosis allows one to directly access the subconscious, allowing one to implant healthier ideas of who we are.
Self-Esteem's ultimate goal seems to be to get the reader to measure up against a new standard of worth. An inspiring passage sums it up:
"The truth is that your value is your consciousness, your ability to perceive and experience. The value of a human life is that it exists. You are a complex miracle of creation. You are a person who is trying to live, and that makes you as worthwhile as every other person who is doing the same thing. Achievement has nothing to do with it. Whatever you do, whatever you contribute should come not from the need to prove your value, but from the natural flow of your aliveness. What you do should come from the drive to fully live, rather than the fight to justify yourself."
Reading Self-Esteem, and implementing the solutions, will allow you to feel better about yourself no matter what life throws at you.

I cannot speak highly enough of this book. I found it to be absolutely invaluable in developing better self esteem. You do need to actually sit down with a pen and paper and do the exercises it suggests, but I found this process really helped me to understand myself and my thinking patterns better.

For me, what really opened my eyes was the way the authors explained how the inner critic is reinforced. I feel that this is crucial information which is missing from many other books on self esteem. The authors explain a number of different ways in which we reinforce our inner critic and more importantly, they explain why we continue to use these self-limiting behaviours and provide alternatives. A simple example of this is that your inner critic drives you to achieve goals. You may tell yourself that you will be stupid or worthless if you don't achieve a high exam mark, or a good performance review at work. The critic is reinforced because this fear and criticism motivates you to achieve - yet it also sacrifices your self esteem. A healthier alternative is to rebut the inner critic and practice visualization techniques to motive you to achieve success.

The chapters on Compassion and Handling Mistakes also really helped to alter my way of thinking. I, like many other people, had a tendency to continually beat myself up over past mistakes. The book helped me to reframe the way I think about mistakes. More importantly, it helped me to understand the limits of my awareness, at the time of the mistake we are usually attempting to get our needs met in what we deem to be the most effective way. The chapter on Compassion also provided a really simple and powerful exercise which helped me to move past mistakes made by myself and other people.

Another reason I highly recommend this book is the chapter on Core Beliefs. We are usually completely unaware of our negative core beliefs and therefore they continue to have a very profound negative effect on our self-esteem at a deep level. Identifying and testing my core beliefs has been an eye-opening and empowering experience. It does take time as there are no quick-fixes, but the process of building more positive core beliefs has fundamentally changed the way I view myself and the world around me.

Other parts of this book which I found to be helpful were the sections on responding to criticism, healthy and unhealthy values, asking for what you want and the accurate self assessments.

In summary, this book has been instrumental in building my self-esteem. It is written in an easy to understand and relatively entertaining manner. There are plenty of practical exercises to help you apply the information that is given. I strongly recommend it.

My original motivation for purchasing this book was to re-familiarize myself with the topic of self-esteem, how to foster it and how to make sure that I support the self-esteem of those around me (particularly in light of the team I was set to manage). However, I found that this book applied to myself much more than I would have anticipated. I learned more about myself by reading this book than I have through hours of self-reflection and contemplation. I always considered my humility and lack of ego to be one of my greatest strengths...unfortunately it appears that much of that stems from very harsh internal criticism and lack of self-worth as opposed to some other healthy source. Now that I am aware of some of my own internal self-esteem issues, I am on my way to combating my internal critic and becoming even more effective in everything that I do. I still remain humble, but this time for the right reasons.

Each individual manifests self-esteem, or the lack of it, differently. Generally, people with strong self-esteem had parents who nurtured them constantly during their early childhood, while those with low self-esteem often did not. Can people with low self-esteem build it as adults? Yes, because self-esteem is how you feel about yourself, and your thoughts control your feelings. If you take command of your thoughts, you can take command of your feelings, including your sense of self. In this fine book on self-esteem, Matthew McKay and Patrick Fanning show you how to banish regressive "stinking thinking" and the nasty inner critic that inevitably tries to flatten your self-esteem. You can use their instructive "cognitive techniques" to elevate your self-esteem, develop self-assurance and feel better about yourself. getAbstract finds McKay and Fanning's book warm and practical. If their self-esteem is high, there's a good reason.

This is a well-written and very organized book that explores self esteem and how to further develop it. It is based on the principles of cognitive therapy which have proven to be effective clinical tools over and over in many people's practices around the world.

The book is loaded with useful exercises that illustrate the concept and show you how to apply them to bring about change. However, you really need to do ALL of them faithfully to get results. Many people who approach this work don't want to make that kind of time investment. However, it's a book you must do and not just read to get the results required.

In short, the book looks at examining largely unconscious thoughts and unexamined assumptions about reality. It shows you how to challenge these dysfunctional beliefs and how to use compassion to look more deeply so your psychological defense mechanisms don't get in the way.

This book is for people who are really serious about seeking change. Some sections are dense with concepts and it's really a book you need to engage with in order to reap the benefits. There are lighter versions of this kind of content. However, in my experience it takes a hard push to overcome our past conditioning.

I've read this book twice. I consider myself pretty normal and pretty satisfied with life, but I really enjoy self improvement so I've read a *lot* of self help books, and this is one of very few that have actually altered my thinking permanently.

The biggest takeaway from this book is that self-esteem isn't about thinking you're great, it's about feeling good without being perfect. Some key ideas are that the "shoulds" aren't valid - as in, I "should" do this, or you "should" do that. Also, the concept that at any given moment, you are doing the very best you can. That's hard to believe (especially when you think about all the times you felt really lazy)... until you read the book. And when you accept that idea, it can relieve a lot of judgment. Oh, and another great takeaway is that to quit judging yourself, you have to quit judging everyone else, too.

