[.ca] Addicted to Unhappiness (ISBN 0071433694)

Not even one star, the reviews are PLANTED:
All the reviews from "Customer" from various cities are fake, just false advertising for this very inadequate book. Don't be mislead. Read my real review down below.

Beware these reviews. I think they are planted.:
This book does not deserve the reviews it is getting. It looks like a con job. See my review way down the list. Everytime someone tells the truth about the book, 20 people from the same two towns chime in and vote the rating back up.

RISE ABOVE YOUR RAISING - SELF SABOTAGE:
I strongly recommend this book for anyone seeking to find help with mood disorders, any type of addiction, identity issues, self-esteem issues, reoccurring unresolved anger and troubling relationship issues. Excellent compliments to this book are: The Angry Heart: Overcoming Borderline and Addictive Disorders by Joseph Santoro and Ronald Cohen; The Narcissistic Family: Diagnosis and Treatment by Stephanie Donaldson-Pressman and Robert Pressman; Emotional Blackmail: When People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation and Guilt to Manipulate You by Susan Forward and Donna Frazier; Understanding the Borderline Mother: Helping Her Children Transcend the Intense, Unpredictable and Volatile Relationship by Christine Ann Lawson; Living with the Passive-Aggressive Man by Scott Wetzler; Children of the Self-Absorbed: A Grown-Up's Guide to Getting Over Narcissistic Parents by Nina Brown; Treating Attachment Disorders: From Theory to Therapy by Karl Heinz Brisch and Kenneth Kronenberg; Toxic Coworkers: How to Deal with Dysfunctional People on the Job by Alan Cavaiola and Neil Lavender. And if you want to pursue the subject even further, you may be interested in reading The Narcissistic / Borderline Couple: A Psychoanalytic Perspective On Marital Treatment; Parenting with Love and Logic: Teaching Children Responsibility by Jim Fay and Foster Cline.

Good ideas, straightforward approach:
If you buy this book, you probably want to change something about yourself. The key premise of this book is that people sabotage themselves (usually in several ways) because they have been taught to confuse happiness with unhappiness. Being unhappy and engaging in self-defeating behaviors becomes the norm for these people. As a result, they find it nearly impossible to change their self-defeating behavior. By confronting our self-sabotage for what it is, and perhaps understanding the reasons behind it, we can begin to change the behavior, substituting healthy behaviors and seeking out true happiness instead. Does this book work? I believe it does. I am an ex-smoker after having read it. The book helped me to see my smoking for what it really was: a way of harming myself. It also helped me see how much more intentional the harm was - how I had lied to myself that I "enjoyed" smoking when in fact I hated it. I decided to quit (using the approach outlined in the book) and have been smoke-free for over a month now. I found that I had much greater willpower in myself than I ever had admitted.

Decent Book:
I have just finished reading this book today. Overall, I liked the book and I think it might be helpful to me personally. Although a lot of the information is not new news to me, I like the way that it is presented in that I am looking at myself a little differently in that a lot of my mental states have addictive qualities that I didn't quite understand. Additionally, I like the "no blame" approach to helping (and thinking about) yourself. And finally, I really like the approach to getting on track, getting back on track in the eventuality of "relapses", and the fact that this is not a "quick fix" book. I did find the book extremely redundant in the explaination of how one processes (and confuses) information in regards to being lovable. Furthermore, I have to agree with one of the writers here that it is a simplistic approach to viewing psychology. But then again, the masses are not "shrinks" and therapist. It is simply a usable and explainable paridigm for laymen. Cool approach, but to over and re-stated through out the book; which in term makes it so "ah-ha" moments are counterbalanced with moments of thinking, "you said that already 100 times". Overall, I would recommend this book to people who are not deep in to psychology, yet, seek to understand themselves in a different light. Sometimes a simplistic approach is better I think. As a vast under-achiever in a lot of ways, I feel like this book has at least opened my eyes to a new way of thinking about my world. I am in a field that I should not be in, I've battled my weight for most of my life, and I am extremely artistic. But, a lot of stuff has happened to me that has distorted and hindered my progress unknowingly (until the last few years). As I've know, working on self is no quick fix (and the need for a quick fix is America's main problem in my opinion). For the new perspective, it was worth reading it.