Contending with depression and anxiety on your own can be a scary prospect. You might feel overwhelmed and unsure where to turn. Maybe you've pursued therapy and found yourself wondering how talking about your childhood will make you feel better. Perhaps you dropped out of therapy because you didn't feel like it was helping. We all want to feel better sooner.
If you are interested in experiencing improvements quicker, I encourage you to consider contacting me for an appointment. If you are lucky, you have found a good therapist. Someone who listens and seems to gel with you. They take your goals into account and try to make sure you are NOT "wasting" time in session. But even then it takes time to feel better and can require more than just weekly therapy. Whether you're looking for self-help, want greater focus to your work in therapy, or have been in therapy and want to keep working towards progress on your own, the following resources might be helpful. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Feeling Good Handbook by David Burns, M.D. This is a workbook designed to help you help yourself. Dr. Burns is a Stanford professor, and he developed a self-paced, user-friendly guide to changing your thoughts or behaviors to help you feel better. This book may seem a bit long, but it is designed so that one-third of the book addresses depression, one-third anxiety, and the last third is intended for clinicians working in mental health. While the title might sound cheesy, Dr. Burns has conducted extensive research on the use of this handbook and has found it to be quite helpful for adults in combating depression. I recommend this book to all of my adult and teen clients. Mind over Mood by Dennis Greenberger and Christine Padesky Similar to The Feeling Good Handbook but with less narrative. This book utilizes a different format to present similar ideas to Dr. Burns' book. The focus of this book relative to the handbook is that it's less about educating or considering every day situations that might arise that cause you to feel "bad." You begin to look at your thoughts and behaviors from the beginning and how to change them. When Panic Attacks: The new, drug free anxiety therapy that can change your life by David Burns, M.D. More up-to-date than Dr. Burns' handbook, this workbook walks you through understanding anxiety related to panic and how to combat panic attacks. The 10 Best Anxiety Management Techniques: Understanding How Your Brain Makes you Anxious and What You Can Do to Change by Margaret Wedrenberge This workbook is a bit more mindfulness-based than the above. It discusses self-care habits that fuel anxiety and how to nuture yourself to begin to see baseline reduction of anxiety. A good read and great for those who are interested in implementing changes to self-care to feel better. |
Dr. Melissa McMullin
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Phone 323-345-1402
1151 El Centro St., Suite B SOUTH PASADENA, CA 91030 |