Gotta mention here that this same team also wrote my all-time favorite relationship book: "Couple Skills". After reading all the top-rated relationship books and still feeling exasperated trying to get along with my husband, I read "Couple Skills" and everything just clicked. We get along so well now that to read another marriage book seems tedious, so I haven't in all the years since. These guys can really enlighten.

This book had so much substance EXPLAINS a lot!
Giving VERY PRACTICAL examples and stories, you almost feel as if the book was written with your ideas and thoughts in mind- You can identify with it instantly, almost thinking "WOW, I thought i was the only one". It gives another voice of reason and logic to the negative voice forcing a lot of the self esteem issues.
It uncovers many deep issues, being very revealing about self anger, or self loathing-self rejection. It also helps for the small issues
like confidence and interaction between co-workers or family. It doesn't stop with just an explanation- it goes the next step -giving some very great suggestions & methods on healthy recovery. It went above and beyond-covering so much!- the audio book was a delight for me.

I purchased this book after my therapist shared the chapter on the "Pathological Critic" with me. I have not yet finished the book, but it does recommend that you take it slowly, not rushing through. This book makes a lot of very logical and valid points. The introductory chapter does stress that it's important to actually get out your paper and pencil and DO the exercises. It's the thing we all hate to do the most, but I've pushed myself to do them and I'm definitely seeing a difference. It's amazing to realize how much I mentally berate myself. Once you find awareness of it, the next step is to stop that behavior and begin finding your positive points. Easier said than done, but this easy-to-read book is helping me along the way.

I will mention that I have been seeing a therapist for about a year and a half and I must credit that for a lot of my improvement, but I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is truly motivated to improve the way they feel about themselves. It's co-written by a Ph.D., but doesn't get bogged down with a lot of medical/mental health jargon that laypeople don't understand. Every point that the authors mention does not apply to me, but it is clearly impossible to tailor a book of this nature to any one person. I find, however, that I'm able to glean good points from nearly every example.

If you want to feel better, get the book, take your time reading it, doing the exercises AS YOU GO, and start taking the steps to being a better, mentally-healthier you!

I attended to this through chapter three. I have decided to let it go because it seemed to me to contain to many unsupported assertions, and in a real sense, often contradicted itself. It is clear that our consciences guide us, very often away from temptation. Our consciences surely are particular to us and of course not omniscient. The notion of identifying a bad guy, an inner critic can be spun out as it is here and cast its light on wide ranging aspects of our lives. If we can vote this inner critic out of power and replace him with a shiny new good guy, what can stop us? I'm not on board with this. There is a level of desperation that gives rise to anything is worth a try; there are other ways. I'm all for self-acceptance, but I think it requires knowing yourself. That is hard work and should bear the fruit of humility, patience, equanimity, peace and love. I don't think you can get there by identifying some part of yourself as something you want to replace. Science is here to stay, but the side effects are often read off too fast to make any impression.

Self esteem is such a fascinating topic. It can make or break a person's life. And it can be so fragile. This book is wonderful for explaining how and why people do the things they do, intentionally or accidentally, to hurt others. This may offer some help for those who have been abused.

This book was recommended to me by a licensed clinical professional counselor. It began helping me in the first chapter! The book really makes it easy to understand where lowered self esteem comes from and how to increase your self esteem. No wonder it's a best seller. The book made it easy. I highly recommend it!!

This book contains the most wealth of information to change and improve one's Self-Esteem. Which leads to better awareness and more enjoyment of life through understanding ourselves and others. Has both great psychology and philosophy behind great tools to try. I want to thank both Matthew McKay and Patrick Fanning on putting this book out. Great book also to read to help on anger problems. ....

I truly gained an insight into my own Self-Esteem issues as I read this book. I began to use some of the techniques suggested in this book and I have noticed quite a change in my attitude. This book is easy to read and understand. I appreciate the concepts of self-pacing as you read through this book. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in Psychology or in just building your personal self-esteem.

To say that this book is an excellent reference for understanding the nature of one's self-esteem would be an understatement. The authors take pluasible, objective step-by-step approaches for assessing, and maintaining one's self-esteem. If you're challenged by your self-esteem as I am, this book is the one to read.

Would recommend to anyone even if they don't think they have self esteem issues, I was amazed to realise issues I didn't think were related actually stemmed from low self esteem. Very helpful, insightful and practical.

The first half of this book is excellent and goes very well into the details about building up a solid sense of selfworth. From the middle of the book, I thought it would go even further into details, but to my disappointment, from then on it begins to look more like the regular quick-fix selfhelp books. That is, a lot of talk about visualisation and meditation, and some fluffy tips on improving communication and setting up some goals in certain areas of life.

The book has some contradictions:

In one chapter it says that one should become independent of other people's opinion. In another chapter it says that one should use other people's approval as motivation for achieveing goals.

In one chapter it says that one should get rid of unrealistic fantasies. In another chapter it says that it is okay to do so for motivation.

It also says that one should not stand up for oneself if being criticised, but just say "You are right!". And then think "But I know that he/she is not right" - ??

It also advices to use profanity against one self and physical self-harm in order to stop the inner critic. I allow myself to question whether this could possibly be any good advice at all, thinking of the overall issue that this book is trying to cover.

The first eight chapters are great (with some exceptions), but the rest of the book is too vague. It simply slides off the track. It should have continued with more details, examples and more of the great thoughts on building self-esteem. Especially the chapters on visualisation and meditation should have been cut out, as it contradicts the theories presented in the beginning of the book.