What it is about
Feeling Good is the book that took Cognitive Behavioral Therapy out of the research clinic and put it in ordinary hands. Burns's central claim is simple and, at the time, radical: your moods are created by your thoughts, and depressed moods in particular are driven by thoughts that are systematically distorted, all-or-nothing verdicts, mind reading, catastrophes told as certainties.
The heart of the book is a practical method. You learn to name the ten classic distortions, write down the automatic thoughts as they happen, and answer them the way a fair-minded friend would. The method is simple on paper; what makes the book work is how thoroughly Burns shows it applied, mood by mood, thought by thought.
Decades of research followed. Studies of guided reading have repeatedly found that working through this book measurably reduces depressive symptoms for many People, which is a rare thing to be able to say about any book.
