Book Review: Stop Letting Everything Affect You by Daniel Chidiac

Daniel Chidiac is not a psychotherapist. He is an Australian coach and personal development author. His latest book, published in 2025, is written for people who overthink, absorb other people’s emotions, and often feel controlled by circumstances or the opinions of those around them.

I picked it up because I wanted more inner calm. More confidence that the choices I make are truly my choices, rather than reactions to the many people who seem eager to tell me how I could have done things differently. (Believe me, for some reason people are always happy to explain how I should have handled things better.)

It is a relatively short book – under 200 pages – organized into seven sections. It moves from exploring why some people feel everything so intensely, through setting healthy boundaries and emotionally detaching from what doesn’t belong to us, to recognizing manipulation, knowing when to walk away, and ultimately finding forgiveness and inner peace.

If you’ve read other books on boundaries, emotional regulation, or people-pleasing, the structure will feel familiar. What makes this one worthwhile is not that it offers a revolutionary new idea, but that it provides practical tools rather than simply inspiration.

What the book does well

It is practical rather than merely inspirational.

Unlike many personal development books, Chidiac includes structured exercises you can put into practice immediately. Among them are a daily “worry time” practice for managing intrusive thoughts, a “control inventory” (divide a page in two: list your stressors on the left, and on the right write one thing you can actually influence about each one), and a week-long “energy audit,” where you observe how different interactions affect your emotional state before and after they happen.

These are the kinds of exercises I could easily imagine recommending to parents or teachers and having them use that very evening.

It is refreshingly honest about guilt.

The chapters on boundaries and over-explaining are among the strongest in the book. Chidiac’s central insight – that feeling guilty after setting a boundary is not evidence that you’ve done something wrong, but simply your brain reacting to the breaking of an old habit – is genuinely valuable, especially for parents who have learned to equate “keeping the peace” with “being a good person.”

It draws on real psychological research.

The book references Julian Rotter’s work on locus of control, Susan Nolen-Hoeksema’s research on rumination, Elaine Aron’s work on highly sensitive people, and Daniel Wegner’s classic studies on thought suppression. These are well-established areas of psychological research. While Chidiac’s interpretation is sometimes simplified, it is grounded in genuine evidence rather than pseudoscience.

Where I would be more cautious

This is coaching, not clinical psychology – and you can feel that distinction throughout the book.

Some chapters lean quite heavily toward validating withdrawal from difficult relationships without giving equal attention to repairing healthy ones. The sections on recognizing manipulation and knowing when to leave are genuinely helpful for people in truly unhealthy or abusive relationships.

However, applied too broadly, the same framework could become an excuse to avoid the more difficult – but often more rewarding – work of resolving ordinary relationship conflicts.

For that reason, I would recommend reading this book with your critical thinking fully switched on, especially if you’re recommending it to someone experiencing everyday interpersonal challenges rather than a genuine crisis.

It is also important to remember that this book complements therapy rather than replacing it – and, to the author’s credit, he never claims otherwise. In fact, I see that honesty about the book’s own limitations as one of its strengths.

Final thoughts

I would recommend this book – with one important caveat. Read it as a source of psychoeducation and practical tools, not as a clinical guide.

It is particularly valuable for people who tend to overthink, struggle to set boundaries without feeling guilty, or find themselves carrying other people’s emotional burdens. If you’re looking for practical daily exercises rather than simply reassurance, you’ll likely find something useful here.

Three ideas to try this week

1. Do a control inventory.

Take a sheet of paper and draw a line down the middle. On the left, write down everything that is currently causing you stress. On the right, next to each item, write one aspect of that situation you can actually influence – your response, your boundary, or your next step.

It is a simple way of shifting your attention away from what you cannot control.

2. Schedule your worrying.

This was probably my favorite exercise in the entire book.

Choose a fixed 10–15 minute period each day as your designated “worry time.” Whenever an anxious thought appears outside that window, write it down and remind yourself that you’ll give it your full attention later.

When your worry time arrives, ask yourself two questions about each item:

Is there something I can actually do about this?

If yes, what is the smallest first step?

If not, can I accept this uncertainty – for today?

3. Practice noticing instead of identifying.

The next time a strong emotion arises, try changing the way you speak to yourself.

Instead of saying, “I am anxious,” try saying, “I notice that anxiety is showing up.”

It sounds like a very small shift, but it is a well-researched psychological technique that creates just enough distance to help you observe the emotion rather than become consumed by it.

Happy reading – and I hope you’ll find at least one practice that stays with you long after you’ve finished the book.