The Stress Less Workbook is a self-help guide based on CBT which offers simple strategies to help reduce and manage everyday stress. The author uses a structured, step-by-step approach to encourage the reader to create and follow their own stress management plan. Abramowitz is an American clinical psychologist and internationally recognized clinician and researcher in the treatment of OCD and other anxiety disorders. This is the third self-help book he has written.

The book is divided into three parts. Part one explains what stress is and how it can affect us physically, mentally, emotionally and behaviourally. The author is careful to explain that stress can be a good thing and the aim of the book is not to eliminate all stress but rather to learn how to cope with stress more effectively. Through tick-box exercises, the reader is asked to identify their symptoms and levels of stress as well as triggers and maintaining factors. At the end of part one, the author encourages the reader to match their identified stressors with up to six stress management techniques to create their “stress management journey”. This final section is a little more complex and I imagine this is where a client may need support from a therapist in deciding where exactly to begin.

The second part of the book teaches six specific stress management techniques: problem-solving, communication/assertiveness, time management, cognitive restructuring, relaxation, and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Each technique is clearly explained with questions, logs and charts to complete. The chapter on time management is very detailed and covers monitoring time, prioritising, delegating, planning, procrastination and reward. The “changing your stressful thinking” chapter felt slightly more complex than necessary, with many different thought charts to complete. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle has a detailed section on healthy eating including identifying eating patterns and cravings, as well as a description of different nutrients, plus sections on exercise and sleep.

The final part of the book shows the reader how to apply the stress management techniques to areas where it is common to experience stress – at work, in relationships and when a crisis happens. The chapter on work discusses how to deal with a difficult boss through problem-solving, assertiveness and thought-challenging, how to deal with performance anxiety through thought-challenging and time management/preparation, and how to prevent burnout. The chapter on managing relationships and family stress draws on techniques from couples therapy such as sharing thoughts and feelings, as well as mention of dealing with break-ups, parenting and difficult relatives. Managing a crisis is a useful chapter discussing how to cope following a trauma, serious illness, death of a loved one, and job loss. The book concludes with a chapter focusing on how to maintain a “stress-less lifestyle” and relapse prevention.

The Stress Less Workbook provides a good overview of stress and related CBT techniques. It offers a combination of both information and practical exercises/techniques to try. Throughout the book, the author normalizes stress, explaining that it is familiar to us all. The use of case examples supports this and these examples help to illustrate application of the techniques. For a self-help book, it is relatively easy to read but is rather long with some repetition. It could have benefited from the addition of illustrations and summaries to highlight key points at the end of each chapter.

This book could be recommended to clients with a range of difficulties, for use alone or used alongside CBT sessions. Because of the length of the book, it is likely that I would signpost clients to a specific chapter rather than suggesting they read the whole guide. It may also be a useful resource for psychological wellbeing practitioners.