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Retrain Your Brain
Seth J. Gillihan
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What is Retrain Your Brain about?
Retrain Your Brain is about mastering practical strategies designed to break free from negative thinking patterns and create a more positive, fulfilling life. Whether you're struggling with anxiety or depression, or simply want to improve your overall mental well-being, this guide serves as a valuable resource for retraining your brain and becoming the best version of yourself.
Key ideas of Retrain Your Brain
Thoughts Drive Emotions
Between any event and your emotional reaction sits an interpretation, and identifying that hidden thought is where change begins.
Behavior Change Comes First
Acting before you feel ready breaks depression's catch-22 by letting small behavioral wins rebuild mood and motivation.
Gradual Exposure Defeats Fear
Facing feared situations one manageable step at a time teaches the brain, at a level deeper than argument, that the danger is not real.
Read an excerpt from the summary
Retrain Your Brain: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in 7 Weeks
A Bridge, a Library, and the Missing Step
Ted is walking through the woods on an ordinary afternoon when the trail reaches a wooden footbridge. A creek runs maybe thirty or forty feet below it. He takes a few steps out, and his chest clamps shut. The world goes light and distant, and he can't pull in a full breath. He turns around and hurries back to solid ground, heart slamming.
Years earlier, Ted had been trapped in traffic on a huge suspension bridge during a violent thunderstorm. Ever since, bridges have meant terror. But notice what's strange about the footbridge in the woods: nothing is actually happening to him. There's no storm, no danger, no real threat. So where does the fear come from?
That gap is the whole subject of this book. Seth Gillihan, a clinical psychologist trained at the University of Pennsylvania and a faculty member there, spent more than a decade studying, practicing, and researching cognitive behavioral therapy. He's also been on the receiving end of his own struggles: panic attacks, depressed moods, insomnia, stress, and the kind of crushing disappointment most of us would rather not talk about. He discovered CBT as a master's student during a late night in the library, and it changed the direction of his career. The promise he makes in this book is unusually concrete. In seven weeks, working one chapter at a time with a notebook beside you, you can learn to be your own therapist.
To understand why CBT works, Gillihan walks through three earlier ways of treating someone like Ted. In the first half of the twentieth century, Ted would have ended up in psychoanalysis. He'd lie on a couch and talk, maybe four days a week for years, while an analyst made occasional comments about what the bridge might symbolize and what childhood memories it stirred up. The trouble, Gillihan notes dryly, is that there was scant evidence it actually worked.
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Continue in the appWho is it for?
- Anyone who struggles with anxiety, panic attacks, or persistent worry and wants a structured, evidence-based way to manage them.
- Anyone who has tried to think their way out of depression and found that insight alone was not enough to get moving again.
- Anyone who wants to understand cognitive behavioral therapy before committing to a therapist, or wants a self-directed program they can follow at their own pace.
- Anyone who avoids situations, tasks, or people because of fear or low mood and wants practical tools to break that pattern for good.
About the author: Seth J. Gillihan
Seth J. Gillihan is a clinical psychologist who trained at the University of Pennsylvania and has held a faculty position there. He has spent more than a decade studying, practicing, and researching cognitive behavioral therapy.
Gillihan has also experienced anxiety, panic attacks, and depression himself, which shapes his practical and non-judgmental approach. He writes and speaks widely on CBT and mindfulness-based approaches to mental health.
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