Think Your Way to Happiness by Dr Windy Dryden and Jack Gordon

Have you ever wanted to take more control over your life? Wouldn't you be happier if you didn't have to worry about jealousy, anger, frustration and embarrassment getting in the way?

Emotional problems don't have to spoil your life, because you can get rid of the ideas which hold you back and depress you, so you can make a new, positive start.

When you read this book you'll learn to understand your feelings, and see that you don't have to feel bad about anything. Dr Windy Dryden and Jack Gordon explain the rational approach, which will let you choose a better life, and think yourself happy!

With an introduction by Dr Paul Hauck, bestselling author of Depression, How to love and be loved, and many others.

Contents: Think Your Way to Happiness

Foreword by Dr Paul A. Hauck 

• Basic ideas
• Anxiety and worry
• Depression
• Guilt
• Anger and hostility
• Love problems
• Shame and embarrassment
• Problems of self-discipline
• Staying emotionally health

Foreword: Think Your Way to Happiness

What is the value of a book on emotional health? Too many people are of the opinion that emotional problems always require months or even years of in-depth therapy. The image of Freud sitting at the head of his couch while he listens to his patients dig up the dark secrets of their past is a very popular one, but this notion that a therapist is always necessary if we are to gain control of our lives is not only exaggerated, it is downright false. What might have been fairly accurate decades ago is simply no longer true.

Psychology today has moved miles beyond Freud. Counselling people for their emotional disturbances no longer calls for a couch, nor daily sessions, and normally takes no more than a few to about twenty sessions. However, even more changes, fundamental changes in the philosophy behind therapy, have also appeared.

For example, everyday emotional problems such as depression, anger, anxiety, jealousy, and excessive passivity are no longer thought of as physical and medical problems most of the time. Some of these disorders can, of course, be the result of bodily organs not functioning smoothly, but the vast majority of the complaints people seek counselling for are psychological in nature. That is to say, most emotional problems are learned. They are bad habits, if you will, which we all learned as we grew up. We were taught how to feel guilty, depressed, angry, and how to worry ourselves to the point that we bite our nails, develop insomnia, or are afraid to leave our homes.

Strange as this may sound, it is the best explanation we have today of how neurotic emotions are created. Our parents, teachers, and friends have all learned the same self-defeating habits the same way we did. In fact, they taught them to us and we passed them on to our friends and children.

This is only the beginning of the changes in our understanding of disturbed behaviours. For if these are habits which we learn then how do we change them? With education, obviously. I insist people get angry because they were taught to by their families. They continue to have tantrums all their lives unless someone teaches them how not to get angry. How can this be accomplished? Why, by getting lessons from a teacher who knows how anger is created. Who is this teacher? The counsellor. We also call them psychotherapists and we refer to their work as therapy. When examined objectively we cannot deny that people today who seek help for emotional and interpersonal difficulties are in fact not sick, they just need to learn. They don't need therapy! they need education. They don't usually need to see a medical doctor, they need an educator or a tutor who can teach them in his or her classroom (not clinic) a lesson in the basics of human behaviour.

When viewed in this manner we can achieve results the likes of which the earlier psychotherapists would have envied. True, some emotional conditions will always be so severe that education alone will not help. For them, medical help is indispensable. The vast majority of people who seek counselling, however, need no such heroic methods. They need to learn how they upset themselves and how they can unupset themselves.

This brings me to the purpose of my writing a foreword to a book on psychology. What is more natural to the educational process than textbooks? Is this not a time-honoured method of educating people on all manner of subjects from instruction in foreign languages to playing a musical instrument? Then why should it be surprising that educational materials should not be used in teaching people principles in emotional health? Psychology is no different from geography. Both can be taught through tutoring or classroom techniques, and both can utilize books as tools to maximize education.

If you have reservations about the place of bibliotherapy (therapy through the study of pertinent books) in the counselling process, then let me give you illustrations of other, but similar, educational tools to teach people to be psychologically healthy.

