The Myth of Stress: Where Stress Comes From and How to Live a Happier and Healthier Life

Bernstein, a former protégé of self-help guru Byron Katie and a consultant to Fortune 500 corporations, thinks stress is produced not by external circumstances but by mistaken thoughts. He has developed the seven-step ActivInsight program to combat these thoughts and banish stress and related feelings of depression, despair, anger, and frustration. Really a form of cognitive therapy, ActivInsight involves framing a “should” statement that expresses your stress (they should agree with me), evaluating the feelings that accompany it, and then framing its opposite, no matter how counterintuitive it sounds. One must then set out to prove the counterstatement (I should be here [in drug rehab] because I need help) and examine again the feelings it elicits and the actions it could lead to (e.g., participation). Chapter by chapter, Bernstein takes on various stress-inducing thoughts—I should weigh less; I should be successful; I shouldn't have done that—and shows how to let the air out of them. His program seems to involve formulaic thinking rather than genuine self-examination, and to ignore the plain truth that certain situations (like losing a job) are indeed stressful. (May 4)