Neural Path Therapy: How to Change Your Brain's Response to Anger, Fear, Pain, and Desire

by Matthew McKay, David Harp

When we set out to describe the problems this book can help fix-the stressful and anxiety-provoking conditions of everyday living-we quite simply ran out of space. It's no secret that life is tough, and that each passing year isn't making it any easier. Whether you're more stressed by politics, the environment, your relationships, major life changes, or just the daily task of keeping food on the table, it's easy to let life knock you down and hard to get back up again. But this book offers readers a chance at a different way of life. It shows them how to accept their lives as they are, regard the events of each day with nonjudgmental awareness, and stop obsessive thoughts from compounding their feelings of helplessness and frustration. The first part of the book introduces you to the basics of neural network learning theory. The basic idea is that neural pathways strengthen with use and weaken with disuse. While certain events are likely to provoke a hardwired neural response in us, we are capable of creating new neural paths with no more than a thought. Instead of letting automatic triggers dictate our responses to painful events, we can use this characteristic of our nervous systems to short-circuit the responses that lead to painful thoughts and emotions. The second part teaches you five easy-to-learn skills for dealing with stress-breath counting, thought watching, compassionate awareness, softening to pain, and wise mind. Together, they make up a set of skills that readers can take with them anywhere, a kind of portable therapy. Once learned, the techniques in this book can be used to cope with many different situations. Combined with each other, they become a powerful tool for creating happiness, compassion, and well-being.

Genres: Psychology

141 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2005

About the author

Matthew McKay, PhD, is a professor of psychology at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, and author of more than 30 professional psychology and self-help books which have sold a combined total of more than 3 million copies. He is co-founder of independent self-help publisher, New Harbinger Publications. He was the clinical director of Haight Ashbury Psychological Services in San Francisco for twenty five years. He is current director of the Berkeley CBT Clinic. An accomplished novelist and poet, his poetry has appeared in two volumes from Plum Branch Press and in more than sixty literary magazines. His most recent novel, Wawona Hotel, was
published by Boaz Press in 2008.

Reviews

[Diana D · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this book had a lot of great ideas and some good exercises, but I almost didn't finish it because the writing was so unfocused and tangential, it was hard to follow. The authors would start to present an idea, but would keep interrupting what they were saying by referring back to something in another chapter or asking you to flip forward to the appendix. The writing reminded me of someone giving an oral presentation for the first time and going off on tangents, then trying to get back to the point, then getting derailed again, while pointing to different diagrams on a board. It may have worked in person with all of the diagrams within view, but in book form it was confusing and annoying.

They once started a sentence by saying something to the effect of "as we discussed first on page 12 in chapter 1..." There were many unnecessary asides and parentheticals like that, and I found them to be distracting. Some of the exercises were also very disjointed. For example, on page 40, there is a 6-step exercise where 4 of the steps ask you to do things you havn't learned about yet. "3. Visualize the situation, as described in the next section." and "5. During your visualization, play with the point of no return (PONR), which we'll discuss in a moment."

Throughout the book I was so annoyed with the writing, I kept thinking I would stop reading or that, if I did finish, I would give the book 1 star and never recommend it. After finishing, I noticed that I have about 20-30 flags, so the book did give me a lot of valuable ideas to consider. If I could split the rating, I would give 5 stars for content and 1 for organization and writing style.