This little book by Guy Winch, Ph.D states what it is in the title and byline of the book. This is Emotional First Aid tools summarized in a small book. As with physical first aid this is just the pre medical work to do before a doctor visit. This book does a great job providing exercises to help someone start on a journey to cope with rejection, loneliness, trauma, loss, guilt, overthinking, failure and even self esteem boosting activities. The way the chapters are structures include a section explaining why one might be feeling the above emotional roadblocks followed by 3 to 6 exercises Dr. Winch calls treatments listed by letters, treatment A, treatment b ect. These treatments are more complex as the letter increases. At the end of each treatment Dr. Winch includes a little summary of how the exercise can be most effective and how it aims to improve ones life in a section including the titles diagnosis, primary effect and secondary effects.

  This book is great for the following types of readers:

       1) Those who want or feel a need to bring themselves up from a spiral of negative emotions

       2) Those who have recently lost someone a close friend or relative through death or seperation 

       3)Anyone who knows someone struggling with emotional pain that want to be able to help regardless of thier medical training or lack of it.

This book is a great little book to help someone point themselves or others to practical techinques that might be harder to learn though a CBT or ACT workbook. This little book is like a little dictionary of ways to soothe olde emotional hurts. 

   This book is not for:

     1)This is not a replacement for actual therapy. 

     2) This is not a treatment for Clinical Depression or long standing Anxiety Disorders.

    3) This book does not touch on how to deal with the long lasting effect of any of emotional states listed in my first paragraph. This book focuses solely on the first response treatments that can be take to lessen the long term impacts of these conditions but not on avoiding or stopping any long term issues.

   My last thoughts on this book are that ''Emotional First Aid'' by Dr.Winch is a great little dictionary of ways to help oneself or others on starting the process of healing emotional wounds but not an all encompassing way to fully heal. It is a great little book for ones library but not meant as more than a quick guide to emergency interventions. I  highly recommend this book to everyone. I give this book overall a 9 out of 10.