The Breakthrough Program to End Negative Behavior and Feel Great Again

This excellent book helped me to identify, and develop practical strategies to survive, traumatic incidents from my past which have affected my interpersonal relationships for many decades.
Based on Young's Schema Therapy questionaire (which can be downloaded from the web), Reinventing your life takes us through a process of identification of "faulty thinking" which impacts in negative ways on our emotions and hence our relationships.
This book was recommended by my psychologist, whom I will say I was glad to be able to discuss sections with... it can stir up some deeply buried excrement, so make sure you have a friend at least to support the reinvention process.
Highly recommended for those who want to dig deep and throw out the trash for a better life.

After happening upon Jeffrey E.Young courtesy of a podcast to do with mental health, I actively sought out this book. While waiting for it to come in the post I let my therapist know I was interested in, and was seeking more information about, Young's approach.

The book proved to be a pragmatic and insightful work. As a survivor of persistent physical and verbal childhood abuse some of the 'lifetraps' resonated with me deeply. Reading the work also felt like folks with entrenched issues had been listened to and not just spoken at or reduced to a limiting label from the DSM. When it comes to any therapeutic approach that's vital. Can certainly think of experiences with counsellors that were (re)traumatising because of the feelings that were triggered and unacknowledged by the therapist.

My notebook has been filling up working through the chapters that are particularly applicable to me. This isn't easy stuff and it's a long haul towards recovery. Nevertheless, it's an approach that makes perfect sense.

Posted on 24 December 2014 (for some reason the date of posting is appearing wrongly).

I received this book early over the weekend. That was a plus.
Although I'm just getting started, the words are already resonating with me.
I can tell that this book is going to take me on a journey to help solve those
issues inside that I've wrestled with.

I will try to follow up with a review on whether it was effective or just another self help book.
But I am hopeful.

This book has been a huge help and encouragement. I have been through it twice, learning more each time and getting better with a lot of issues. Strongly recommend it. It can be a big help if you are willing to do the writing and exercises as recommended.

This is the book used by professionals to introduce clients to Schema Therapy. It may also help highly motivated people gain insight into their self-defeating behavior patterns even if not in therapy.

This book is so helpful and offers such an insight into psychology and chilhood trauma that l've read it twice already and have made a lot of notes. It is best used with cognitive therapy for optimum results. A must read!

My wife, who is a psychotherapist, regards this book as an excellent insight into how a client's behaviour in the present has been shaped by early childhood experiences. It provides a conceptual framework, as well as self-assessment tools.

I really wanted to love this book. I really really really want to say its 5 stars. However I just cant. The biggest issue is all the examples they use are the extreme ends of things. The way they explain schemas is great, its just very extreme. If you are someone who is reading this book for their own personnal benefits, someone who is going through things and is doing all they can to figure out how to better themselves, then great. One step in the right direction. However, again, the schemas are the extreme end of things. The abondment schema is something i feel and resonate with due to my past but my past is not as ugly as my father leaving my fanily, leaving my mother a drunk as he started a whole new family with a different woman...the example the book uses. The authors utilize their examples throughout. And it makes me question the validity of my problems. “Do i really have abondment issues? Am i just being dramatic?” Because these examples are SO extreme. It would have been fine if they JUST used them as examples...but they consistently draw upon them to validate their points....always referring back to these extreme examples they use. I find it hard for someone who doesnt have an extreme past to relate to any of the schemas brought. Some schemas (very small amount, around 2) have examples that are not as extreme. This book is probably great for those who have had actual problems in their past. People with past issues that are clear, definitive issues (an orphan, an alcoholic parent, serious abusive past relationship, extreme anxiety, etc) will benefit from reading this book. But i have had nothing like that in my life (grateful as i am), this book becomes distant from me. I write this review for someone like me. I am someone who just needs to resonate with something, this book makes it hard. But it is still great information. I dont regret ever reading, and i hope anyone who reads it can learn from it and grow.

I am a psychotherapist who has worked with hundreds of clients on all kinds of issues from depression, anxiety, all the range of mental disorders, self esteem, relationships and many other issues. I myself went through abusive childhood and an extremely unstable life until I was an adult. When all my problems were actually over and I was free to just start a happy life for myself, it was just really hard to do so. With my background, I was constantly bombarded by anxieties, fears and insecurities. As much as I longed for love, forming relationships was hard because they trigger so much fear and painful feelings. One of the therapists I worked with mentioned this book, and when I started reading it... there it was. All my life problems and all those strange feelings I always had explained in those chapters. With that awareness began my journey to healing, which has not been easy and it's still ongoing, but at least it got me to a happy marriage, a good direction in my life and allowed me to be a better person to people around me.
Among the clients I worked with as a therapist, there are often those who do not have a clear mental illness but struggles their whole life with the same patterns of insecurities and troubles in their relationships. I could say quite certainly that for most, their problems were able to be explained by one or more of the schemas in this book. I practice schema therapy and have shared this book with many clients and even friends, many of whom gained understanding of the issues they have had their whole lives, and some really turned their lives around. However, it is not as easy as the cover of the book made it out to be. This book can provide awareness and understanding of your issues, but to actually change and turn your lives around takes a lot of hard work to implement the recommended steps for change. This process could take years or even one's whole life for the more serious cases. However, from my own experience and others I have worked with, every steps of improvement brought increasingly positive changes in our lives.
If you had ever went through any kind of abusive or rocky childhood growing up, instabilities, difficult relationship with your parents... or have constant insecurities or issues in forming close relationships.. or you are with some one who is... very likely you will benefit from this book.