The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness

by Mark Williams, John Teasdale, Zindel Segal

The revolutionary book that has helped hundreds of thousands of readers find relief from chronic unhappiness is now in a revised and updated second edition. This authoritative, easy-to-use self-help program is grounded in mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, a clinically proven approach. The expert authors explain why our usual attempts to "fix" sadness or "just stop thinking about it" can actually worsen depression, instead of relieving it. Through vivid stories and downloadable audio meditations encouragingly narrated by Jon Kabat-Zinn, the book shows how you can break the mental habits that lead to despair--and recover a sense of joy, aliveness, and possibility. Revised throughout to be even more reader friendly, the second edition features fresh insights on coping with the challenges of our ever-changing world, the latest scientific data, and four additional audio tracks.

See also the authors' Mindful Way Workbook, which provides step-by-step guidance for building your mindfulness practice in 8 weeks. Plus, mental health professionals, see also the authors' bestselling therapy Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression, Second Edition.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction

262 pages, Paperback

Published October 11, 2024

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. For children's author (including adaptations of Sherlock Holmes stories) see Mark Williams and for clinical psychology professor writing on mindfulness, depression, etc. see Mark Williams

Reviews

[Maddie Chyczij · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ll start this off by saying I have a complicated relationship with self-help books. I’m not sure if I’m just not the kind of open mind person they’re directed at but I rarely grab a lot from them.
I think this book would be really useful if you’ve never been introduced to the concept of mindfulness. As someone who spent a lot of years with an eating disorder, I am very familiar with mindful eating. So this book kind of awakened some stuff I didn’t enjoy…however I am very curious about applying mindfulness to other aspects of my life.
This book focus is a lot on meditation, and I haven’t done a lot of that yet. There’s a guided practice attached that is recommended to be done over eight weeks. So, when I’m ready, I’m going to try that and hopefully I will update my review. As a book on its own, it it describes mindfulness in a bunch of different ways. I didn’t grab too much from it, but there were a couple moments that I found really interesting. And I know that’s the case with all self-help books. You’re gonna take what you can and leave the rest. I guess that’s just exhausting. When you have to read a whole book about it, however, there’s no way to say what you’ll actually take from it so you kinda have to lol.
If anything, the most effective part for me was just feeling seen. A lot of the things described were like yeah I guess I wasn’t misdiagnosed! Definitely depressed!
I’m going to start the guided meditations when I’m ready and hopefully it’ll make a difference. The book does say don’t start things when you’re depressed and….it’s been a week lol. Hopefully I’ll be ready to start soon.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

The self-help-y jargon is fairly minimal (whew), though it does crop up from time to time, but there are definitely enough pieces of wisdom here to make it worthwhile to navigate through that stuff. And, as with lots of mindful-based books, just the process of listening to this and having it there in the back of my mind does help me to be more mindful in general.

The audiobook isn't done particularly well--the narrator is fine, but there are references to listening to parts of the CD, which was originally included with this book I suppose. Perhaps they have an updated audiobook, or will at some point...

[Cat Lem · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good content with evidence-based guidance on mindfulness. Though I thought it was an awfully long and repetitive read, I guess it’s fine for someone who’s new to mindfulness. I personally felt like I was reading the same chapter all over again but in a slightly different formulation. I ended up skimming a lot of parts near the end, but still a good read overall.

[Nell Rudoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought it was overall very helpful and tangible for a general audience. I thought it got repetitive towards the end.

[Tom Lantos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent self help book dealing with Depression.