You can use self help for practical advice on various things related to your condition. These can range from small things that improve your life a little, to a complete do-it-yourself course of CBT treatment.

As with other forms of self help, it is best to make sure that the practical advice really applies to you.

Before you try something that might improve your life, you can make notes about how you feel. After you try the advice, you can compare how you feel with the notes you made. If you feel worse, stop doing it! It might have helped someone else in the past, but that does not automatically mean it will help you. Treat each piece of advice as an experiment. Try it for a limited time, then make up your own mind about whether to continue.

If you decide to work through a do-it-yourself course of treatment, remember that the do-it-yourself course is not like real CBT. For details of how real CBT works, see The four stages of CBT. A do-it-yourself course does not provide you with a therapist who can understand you as a person (stage 1), and it might not give you any understanding of your particular condition (stage 2). It might make you practice behaviours that are pointless in your circumstances (stage 3). And you might not learn anything relevant to your life (stage 4).

Even so, do-it-yourself treatment can sometimes be helpful. If you find that do-it-yourself treatment helps you a little, then you can expect real CBT to help you much more. If you find that do-it-yourself treatment does not help you at all, remember that real CBT treatment is very different. It might be very effective for you.

See also: Someone to talk to in a crisis