Conquer Negative Thinking for Teens: A Workbook to Break the Nine Thought Habits That Are Holding You Back

by Mary Karapetian Alvord PhD, Anne McGrath MA

Overview

You aren’t what you think! For teens with negative thinking habits, a licensed psychologist and a health journalist offer cognitive restructuring—a simple and effective cognitive behavioral approach to help you break free from the nine most common negative thinking habits that typically result in feeling sad, worried, angry, and stressed.

This workbook offers a powerful technique called cognitive restructuring to help you reframe your thoughts, regulate your emotions, become a more flexible thinker, and stop letting your thoughts define who you are and how you feel. You’ll learn to target the nine specific kinds of negative thinking habits that can cause you to worry or feel bad, such as the I can’t habit, the doom and gloom habit, the all or nothing habit, the jumping to conclusions habit, and more!

Each chapter will walk you through simple explanations of each kind of negative thought, and offers real-life examples—as well as the sorts of behaviors, emotions, and bodily sensations that might be expected. You'll also gain an understanding of unhelpful or unrealistic thoughts, how to challenge them, how to replace them with more realistic and helpful thoughts, and an action plan for moving forward.

By recognizing these negative thinking habits, you’ll feel more in control and less anxious and sad. Most importantly, you’ll be able to see yourself and the world more clearly. Your thoughts don’t have to define who you are and how you experience life. The transdiagnostic approach in this book will show you how to kick negative thinking habits to the curb for good!

This book has been selected as an Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies Self-Help Book Recommendation—an honor bestowed on outstanding self-help books that are consistent with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) principles and that incorporate scientifically tested strategies for overcoming mental health difficulties. Used alone or in conjunction with therapy, our books offer powerful tools readers can use to jump-start changes in their lives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781626258891
Publisher:	New Harbinger Publications
Publication date:	07/01/2017
Series:	Instant Help for Teens Series
Pages:	168
Sales rank:	70,543
Product dimensions:	7.80(w) x 9.90(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	13 - 17 Years

About the Author

Mary Karapetian Alvord, PhD, is a licensed psychologist with more than thirty-five years of clinical experience, and is director of Alvord, Baker & Associates. She specializes in treating children, adolescents, and adults using cognitive behavior therapies. A central focus is children and teens with depression, anxiety disorders, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and other emotional and behavioral regulation problems. She is adjunct associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, and is a fellow of both the American Psychological Association and of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies. She is coauthor of ResilienceBuilder Program and the audio recordings, Relaxation and Self-Regulation Techniques for Children and Teens and Relaxation and Wellness Techniques (for adults).

Anne McGrath, MA, is former executive editor of publications at U.S. News & World Report, where she wrote and edited on subjects from health and mental health to investing and education for more than thirty-five years. She was responsible for three of the publisher’s signature guidebooks: Best Graduate Schools, Best Colleges, and Best Hospitals. She holds her master’s in journalism from Syracuse University.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 The "I Can't" Habit 7

2 The Catastrophizing Habit 19

3 The All-or-Nothing Habit 31

4 The Zooming-In-on-the-Negative Habit 43

5 The "I Should, You Should" Habit 57

6 The Fortune-Telling Habit 71

7 The Mind-Reading Habit 83

8 The Blaming Habit 97

9 The "It's Not Fair!" Habit 111

Acknowledgments 125

Appendix: A Handy List of Challenge Questions 127

Resources 131

Interviews

Alvord and McGrath reside in Silver Spring, MD.

Editorial Reviews

“There is no other workbook like this. Concise, thorough, and easy to use, it fills a need felt by clinicians every single day. I plan on giving it to every teen in my practice.”
—Catherine McCarthy, MD, child and adolescent psychiatrist in Virginia

From the Publisher