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Can’t Just Stop
Book

Can’t Just Stop

An Investigation of Compulsions

Sharon Begley
Simon & Schuster, 2017

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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Analytical
  • Eye Opening
  • Concrete Examples

Recommendation

Science writer Sharon Begley offers a careful, empathetic compendium of compulsion. While extreme “compulsions,” such as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), are so debilitating that the psychiatric community classifies them as mental disorders, they grow from the same seeds as many common coping mechanisms for anxiety. Begley examines compulsions, explains why sufferers “can’t just stop,” and explores psychiatry’s evolving perspectives and discoveries. This readable, compassionate work may prove very useful to those who suffer from anxiety or compulsion and to those who care about them. 

Take-Aways

  • Compulsive behaviors relieve anxiety and enable people to function.
  • Professionals and laypeople often confuse addiction, compulsion and impulsivity.
  • Repetitive or ritualized behaviors that stave away a perceived threat characterize obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Its compulsions are “ego-dystonic”: perceived as externally driven.

About the Author

Boston Globe senior science journalist Sharon Begley co-authored The Emotional Life of Your Brain and wrote the bestseller Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain.

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    S. H. 8 months ago
    I have been diagnosed and medicated for OCD since the biochemical changes of my first pregnancy sent a genetic tendancy into a full-blown disorder 27 years ago. This book is dead-on accurate.