Getting Control: Overcoming Your Obsessions and Compulsions

by Lee Baer

Book Overview

Six million Americans suffer from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), and they know firsthand the often devastating effects it has on their lives. Some symptoms, such as the nagging feeling you have left the stovetop burner on, can be mildly distracting. Yet others, like compulsive hand washing, the inability to throw anything out, or nerve-racking feelings of guilt, can be completely paralyzing and make it nearly impossible for sufferers to lead...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0452268893
• ISBN13: 9780452268890
• Release Date: July 1992
• Publisher: Plume Books
• Length: 234 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A wonderful and amazing book

This book -- and a similar one by Joseph Ciarrochi called "The Doubting Disease" -- helped turn my life around when I was deep under with OCD. Now I am so much better, and I am forever grateful. If you have OCD then don't waste your life not reading this book.

The Book that will make your OCD symptoms go away

After reading this book,I practiced some of the anti-OCD methods described in this book,and was quite successful. Baer pulls no punches in this compelling examination of OCD,it's pain,and the methods used in recovering from it. As with Jeffrey Schwartz's Brain Lock,and Judith Rapoport's The Boy Who Couldn't Stop Washing,it's filled with other Ocd sufferers' experiences,so you won't feel isolated from the rest of the world. The book isn't that long,so you can be on the road to recovery in a few days.

He did it again!

I must admit I was skeptical when I started reading Dr. Baers revised edition of Getting Control. How can a book like this possibly get better? But it truly does. He has a lot more NEW information on Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). As a sufferer of OCD, the first book was a life saver. This book gave me even more useful information and self help skills. I especially liked the new theory on thought stopping. He covers all the new medications approved for OCD. And other that are not approved but are showing promise. He covers the anxiety that comes with OCD and how to control it. There is more real life patient stories. That I could identify with. He even includes his e-mail address in case you would like to contact him! Again, Dr. Baur's true concern and compassion for his patients suffering shines through. This is a truly wonderful and extremly helpful book!

How this book helped me

This book is great for OCD sufferers looking for ways to practive behavioral therepy. If the nature of your obsessions and compulsions are too abstract to seek structured behavioral therepy sessions, (as mine are), this book is ideal.

The self help book I recomend most often for OCD patients

Lee Baer has done a nice job of putting together a good self help book on OCD. He leads the reader thru a series of steps first explaining what OCD is and how to assess it, then how to treat it. He provides a guide for the individual to set up their own behavior therapy program. I frequently recomend this book to my patients who have OCD as well as to people on the internet who have OCD. He also provides one of the only descriptions of a behavioral treatment of trichotillomania available in the popular press. Although he could stand to revise it with some of the newer developments in cognitive therapy for OCD comming along it is still an excellent starting place. I would also recomend that any therapist new to the treatment of OCD could benifit from reading this as well.