Before Scheduling an Appointement With a Psych.

books:

	• White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts: Suppression, Obesession, and the Psychology of Mental Control Daniel M. Wegner The Guilford Press, 1994 - 207 pages average customer review:based on 6 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

white bears and other unwanted thoughts

I am suffering from ocd. I get uncontrollable bad thoughts all the time. I was looking for a book to help me understand these thoughts. This book may be good to many people but for me, it did not help. You must be a college student or someone with some type of higher education to understand this book. I read it and could not relate to the book.

Before Scheduling an Appointement With a Psych. - Read This!

Simply put, this book changed my life... I was going through a long period (over a year in duration) where I had trouble getting rid of "unwanted thoughts"; basically thoughts that I knew would reduce the level of pleasure I was getting out of any given activity. For example, if I dwelt on X while I was undergoing some otherwise-pleasurable activity - where X is an unwanted thought - my level of enjoyment i.e. my appreciation of that activity would decrease. While I was going through these cycles of unwanted thoughts, the quality of my life was drastically reduced. I'm sure "unwanted thoughts" differ for each person, both in their individual characteristics and implications. According to this book, one should not consciously try to suppress unwanted thoughts, as thereby the thoughts will systematically persist in reemerging. Instead, just "let it be" as it were, and inevitably the unwanted thoughts will start to dissipate. Don't be dissuaded by the above editorial review, as though it is true this is not "light reading" per se, it is very well written and in an easy-to-read format with the layman in mind; and it does not contain a lot of jargon. It reads just like a novel and is quite humorous in parts. I'm not a student of psychology but had no problem with my reading and comprehnsion of this book and gleaned a lot of new information out of it, such as how meta-cognition or "thinking about thinking" works. I hate to say anything negative about this book since I found it a self-help book in the truest sense, but its only feature I didn't fully appreciate was the few charts and graphs it contained, even though they were relevant to the information at hand and supplemented the statistics well. If I were the author of the book I'd have put them in the back. That's trivial, though. In summary, next time someone says "just stop thinking about it" in replying to how you should get rid of an unwanted thought, ignore their advice - then enlighten them.

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Forget the White Bear

Not your typical psychobabble. This is a book sprinkled with research, experience, and humor. And definitely not a book on "mind control" but "mental control." Do you have complete control over how you think? Can you suppress unwanted thoughts? Maybe... Maybe not. (Don't forget the white bear...)

Wegner takes you on a journey through many types of "minds." Especially interesting were his thoughts on depression and obsessing thoughts - those tapes that keep running through your head over and over and over again.

A short book, long on insight, this book has the potential to change your life. In the least, it will help you understand the process of mental thinking and what really controls it.

Oh, and stop thinking about that white bear...

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A refreshing change from traditional mind control rethoric

Since graduating high school and moving on to college, I've had significant difficulties concentrating due mostly to what could be described as unwanted thoughts - at least unwanted and the time. This book is the first one I've read that offered scientific evidence supporting the authors points. It didn't solve all my problems, but it has been a great place to start finding solutions.

A Great Read

A wonderfully engaging, cleverly written book about a serious subject. A real delight.

reviews: page 1, 2

For several years, social psychologist Daniel M. Wegner has been investigating the inability to control thoughts. Drawing on the most recent breakthroughs in this area of research, this is an illuminating explanation of just how human minds work and of the glimmerings of madness in all people.

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