Claire Weekes books?

[Ditapage]

Hi everyone, i keep hearing Claire Weekes' books have helped people to understand and heal from GAD and she has a few books out there, all similarly titled. I don't want to spend money on all these books if they're not beneficial. Was wondering if anyone has read her stuff and what they've read and would recommend me to buy. Doesn't have to be Claire Weekes if you have another recommendation for a great book. Thank you!

[MyNameIsTerry]

Hi,

I haven't read Claire Weekes but I'm sure someone will post shortly with some recommendations as she gets mentioned by some current members in threads. But since you don't mind any book and whilst I've only read a couple, I would recommend Mindfulness: a practical guide to finding peace in a frantic world by Professor Mark Williams. His co created MBCT programme is NICE endorsed for recurrent depression, supported for anxiety & depression by The Mental Health Foundation (long running UK charity) and is based on the works of Jon Kabat-Zinn who created MBSR and brought Mindfulness to the West in the 1970's.

It's a very down to earth book, no psycho babble and doesn't have many examples of other people in it. It's an 8 part programme that you do over 8 weeks (or longer if you can't fit it in) and it introduces you gradually. It's part CBT, part Mindfulness but it's not heavy on the CBT like therapy is and the exercises are more basic as the Mindfulness is the real power behind it. For instance, in week one the CBT element is sitting in a different chair and examining the room from a different perspective (called habit releasers) along with performing a daily meditation. It works up from there.

[Ditapage]

Thanks Terry! I like the idea of not including personal examples, I sometimes find them more triggering than helpful but other times you read something that sounds a lot like your own experience with this beastly affliction and it can be cathartic.

I was only interested in Claire Weekes because apparently she explains how anxiety can manifest as various aches and pains which is what I am dealing with all the time and I would love to know the science behind that.

I had 10 weeks of psychology and didn't learn CBT which is pretty infuriating given its a very successful treatment. My psychologist was more like "you get over this by going places" and she'd give me a task like "go to the beach for an hour" with no coping skills and I never did these tasks. "Why don't you go to a yoga class?" Um because I have agoraphobia and panic? Some therapists have a "get over it" approach that cost me 10 sessions of no success.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Thats very similiar to mine and I did have CBT. She did explain about how thoughts, feelings, emotions, etc all work together in the CBT triangle and I did some homework here & there but then it just got stuck. It was like unless I could blast through a brick wall, there wasn't anything. I left CBT thinking my therapist was very nice but CBT wasn't much use. But I later found out I barely had any CBT at all and it was just trying to get me doing more things which is really more Behavioural Activation and thats more for depression.

Your's might as well have just said "stop having anxiety." It's frustrating when I see people post things like this because these people are supposed to be trained and should be helping us to creating a pathway to get to those things and giving us the coping skills. CBT has ERP built within which is just to achieve that.

The best thing my therapist did was put me onto Mindfulness. I wonder whether she say I wasn't getting anywhere? The relaxation techniques were ok but they are more for the physical side and short term. I gained a lot more from Mindfulness, stopped my intrusive thoughts and reduced my anxiety a fair bit. I also started wanting to tackle the CBT goals I was stuck on and made some movement on them. There was also a big shift towards compassion, so much so that I literally felt a change in me. I later picked up this book and found that shift actually explained in it and the science that even shows how the shift is made in the brain.

The book I recommended doesn't get into physical symptoms, it's not about any of that or mental symptoms but it will mention them at times. It's a very positive book and concentrates on changing the mindset as opposed to explaining why things are bad as it explains more about how we think than that.

You will probably find many anxiety books that talk about the various aches & pains. A book more aimed at a specific therapy, like CBT, is most likely going to concentrate on the therapy itself so you perhaps are looking for books more about anxiety in general?

In the book I recommended there are 8 weekly chapters after the first few explaining it all. These can start with an example of someone but what I have found is that they aren't very detailed in terms of symptoms and talk more about the persons situation, thinking, feeling, etc. So, it's not one of those books that tells you all about their heart palps of battles with IBS or any of that. I know some people find those hard and just see new potential issues, like the HA people.

[MrAndy]

this is a brilliant book and a bit like Claire weeks teachings but more up to date
http://www.anxietynomore.co.uk/the_book.html

[bernie1977]

There's some Claire Weekes audio on this site http://www.junior-anxiety-depression-exchange.org.uk/relax.html