Excellent Book | Negaholics: How to Overcome Negativity and Turn Your Life Around

Quick Read - Delightful Insights | Negaholics: How to Overcome Negativity and Turn Your Life Around | Cherie Carter-Scott

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	• Negaholics: How to Overcome Negativity and Turn Your Life Around Cherie Carter-Scott Wellspring/Ballantine, 1999 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 9 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Clearly written but sometimes contradictory advice

Carter-Scott defines a Negaholic as a person who sees themself in the worst light possible, not as they really are, because they have been thinking in patterns that reinforce this flawed image. The greatest strength of this book is that it was clearly written with lots of easy to understand examples. One that I found useful was the explanation that negaholics use negativity to give themselves attention. So when they mess up and freak out the freaking out acts as a reinforcement. Likewise when they do something right it is no big deal hence no reinforcement. The section on changing this pattern to start reinforcing positive actions was useful.

Many of the ways to affirm yourself are very corny. Carter-Scott at one point provides a list of affirming statements to read to yourself each morning. Taping them by your bathroom mirror and reading them to yourself each morning will leave you feeling like that Saturday Night Live sketch: "I'm good enough. I'm smart enough. And gosh darn it people like me!" Exercises in the book are useful, but corny like that.

My greatest misgiving about Negaholics is that the advice given can be contradictory. For example, a very early example tells of a woman who described her family and childhood as "wonderful", but from asking specific questions about her past Carter-Scott found that her parents were alcoholics and that one of her siblings was now in a mental asylum. Here Carter-Scott tells us not to lie to ourselves about the past and to honestly examine our childhood's to better understand ourselves now. In a later chapter Carter-Scott has an entire chapter on putting a positive spin on our pasts, including telling us that "its never to late to have a good childhood" and listing ways that we can emphasize the positive and forget the negative in our pasts. Which advice should I take?

In fact her way of dealing with negativity seems to rely heavily on rewriting our pasts. The idea is that negaholics are going to see the glass as half empty and tend to place blame on themselves. As a solution Carter-Scott tells us to find ways to view reality such that we are always right. Either way we are deluded, so be deluded in the way that makes you happy. That didn't sit well with me and Carter-Scott's support for this position didn't win me over.

In summary this book is a quick read and presents lots of examples and useful ways of analyzing yourself and situations. It does have useful strategies for thinking through things and for affirming yourself. One the other hand the advice here is sometimes contradictory. This is a book you will be able to read cover to cover but if you are hoping for consistency you will not find it here.

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Excellent Book

Negaholics - How to Overcome Negativity and Turn Your Life Around is an excellent book. This may be an opinion which is closely linked to the fact that I'm a woman and Negaholics is written in a very "touchy-feely" style by a woman. The idea is that bad experiences and/or toxic relationships in your childhood deeply affects the way you view yourself and all your relationships. Negaholics does not focus on childhood specifics, but gives some really positive techniques to try to turn your negativism around and build up your self-esteem.

Quick Read - Delightful Insights

After finishing the book in two days (including taking notes), I found it a useful tool in dealing with everyday pains and stress. Although the focus of it is on negativity, it is not just for those who are depressed. Everyone experiences negative thoughts and the book just helps you use them in a positive way. The case studies are nice examples of her explanations and the charts, stories, and lists are nice additives as well. I was espcially interested in the analyzation of identity and childhood aspects of the book more so than the negativity and although that wasn't the focus, I found it more than enough informative for my novel needs.

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Life Doesn't Have to Be So Hard

Negaholics is the answer for those focusing too much on the problems in life. It includes strategies for individuals who are too critical of themselves.
We all have times when we feel like this, even if it's not our natural pattern. It's good to have a book like this to find ways to pull yourself out of a slump before it becomes habitual or affects your relationships or job. I also recommend "You Can Be Happy No Matter What" by Richard Carlson.

Road to recovery

The book is very informative and easy to read. Dr. Carter-Scott has presented different ways which we can use to manage ourselves and also made suggestions on how to reach out to others for support. A very enlightening piece of reading, I might say.

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"Easy to read with plenty of case studies and fine advice." Milwaukee Journal

Do you sometimes focus on all time times you blew it and things didn't work out? Do you often find yourself expecting the worst so as not to be disappointed? When friends compliment you, do you brush it off, dismiss it, or look for an ulterior motive? If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, you could be a Negaholic -- and ready to find help and hope in this book.

From the Paperback edition.

reviews: page 1, 2

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