Very Insightful

Even by chapter 4, I was already thinking of things differently.
I would have given this 5 stars overall however the pdf that is mentioned throughout did not download, which is quite frustrating.

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1 person found this helpful

Eating a strawberry!

Right book at the right time. Put my head into the right gear. Now it's time to break some habits.

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3 people found this helpful

Phenomenal

the most important piece of knowledge I have ever ecountrred. Straight to the point and very effective.

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4 people found this helpful

Great book

I really enjoyed this book, it helped me to understand my anxiety and it has really helped me.

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Inner Reflection

Luciani has written an excellent book on self coaching, very simple and well narrated steps to ensure you are in the right mode of control.

While this IS a self coach book, I would argue that the advice is just as effective for coaches in any proffesion...even if to add a value string to your coaching bow!

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Worth your time when it gets going…

As a therapist, I’m always building on my training and continuing my development to offer the best to my clients. I also want to see what I can apply to myself and see if it works. This approach, Self-Coaching, is really good at recognising and managing those times when we get stuck.

(You might want to skip the first 5 chapters or so to get to the bones of his approach.) It’s straightforward and he repeats it frequently, along with case examples, to ensure you do the work. Remember, a book will not make you feel better - you need to take steps to make changes.

From what I recall he has 3 main steps:
* Question: is this problem fact or fiction? Eg Am I really going to look stupid or am I making up stories in my head? The part causing this anxiety is our Child Reflex.
* Question: Do I want to run my life or the Child to run my life?
* Let it all go: don’t let the feelings take charge, instead you take charge. The feelings don’t need to run the show.

What I found helpful is recognising the Child Reflex. The authors approach is to dismiss it. I want to suggest another approach: to parent the child, be compassionate to him or her, listen and dialogue and reassure the child.

I have no doubt this book will really help you.

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2 people found this helpful

Interesting Book

Great book..
Interesting and up to date
would recommend to anyone suffering from depression or anxiety and indeed of self coaching.

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Brilliant

Easy listening and lots of sense, makes you realise you can do it!! Helped me...good luck 👍

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Some very potent ideas and advices, but be aware

The narration is quite good and engaging. Dr. Luciani is a good storyteller and listening to him would move you and may induce some strong emotions. If you are listening this audiobook to learn self-coaching that can help your depression and/or anxiety it might be helpful. But he himself advise you very clearly to have a consultation with a specialist if your condition is not just a habit of your self-reflexive talking.
Based on my previous personal experience with depression and anxiety, together with my knowledge of neuroscience and psychology (please bear in mind my PhD is not in neuroscience nor psychology and my clinical research experience is not in those therapeutic areas, but I have knowledge and understanding of the field and its research methods, better than many practising coaches) I do believe that this proposed methodology can bring very positive results for some patents.
Because of the potential of his proposed methodology, I believe it should have been rigorously researched and tested. Unfortunately, I cannot find any scientific, peer reviewed clinical studies evaluating it.
Now you may stop reading my review because the following is long, not so positive and may require a little understanding of neuroscience or psychology.
Of very serios concern for me is his constant use of “your child reflexive thinking”, “your insecure child” and many other names-calling very often abusive and insulting easily creating a perception in the reader (listener) that the children’s views of the world are all the source of depression and anxiety. Easily such kind of talk can produce self-hate and/or hate to your inner child. From his own story with which he starts this book it becomes apparent he still hates his inner child for all the pain and suffering he had gone through himself. Such attitude is difficult to accept as positive, healing, and productive. Instead, I would propose you substitute all such phrases of “Child reflexive thinking” and “your insecure child” with “your unhealthy mental constructs” or “the mental models established by your brain as a reaction to a previous trauma”. It is very important to use such terminology properly to avoid side effects and possible adverse reactions to the proposed methodology. Immature reflexes are nothing else but unhealthy mental models and constructs which are often too strong and may dominate your behaviours. Self-coaching can help you better self-regulate and eventually unlearn such unhealthy mental models but naming them “childish” is as dangerous as just leaving them unaddressed. Some other childish mental models and behaviours can be healing and very self-affirmative. Categorizing all “childish” thinking and perceptions negatively and associating your “inner child” as the main reason for your depression and anxiety can be very misleading.
Also to reconsider is his pressure-talking stile suggesting you refuse those “childish reflexive self-talk” and “just do it” stile of stopping it. The ability to “just do it” for immediately stopping the re-enforcing thoughts of self-critique, negative self-appraisal, self-bullying, and self-depreciation is very important, but is very inefficient by itself if not supported with proper strong self-enforcing thoughts. The self-coaching should be focused on helping the person develop the techniques to ask themselves and learn to identify their own strong, positive personal alternatives to the destructive mental models and constructs. Coaching is asking the coachee the right questions which induce positive constructive reflection helping the coachee to identify the strengths inside themselves and build their own strategy to reach a goal. I cannot see/hear this in Dr. Luciani’s book. Or those are too late. Immediately after you “just stop” the re-informing negative self-talk you should ask yourself “how I deconstruct this thought?”, “what alternative talks can I have to challenge those unhealthy mental models?”, and there can be many examples of positive questions that can help the self-talk in the direction of rebuilding. But the purpose of this review is not to substitute the whole book with my own successful self-coaching which mainly used science based analytical search for the alternative of the destructive self-talk.
The third weakness I am finding in this book of Dr. Luciani is that he is not mentioning at all how neurodiverse wiring of the brain impacts all those self-talks and solid but unhealthy mental models. I believe that lack of consideration in such a book of how different levels of neurotransmitters or how differently wired brains may make you think is quite unprofessional. Yes, he says that if you have a neurological condition you need to consult with a professional, but many are undiagnosed or even do not suspect that they might be neurodiverse even at an adult age. I personally considered I might be ADHD only at age of 40 and was diagnosed ad 45. All my previous live I was unaware of how my physical brain impacts my thinking. Dr. Luciani is not just graduate therapist, he is with a PhD. This has an impact on readers when they try to select what to believe to and what not. I cannot accept a professional like him missing the neuroscience behind huge part of the depression and anxiety.
As this book is from 2007 revised 2015, I hope in his later works (that seems available only on the US sites of Amazon) he eliminated the hate against the inner child and uses more positive and healing terminology.

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