Daniel Freeman - Overcoming Paranoid & Suspicious Thoughts

DR DANIEL FREEMAN is a Wellcome Trust Fellow and Senior Lecturer in Clinical Psychology at Kings College London and an Honorary Consultant Clinical Psychologist in the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. PROFESSOR PHILIPPA GARETY is Professor of Clinical Psychology at College, London and Head of Psychology in the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. Both are internationally renowned researchers based at the Institute of Psychiatry, London as well as practising clinical psychologists specializing in the treatment of persecutory thoughts. JASON FREEMAN is an experienced writer and has spent ten years working as an editor in academic publishing.

The authors offer further accounts of suspicious thoughts, details of their research and the opportunity to provide feedback on this book at www.paranoidthoughts.com

Praise for Overcoming Paranoid and Suspicious Thoughts

Everybody is upset from time to time by suspicious thoughts regarding other peoples motives. For the first time, the problem of the exaggerated fear of being harmed is laid out in detail. In a clear, engaging style, the authors trace the origins of these fears and tell us what to do about them. This book is essential reading for the large number of people who are plagued by suspicions of other people.

Aaron T. Beck, University Professor of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania and President of the Beck Institute for Cognitive Therapy and Research, USA.

Although fears and suspicions about others are extremely common and a source of great suffering and social conflict, no book has ever been published to help people deal with such problems. Now finally a group of the worlds foremost scientists in the field have come up with a very accessible and readable text providing solutions for those who previously had no source to access.

Jim van Os, Professor of Psychiatry and Head of University Psychiatric Clinic, Maastricht University Hospital, The Netherlands

Until recently the problems caused by suspicious thoughts were greatly underestimated. We had little idea that they were so common, no real sense of what caused them, and no clear strategy for how to tackle them. The authors of this excellent and timely book have played a major role in developing our understanding of how suspicious thoughts arise and, crucially, how we can learn to cope with them. Overcoming Paranoid and Suspicious Thoughts is a first-class distillation of their ground-breaking research that will surely establish itself as the best self-help guide on the subject for many years to come.

Nicholas Tarrier, Professor of Clinical Psychology, Manchester University and Consultant Clinical Psychologist, Manchester Mental Health and Social Care NHS Trust.

Many of us harbour paranoid and suspicious ideas that have no basis in fact, but its not something we tend to talk about. This pioneering book shows that, just as many of us can have mild anxiety or depressed feelings without ever requiring specialist help, many of us have minor (but troubling) paranoid thoughts. Most importantly, the book proposes simple and practical ways to understand and overcome these ideas.

Robin Murray, Professor of Psychiatry, Kings College London, and Head of the National Psychosis Unit, South London and Maudsley NHS Trust.

Suspiciousness and irrational fears of being harmed by others are common and distressing experiences, but often go unrecognized. This book is the first to offer practical help to people suffering from this type of difficulty. It is written in a warm and engaging style, aimed at the non-specialist. It will be enormously helpful both to people suffering from suspiciousness and paranoia, and to their friends and relatives.

Richard Bentall, Professor of Experimental Clinical Psychology and Consultant Clinical Psychologist, Manchester University.

Feeling depressed, anxious or having an urge to recheck things are universal experiences; in fact they are helpful emotions that motivate us to face up to the day to day problems that life throws at us. But they can often escalate and we become aware that they have become our masters and need to be reined in. Suspiciousness is likewise a normal emotion that can serve us well; but overuse it and we can lose the capacity to trust people and soon we are on a slippery slope to isolation and despair. This book is a welcome addition to the self-help literature. It firmly places suspicious thinking in a normal context and offers straightforward, scientifically based guidance to the average man or woman in the street to understand it and to bring it back under control again.

Max Birchwood, Professor of Mental Health, University of Birmingham and Director of Early Intervention Services Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Trust.

www.paranoidthoughts.com

The aim of the Overcoming series is to enable people with a range of common problems and disorders to take control of their own recovery program. Each title, with its specially tailored program, is devised by a practising clinician using the latest techniques of cognitive behavioral therapy techniques which have been shown to be highly effective in changing the way people think about themselves and their problems. The series was initiated in 1993 by Peter Cooper, Professor of Psychology at Reading University and Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge in the UK, whose original volume on overcoming bulimia nervosa and binge-eating continues to help many people in the USA, the UK and Europe. Many of the books in the Overcoming series are recommended by the UK Department of Health under the Books on Prescription scheme.

Other titles in the series include:

OVERCOMING ANGER AND IRRITABILITY
OVERCOMING ANOREXIA NERVOSA
OVERCOMING ANXIETY
OVERCOMING BULIMIA NERVOSA AND BINGE-EATING
OVERCOMING CHILDHOOD TRAUMA
OVERCOMING CHRONIC FATIGUE
OVERCOMING CHRONIC PAIN
OVERCOMING COMPULSIVE GAMBLING
OVERCOMING DEPERSONALIZATION AND FEELINGS OF UNREALITY
OVERCOMING DEPRESSION OVERCOMING DEPRESSION: TALKS WITH YOUR THERAPIST (AUDIO)
OVERCOMING GRIEF
OVERCOMING INSOMNIA AND SLEEP PROBLEMS
OVERCOMING LOW SELF-ESTEEM
OVERCOMING MOOD SWINGS
OVERCOMING OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER
OVERCOMING PANIC
OVERCOMING PROBLEM DRINKING
OVERCOMING RELATIONSHIP PROBLEMS
OVERCOMING SEXUAL PROBLEMS
OVERCOMING SOCIAL ANXIETY AND SHYNESS
OVERCOMING TRAUMATIC STRESS
OVERCOMING WEIGHT PROBLEMS
OVERCOMING YOUR SMOKING HABIT
OVERCOMING WORRY
OVERCOMING YOUR CHILDS FEARS AND WORRIES
OVERCOMING YOUR CHILDS SHYNESS AND SOCIAL ANXIETY

All titles in the series are available by mail order.
Please see the order form at the back of this book.
www.overcoming.co.uk .

ROBINSON

London

Constable & Robinson Ltd
5556 Russell Square
London WC1B 4HP
www.constablerobinson.com

First published in the UK by Robinson,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd 2006

Copyright Daniel Freeman, Jason Freeman and Philippa Garety 2006

The right of Daniel Freeman, Jason Freeman and Philippa Garety to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.