Art therapy activities like drawing, painting, and sculpting will help you better understand your state of mind in order to gain control over your emotions and improve your self-esteem.From drawing a representation of your favorite song, to writing affirmations and taking photos to match, these therapeutic exercises will help you overcome the mindsets that are holding you back and lead you toward inner peace. Some take only five minutes, others up to an hour, but all of them explore a range of artistic mediums, so you can choose exactly what works for you.Essential Art Therapy Exercises offers: The art of getting better—These sophisticated exercises are a springboard for insight, self-expression, mindfulness, acceptance, and self-compassion. Insights and questions—Every activity describes its benefits and offers thoughtful prompts to help you get the most out of each experience. No experience required—You don’t need to be an artist to use art therapy. It’s about the experience of creating—without worry or judgement. Let art therapy help you paint, draw, and write your way to a happier frame of mind.

    It provides examples of some of the forms self-hate takes, including taking blame but not credit, holding grudges, and trying to be perfect, and explores the many facets of self-hate, including its role in addiction, the battering cycle, and the illusion of control. After addressing these factors, it illustrates how a meditation practice can be developed and practiced in efforts to free oneself from self-hating beliefs.

    . . again.Getting angry is easy. Daily irritations, frustrations, and pain poke at us. Feelings of disappointment, hurt, rejection, and embarrassment prod in us. And once the unwieldy cluster of emotions of anger are aroused, our thoughts and actions can feel out of control and impossible to manage.Dr. Gary Chapman, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The 5 Love Languages®, offers helpful-and sometimes surprising-insights into why you get angry and what you can do about it. Using real-life stories and practical principles, Chapman explains how you can channel anger in ways that are healthy and productive. You'll also be equipped to help those you love (including your children) deal with their own anger, as well as effectively deal with those long-simmering feelings of anger toward people in your past.Includes an assessment that will help you discover your personal propensity toward handling anger and how to effectively tame it when it arises.

      Sara suffered a debilitating fear of asserting herself. Spencer experienced crippling social anxiety. Bonnie was shut down, disconnected from her feelings. These patients all came to psychotherapist Hilary Jacobs Hendel seeking treatment for depression, but in fact none of them were chemically depressed. Rather, Jacobs Hendel found that they’d all experienced traumas in their youth that caused them to put up emotional defenses that masqueraded as symptoms of depression. Jacobs Hendel led these patients and others toward lives newly capable of joy and fulfillment through an empathic and effective therapeutic approach that draws on the latest science about the healing power of our emotions.   Whereas conventional therapy encourages patients to talk through past events that may trigger anxiety and depression, accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy (AEDP), the method practiced by Jacobs Hendel and pioneered by Diana Fosha, PhD, teaches us to identify the defenses and inhibitory emotions (shame, guilt, and anxiety) that block core emotions (anger, sadness, fear, disgust, joy, excitement, and sexual excitement). Fully experiencing core emotions allows us to enter an openhearted state where we are calm, curious, connected, compassionate, confident, courageous, and clear.   In It’s Not Always Depression, Jacobs Hendel shares a unique and pragmatic tool called the Change Triangle—a guide to carry you from a place of disconnection back to your true self. In these pages, she teaches lay readers and helping professionals alike   • why all emotions—even the most painful—have value. • how to identify emotions and the defenses we put up against them. • how to get to the root of anxiety—the most common mental illness of our time. • how to have compassion for the child you were and the adult you are.   Jacobs Hendel provides navigational tools, body and thought exercises, candid personal anecdotes, and profound insights gleaned from her patients’ remarkable breakthroughs. She shows us how to work the Change Triangle in our everyday lives and chart a deeply personal, powerful, and hopeful course to psychological well-being and emotional engagement.

    The author offers exploration of self and practical guidance dealing with the dark side of personality based on Jung's concept of "shadow," or the forbidden and unacceptable feelings and behaviors each of us experience.

    Reclaim your life from the one-way street! Disguised as high self-esteem, narcissism is actually a destructive form of self-love or extreme self-absorption."

    BPD can be especially difficult to treat, though there are ways to gain control over your symptoms and live a happier, healthier life.Expanding on the core skill of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), Mindfulness for Borderline Personality Disorder will help you target and successfully manage many of the familiar symptoms of BPD. Inside, you will learn the basics of mindfulness through specific exercises, and will gain powerful insight through real-life stories from people who have BPD. If you are ready to take that first step on the path toward wellness, this book will be your guide.

    They identify four types of injured imprints that combine in marriage to trap couples in a repetitive dance of pain. The groundbreaking principles and practical, solution-focused tools in this book will equip you to… ·identify the imprints disrupting your marriage, ·understand how your love style impacts your mate, ·break free of negative patterns that hinder your relationship, ·enhance your sexual intimacy, and ·create the deeper, richer marriage of your dreams. Discover the truths that have transformed countless relationships– including the authors’ marriage–so you can stop stepping on each other’s toes and instead be swept along by the music of a richer, more passionate relationship.Includes a study guide for individual or group discussion.

    Experienced ethical sluts Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy dispel myths and cover all the skills necessary to maintain a successful and responsible polyamorous lifestyle--from self-reflection and honest communication to practicing safe sex and raising a family. Individuals and their partners will learn how to discuss and honor boundaries, resolve conflicts, and to define relationships on their own terms. "I couldn't stop reading it, and I for one identify as an ethical slut. This is a book for anyone interested in creating more pleasure in their lives . . . a complete guide to improving any style of relating, from going steady to having an extended family of sexual friends." --Betty Dodson, PhD, author of Sex for One

    His spiritual daybook is a summons to reclaim aliveness, liberate the self, take each day one at a time, and to savor the beauty offered by life's unfolding. Reading his poetic prose is like being given second sight, exposing the reader to life's multiple dimensions, each one drawn with awe and affection. The Book of Awakening is the result of his journey of the soul and will inspire others to embark on their own. Nepo speaks of spirit and friendship, urging readers to stay vital and in love with this life, no matter the hardships. Encompassing many traditions and voices, Nepo's words offer insight on pain, wonder, and love. Each entry is accompanied by an exercise that will surprise and delight the reader in its mind-waking ability.

