Breaking the Cycle of Compulsive Behavior

by Martha Nibley Beck, John C. Beck

English 0875792901 978-0875792903

Genres: Self Help, Psychology

306 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1990

Reviews

[Gregory · Rating 3 out of 5]

I used to uphold this book as the "Holy Grail" to overcome my gay self and counted it among my all time favorite books. I enjoy the stories in the book, like the writing style and optimistic tone "you can do anything", however, I fault this book as misleading that you can change your innate sexuality. I found it unsurprising to find out that BOTH authors (who were married at the time they co-authored this book) have since divorced and have embraced their sexual identity of loving persons of their same gender. I do not fault the authors as I took their same approach as advocated by our Mormon church that with God's love and Christ's redeeming power you can over come the burden of same-gender attraction. I cannot speak for everyone, but I can share my experience: the moment I stopped trying to change my innate self, and embraced my homosexual self at age 44, I felt like "my eyes were truly opened". I felt renewed, alive and truly happy for the first time in many years. I no longer keep this book on my bookshelf. I do not recommend this book for those struggling with sexual identity. It may prove useful with someone with a drug addiction or anorexia but I think there are better books for those debilitating issues

[Melinda Christensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a person who has been the victim of compulsive behaviors, I was trapped by them. I would stop one behavior only to have two or three replace the one I had overcome! I was truly caught in a cycle of bad habits. The
authors use case histories to show how their gospel-centered approach can work, whereas conventional approaches fail. I can attest to this myself, as I have tried various approaches. This book is one that can truly be relied to break that downward cycle.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very insightful read. Changed my way of thinking about guilt (seeing it as actually a destructive force instead of constructive), and increased my understanding of why people spiral out of control. It is pretty amazing that the co-authors (Martha Beck and her then-husband) could then ignore everything they knew and spiral out of control themselves, but this book is still great.

[Bridget]

Have this book

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this book offers some great insight into those things hard for so many of us to understand.

Then, the choices of the authors to follow ... end up so hard to understand.