Posted by badhaircut on February 12, 2004, at 7:56:48
In reply to A book about CBT and meditation, posted by rianny on February 10, 2004, at 15:37:44
I think the 2002 book "Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression" by Zindel Segal (& others) would be worth looking at, even though it addresses depression more than anxiety. Most of the meditative/CBT techniques in it would apply across the board to anxiety as well. It gives a detailed, step-by-step approach complete with pages you can photocopy. The authors are serious psychologists (not the latest bestseller cure-alls). They talk about their own experiences beginning meditation and whether you can do meditation-and-CBT on your own. They say you can, and their book details how, although they advise getting a good meditation coach. (THAT could be challenging!)
A main thrust of their meditative approach to depression is disrupting the obsessive ruminating depressives (and anxious people!) get so good at. Also, they encourage more bodily awareness and viewing your thoughts & emotions as *events* -- not as being *you*.
The book also presents the results of the authors' study of how a CBT-meditation combination could help depressed people, but the research had design holes big enough to drive a truck through, so that aspect was disappointing.
In general, however, I think the best self-help presentation of CBT for *anxiety* is the 150 pages on anxiety in the middle chapters of David Burns' "The Feeling Good Handbook". He doesn't talk about meditative techniques, though.
You can certainly do CBT techniques on your own. Depending on where you live, I think it might be even more challenging to find a committed cognitive-behavior therapist than to find a meditation coach.
-bhc
poster:badhaircut
thread:311770
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/books/20040211/msgs/312363.html