Defeating Your "Crazies" : Applying Cognitive Therapy Principles to Everyday Life Challenges

So let's begin with a quick question.  Have you ever had the experience where someone or something really made you mad?  If you answered, "Yes" then you, like I, have been the victim of the "Big Lie."
    
One of the biggest ‘lies’ perpetuated by and in our society is that our emotions, be they anger, anxiety, or guilt, etc., are all created by external events. Our world seems to SHOUT that you and I are NOT responsible for our emotional upsets, rather our unhappiness is the world’s fault and we are merely victims.   After all wasn’t it the ‘jerk’ that just cut you off while driving that made you furious? Or, isn’t it that noise that you just heard coming from that darken alley that is terrifying you?  
    
While this may all seem to make sense, the truth is that it is not the world or some person or set of circumstances that make you or me an emotional wreck.  That responsibility, as well as that power, rests within us.  
    
The straightforward truth, one that serves as the core to the proposed book, is that our emotional reactions are a function, not of the events we are encountering, but instead they are the result of the way we THINK about those events.  Simply put, if you think “crazy” you will act and feel crazy and it will undermine your emotional well-being.
    
Defeating Your “Crazies” is a self-help book, reflecting extensive research, that helps the reader come to understand and embrace the fact that it is not external events nor situations that directly cause our emotional reactions but rather the way we process them.  Defeating Your “Crazies” provides the reader with both the rationale and the steps to be taken in order to develop a more rational functional view of self, others and the world and as a result, develop and maintain an emotionally healthy life.