Rise from Darkness Book Summary - Rise from Darkness Book explained in key points

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Rise from Darkness summary

Name: Rise from Darkness
Rating: 4.3 (133 reviews)
Author: Kristian Hall

Kristian Hall

How to Overcome Depression through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Positive Psychology

4.3 (133 ratings)

14 mins

Table of Contents

Rise from Darkness
summarized in 6 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 6

What’s in it for me? Discover simple yet effective strategies to improve your state of mind.

Do you feel that you spend too much time focusing on the negative things in life? Do you wish you were a happier person? You’re not alone. Bouts of depression affect people all over the world.

Psychologists have developed effective, life-changing techniques that people who suffer from depression can use and benefit from. The best part? You don’t have to visit a therapist, and some techniques take less than a few minutes to follow.

These blinks will show you the right path to radiating happiness in no time!

In these blinks, you’ll learn

how to keep negative thoughts from spiraling out of control;
why it’s important to show thankfulness daily;
why self-hypnosis isn’t just hype (and why you should try it!)

The way our brains filter information can make situations seem a lot worse than they are.

Every image of the world you perceive is first turned upside-down by the lenses in your eyes and then flipped again by the visual cortex in your brain.

Your visual cortex acts as a filter – your brain indeed has many filters – but sometimes these filters can do more harm than good.

In short, mental filters affect how we perceive the world and are the reason why everybody experiences life differently.

Picture two friends, a man and a woman, walking through a park. Suddenly a dog runs up to them. The man had a traumatic experience with dogs as a child; he becomes terrified as the dog approaches. The woman grew up around dogs, so she knows the chubby Labrador has just come to say hello.

Filters serve an important purpose, in that they enable us to make sense of a complex world.

Filters break down information to help us understand, allowing us to recognize patterns in everything from news stories to the behavior of friends and family. Our views and values, from politics to personal ethics, are affected by these filters.

Mental filters can also malfunction, however, and distort our perception of reality.

We tend to view the world through a lens colored by our beliefs, ignoring anything that contradicts those beliefs. If you see people as inherently untrustworthy, for example, then you’re going to see more bad than good in people in general.

Psychologists Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatté call this the Velcro/Teflon effect. Anything that backs up our beliefs sticks like Velcro, while anything that contradicts them slides off like non-stick Teflon.

We form many of our filters as children by paying attention to those around us. Because of this, it’s a good idea to inspect your beliefs and see whether you need to “update” them.

Flawed thinking leads to negative thought patterns that soon turn into debilitating demons.

Picture a car driving in circles in a large field. After many loops, the circular grooves in the soil become deep, making the driving easier – but making any deviation from the track almost impossible.

Our thought patterns are like this. We can get stuck in loops with thoughts and feelings, and once stuck, find it a struggle to move beyond them.

Writing down your worries and listing what you are grateful for are good ways to combat depression.

Psychologists used to focus only on mending what was broken, and mental disorders were the industry’s bread and butter. The relatively new field of positive psychology represents a radical departure from this tradition. Its techniques focus on increasing individual happiness.

The simple act of writing down a list of positive and negative activities in your life can give you a roadmap to recovery.

Use simple mental tricks to improve your mood and reduce tension daily.

Most of us can only think about one thing at a time. This limitation can be made an advantage, however, as it can help banish negative thought patterns.

In short, if you change your thought patterns, you can improve your mood.

Self-hypnosis can help you rewrite damaging mental habits with more positive ways of thinking.

Have you ever watched anyone be hypnotized? Unlike what many people think, hypnotism doesn’t involve a person taking control of another person.

For hypnotism to work, you have to want to be hypnotized. A hypnotist is there to act as a guide, but people really hypnotize themselves.

Visualization is an effective tool for achieving personal goals and battling general depression.

Your mind can’t always tell the difference between what’s real and what’s not. This is why just thinking of a tarantula crawling toward you might make you break out in a cold sweat!

Visualization can be a powerful thing. Some people have even increased muscle mass simply by lifting imaginary weights in their head!

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What is Rise from Darkness about?

Rise from Darkness: How to Overcome Depression through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Positive Psychology (2015) details techniques anyone can use to help overcome depression. These blinks explore the causes of depression and map out the near- and long-term strategies readers can use to develop a recovery program.

Best quote from Rise from Darkness

If I were to point out just one simple habit that reduces depression it would be thankfulness.

—Kristian Hall

Who should read Rise from Darkness?

Anyone suffering from depression
People who want to help depressed friends or family members
Anyone seeking to change their lives for the better

About the Author

Author Kristian Hall overcame a decade of depression by researching and practicing techniques from positive psychology and cognitive behavioral therapy. He lives in Norway, and this is his first book.

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Psychology Health & Nutrition

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