    Yet Dr. Richard Schwartz’s research now challenges this “mono-mind” theory. “All of us are born with many sub-minds—or parts,” says Dr. Schwartz. “These parts are not imaginary or symbolic. They are individuals who exist as an internal family within us—and the key to health and happiness is to honor, understand, and love every part.”Dr. Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems (IFS) model has been transforming psychology for decades. With No Bad Parts, you’ll learn why IFS has been so effective in areas such as trauma recovery, addiction therapy, and depression treatment—and how this new understanding of consciousness has the potential to radically change our lives. Here you’ll explore:• The IFS revolution—how honoring and communicating with our parts changes our approach to mental wellness• Overturning the cultural, scientific, and spiritual assumptions that reinforce an outdated mono-mind model• The ego, the inner critic, the saboteur—making these often-maligned parts into powerful allies• Burdens—why our parts become distorted and stuck in childhood traumas and cultural beliefs• How IFS demonstrates human goodness by revealing that there are no bad parts• The Self—discover your wise, compassionate essence of goodness that is the source of healing and harmony• Exercises for mapping your parts, accessing the Self, working with a challenging protector, identifying each part’s triggers, and moreIFS is a paradigm-changing model because it gives us a powerful approach for healing ourselves, our culture, and our planet. As Dr. Schwartz teaches, “Our parts can sometimes be disruptive or harmful, but once they’re unburdened, they return to their essential goodness. When we learn to love all our parts, we can learn to love all people—and that will contribute to healing the world.”

    We now make up more than half the workforce in the United States and are busier than ever with partners, children, family and friends, often putting the needs of others ahead of our own.And if we feel overwhelmed by it all or fall short of perfection, many of us have learned to be our own worst critic rather than our own best friend.In Warrior Goddess Training, bestselling author HeatherAsh Amara provides the antidote to the flawed idea that you are not enough.Direct, honest, and unapologetic, Amara will show you how to release the layers of expectations to finally see yourself for the authentic, perceptive, perfect woman you really are.If you don't love and honor yourself with every fiber of your being, if you struggle with owning your power and passion, if you could use more joyful play and simple presence in your life, then it is time for an inner revolution.It is time to claim your Warrior Goddess energy.Drawing on the wisdom from Buddhism, Toltec wisdom, and ancient Earth-based goddess spirituality, the Warrior Goddess path includes personal stories, rituals, and exercises that will encourage and inspire you to become the true warrior goddess you are meant to be.

    LEGACY OF THE HEART is a gentle, regenerative approach to discovering the spiritual strength that is hidden in the scars of childhood. A graduate of Harvard Divinity School, therapist and minister Wayne Muller brings together the teachings of many different spiritual and religious traditions to create a program of healing that will appeal to readers of THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED and HOMECOMING. As Ram Dass writes, “Wayne Muller guides us in a process whereby, through gaining spiritual perspective, we transmute our psychological sufferings into grace.”

    How can we recapture the confidence we once had as we stumble through the dark times that seem increasingly bleak? As bad newspiles up--from climate crises to daily assaults on civility--how can we cope? Where, she asks, "do we start to our world and joy and hope and our faith in life itself back . . . with our sore feet, hearing loss, stiff fingers, poor digestion, stunned minds, broken hearts?"We begin, Lamott says, by accepting our flaws and embracing our humanity.Drawing from her own experiences, Lamott shows us the intimate and human ways we can adopt to move through life's dark places and toward the light of hope that still burns ahead for all of us.As she does in Help, Thanks, Wow and her other bestselling books, Lamott explores the thorny issues of life and faith by breaking them down into manageable, human-sized questions for readers to ponder, in the process showing us how we can amplify life's small moments of joy by staying open to love and connection. As Lamott notes in Dusk Night Dawn, "I got Medicare three days before I got hitched, which sounds like something an old person might do, which does not describe adorably ageless me." Marrying for the first time with a grown son and a grandson, Lamott explains that finding happiness with a partner isn't a function of age or beauty but of outlook and perspective.Full of the honesty, humor, and humanity that have made Lamott beloved by millions of readers, Dusk Night Dawn is classic Anne Lamott--thoughtful and comic, warm and wise--and further proof that Lamott truly speaks to the better angels in all of us.

    Authors and widely respected therapists and ACOA workshop leaders Herbert Gravitz and Julie Bowden detail in a clear question-and-answer format the challenges of control and inadequacy that ACOAs face as they struggle for recovery and understanding, stage-by-stage: Survival * Emergent Awareness * Core Issues * Transformations * Integration * Genesis. If you feel troubled by your post, Recovery will start you on the path of self-awareness, as it explores the searching questions adult children of alcoholics seek to hove answered: * How con I overcome my need for control? * Do all ACOAs ploy the some kind of roles in the family? * How do I overcome my fear of intimacy? * What is all-or-none functioning? * How can ACOAs maintain self-confidence and awareness after recovery? * How do ACOAs handle the family after understanding its influence? * And many other important questions about your post, family and feelings. Written with warmth, joy and real understanding, Recovery will inspire you to meet the challenges of the post and overcome the obstacles to your happiness.