For years, I have readily referred my own clients to the best books on Cognitive-Behaviour Therapy, of which Rational-Emotive Therapy is the best model. In fact, I have written fourteen books to help improve their gains from counselling. I believe I am being objective when I report to you that bibliotherapy has earned a most respected niche in the list of techniques we counsellors have at our disposal. A book, after all, has the great advantage of being easily reread. It's there to be studied at leisure, to be put aside and picked up later to help you grasp a different concept. It cannot answer all your questions, of course. This is why bibliotherapy is more efficient in conjunction with counselling. However, leaving this shortcoming aside, it is important to impart knowledge to a client before, during or after therapy. The truth is always the truth and usually helps people manage their lives better.

Audio tapes offer similar advantages. Some persons simply dislike reading and prefer the auditory route. Whether through visual or auditory channels, the common element between tapes and books is the educational one. I have also written a weekly newspaper column and am often informed by readers how helpful some of my columns have been.

Then there is telephone therapy. For years I have counselled people from Mexico to Canada, from California to London, people whom I have never seen but who were nevertheless able to learn how to understand themselves and others.

Finally, letter writing has also succeeded in a number of instances. My mail from India, Australia, or Europe is always answered, and in a few instances has turned into a correspondence over a period of months or years with distinctly beneficial results.

Having made these observations, I trust you will have faith in the efficiency of books to teach you better emotional control.

What kind of book is appropriate for you? Whether this is your first popular book in self-help psychology or your tenth, it should have certain qualities for it to be worthy of recommendation.

1. It must be written for the layman. That means that complex psychological ideas must be translated into the language of the person in the street. That's not always easily done. Some writers have an irresistible temptation to flaunt their professional vocabularies and go over the heads of their frustrated readers. Do not trouble yourself to read books which do not respect your right not to know the field as well as the authors do.
2. It must be written by qualified professional psychologists, psychiatrists, or social workers. Not only should the authors have the proper degrees but they must also have extensive experience as psychotherapists. Doctor Windy Dryden (whom I had the pleasure of meeting in August 1988 in London) and Jack Gordon (whom I also personally know) are both recognized as highly qualified practitioners of RET.
3. It must be practical. A self- help book had better be just that — a self-help book — or it's a fake. That doesn't mean it will cure all the reader's problems. No book has ever been able to come even close to such a goal. However, among the self-help books you should read is one which gives you the fundamentals in self-help techniques. It focuses on those issues which trouble us the most, especially how we get upset and what to do about it. In fact, a proper book of this sort never loses sight of that target.
4. Summaries, either throughout the book or at its end, help the student review what has been taught and thereby offers a refresher course. This book has such summaries at the end of each chapter. I have read them and found them helpful — just as I had expected.
5. The book must deal with the most common emotional problems, not the extraordinary ones. This surely includes precisely those disorders Windy Dryden and Jack Gordon devote most of their pages to. Depression, of course, has to be included. I have called it the most painful emotion, and the authors have very kindly mentioned the views on depression I offered in my book Depression, published by Sheldon Press. They also include the most dangerous emotion, anger, and explain how we make ourselves furious, and how to correct that condition so that it is no more dangerous than an irritation. Anxiety and worry, self-discipline, shame, shyness, and guilt are also all dealt with at their basic and fundamental levels.

Can you believe that it is possible to control these savage and crippling behaviours to a degree where anger is reduced to annoyance, guilt to regret and fear to curiosity? Our disturbances will not be eliminated totally and forever — that would leave us behaving like robots. No, we will always respond to frustrations as humans, not machines — but let us do this to an appropriate degree, not to a neurotic degree.

That is what this book and others like it strive for. We want more control over ourselves, and we want to get along with others better. Fortunately these are skills psychology is able to teach better today than ever before. And one of the best places to start this educational process is to read a book which deals with the fundamentals in a readable style. I am pleased to announce that such a book is now available. Its title is Think Your Way to Happiness. Its authors are Dr Windy Dryden and Jack Gordon. The publisher is Sheldon Press and it is my pleasure to speak on their behalf.

Dr Paul A. Hauck Rock Island, Illinois

About the authors

Windy Dryden was born in London in 1950. He has worked in psychotherapy and counselling for over 30 years and is the author or editor of over 150 books, including How to Accept Yourself and Overcoming Envy (both published by Sheldon Press). Dr Dryden is Professor of Psychotherapeutic Studies at Goldsmiths' College, University of London.

Jack Gordon was born in Dundee in 1921. After working for many years in a variety of management jobs be trained in Rational-Emotive Therapy, and now intends to devote his life to popularizing RET through writing and speaking.