Alcoholics Anonymous


Alcoholics Anonymous - 1939
    It's a way of life. Alcoholics Anonymous-The Big Book-has served as a lifeline to millions worldwide. First published in 1939, Alcoholics Anonymous sets forth cornerstone concepts of recovery from alcoholism and tells the stories of men and women who have overcome the disease. With publication of the second edition in 1955, the third edition in 1976, and now the fourth edition in 2001, the essential recovery text has remained unchanged while personal stories have been added to reflect the growing and diverse fellowship. The long-awaited fourth edition features 24 new personal stories of recovery. Key features and benefits·the most widely used resource for millions of individuals in recovery·contains full, original text describing A.A. the program·updated with 24 new personal stories

Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions, Overcome Negativity, and Thrive


Barbara L. Fredrickson - 2009
    Barbara Fredrickson gives you the lab-tested tools necessary to create a healthier, more vibrant, and flourishing life through a process she calls "the upward spiral." You’ll discover:•What positivity is, and why it needs to be heartfelt to be effective• The ten sometimes surprising forms of positivity• Why positivity is more important than happiness• How positivity can enhance relationships, work, and health, and how it relieves depression, broadens minds, and builds lives• The top-notch research that backs the 3-to-1 "positivity ratio" as a key tipping point• That your own sources of positivity are unique and how to tap into them• How to calculate your current positivity ratio, track it, and improve itWith Positivity, you’ll learn to see new possibilities, bounce back from setbacks, connect with others, and become the best version of yourself.From the Hardcover edition.

The Worry Cure: Seven Steps to Stop Worry from Stopping You


Robert L. Leahy - 2005
    Worrying feels like second nature. It’s what helps you solve your problems and prevents you from making mistakes. It’s what motivates you to be prepared—if you didn’t worry, things might get out of hand. Worry protects you, prepares you, and keeps you safe.Is it working? Or is it making you tense, tired, anxious, uncertain—and more worried?For more than twenty-five years, Dr. Robert L. Leahy has successfully helped thousands of people defeat the worry that is holding them back. The Worry Cure is his new, comprehensive approach to help you identify, challenge, and overcome all types of worry, using the most recent research and his more than two decades of experience in treating patients.This empowering seven-step program, including practical, easy-to-follow advice and techniques, will help you: • Determine your “worry profile” and change your patterns of worry • Identify productive and unproductive worry• Take control of time and eliminate the sense of urgency that keeps you anxious• Focus on new opportunities—not on your fear of failure• Embrace uncertainty instead of searching for perfect solutions• Stop the most common safety behaviors that you think make things better—but actually make things worseDesigned to address general worries as well as the unique issues surrounding some of the most common areas of worry—relationships, health, money, work, and the need for approval—The Worry Cure is for everyone, from the chronic worrier to the occasional ruminator. It’s time to stop thinking you’re “just a worrier” who can’t change and start using the groundbreaking methods in The Worry Cure to achieve the healthier, more successful life you deserve.From the Hardcover edition.

Sober for Good: New Solutions for Drinking Problems -- Advice from Those Who Have Succeeded


Anne M. Fletcher - 2001
    The best-selling author Anne M. Fletcher asked them a simple question: how did you do it? The result is the first completely unbiased guide for problem drinkers, one that shatters long-held assumptions about alcohol recovery.Myth: AA is the only way to get sober.Reality: More than half the people Fletcher surveyed recovered without AA.Myth: You can't get sober on your own.Reality: Many people got sober by themselves.Myth: One drink inevitably leads right back to the bottle.Reality: A small number of people find they can have an occasional drink.Myth: There's nothing you can do for someone with a drinking problem until he or she is ready.Reality: Family and friends can make a big difference if they know how to help.Weaving together the success stories of ordinary people and the latest scientific research on the subject, Fletcher uncovers a vital truth: no single path to sobriety is right for every individual. There are many ways to get sober - and stay sober. SOBER FOR GOOD is for anyone who has ever struggled not to drink, coped with someone who has a drinking problem, or secretly wondered, "Do I drink too much?"

Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself


Kristin Neff - 2011
    Kristin Neff comes a step-by-step guide explaining how to be more self-compassionate and achieve your dreams in lifeThe relentless pursuit of high self-esteem has become a virtual religion—and a tyrannical one at that. Our ultracompetitive culture tells us we need to be constantly above average to feel good about ourselves, but there is always someone more attractive, successful, or intelligent than we are. And even when we do manage to grab hold of high self-esteem for a brief moment, we can't seem to keep it. Our sense of self-worth goes up and down like a ping-pong ball, rising and falling in lockstep with our latest success or failure.Fortunately, there is an alternative to self-esteem that many experts believe is a better and more effective path to happiness: self-compassion. The research of Dr. Kristin Neff and other leading psychologists indicates that people who are compassionate toward their failings and imperfections experience greater well-being than those who repeatedly judge themselves. The feelings of security and self-worth provided by self-compassion are also highly stable, kicking in precisely when self-esteem falls down. This book powerfully demonstrates why it's so important to be self-compassionate and give yourself the same caring support you'd give to a good friend.This groundbreaking work will show you how to let go of debilitating self-criticism and finally learn to be kind to yourself. Using solid empirical research, personal stories, practical exercises, and humor, Dr. Neff—the world's foremost expert on self-compassion—explains how to heal destructive emotional patterns so that you can be healthier, happier, and more effective. Engaging, highly readable, and eminently accessible, this book has the power to change your life.

Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time


Brigid Schulte - 2014
    It is a deeply reported and researched, honest and often hilarious journey from feeling that, as one character in the book said, time is like a "rabid lunatic" running naked and screaming as your life flies past you, to understanding the historical and cultural roots of the overwhelm, how worrying about all there is to do and the pressure of feeling like we're never have enough time to do it all, or do it well, is "contaminating" our experience of time, how time pressure and stress is resculpting our brains and shaping our workplaces, our relationships and squeezing the space that the Greeks said was the point of living a Good Life: that elusive moment of peace called leisure.Author Brigid Schulte, an award-winning journalist for the Washington Post - and harried mother of two - began the journey quite by accident, after a time-use researcher insisted that she, like all American women, had 30 hours of leisure each week. Stunned, she accepted his challenge to keep a time diary and began a journey that would take her from the depths of what she described as the Time Confetti of her days to a conference in Paris with time researchers from around the world, to North Dakota, of all places, where academics are studying the modern love affair with busyness, to Yale, where neuroscientists are finding that feeling overwhelmed is actually shrinking our brains, to exploring new lawsuits uncovering unconscious bias in the workplace, why the US has no real family policy, and where states and cities are filling the federal vacuum.She spent time with mothers drawn to increasingly super intensive parenting standards, and mothers seeking to pull away from it. And she visited the walnut farm of the world's most eminent motherhood researcher, an evolutionary anthropologist, to ask, are mothers just "naturally" meant to be the primary parent? The answer will surprise you.Along the way, she was driven by two questions, Why are things the way they are? and, How can they be better? She found real world bright spots of innovative workplaces, couples seeking to shift and share the division of labor at home and work more equitably and traveled to Denmark, the happiest country on earth, where fathers - and mothers - have more pure leisure time than parents in other industrial countries. She devoured research about the science of play, why it's what makes us human, and the feminist leisure research that explains why it's so hard for women to allow themselves to. The answers she found are illuminating, perplexing and ultimately hopeful. The book both outlines the structural and policy changes needed - already underway in small pockets - and mines the latest human performance and motivation science to show the way out of the overwhelm and toward a state that time use researchers call ... Time Serenity.

You Are the Placebo: Making Your Mind Matter


Joe Dispenza - 2014
    In You Are the Placebo, Dr. Joe Dispenza shares numerous documented cases of those who reversed cancer, heart disease, depression, crippling arthritis, and even the tremors of Parkinson’s disease by believing in a placebo. Similarly, Dr. Joe tells of how others have gotten sick and even died the victims of a hex or voodoo curse—or after being misdiagnosed with a fatal illness. Belief can be so strong that pharmaceutical companies use double- and triple-blind randomized studies to try to exclude the power of the mind over the body when evaluating new drugs.     Dr. Joe does more than simply explore the history and the physiology of the placebo effect. He asks the question: “Is it possible to teach the principles of the placebo, and without relying on any external substance, produce the same internal changes in a person’s health and ultimately in his or her life?” Then he shares scientific evidence (including color brain scans) of amazing healings from his workshops, in which participants learn his model of personal transformation, based on practical applications of the so-called placebo effect. The book ends with a “how-to” meditation for changing beliefs and perceptions that hold us back—the first step in healing.     You Are the Placebo combines the latest research in neuroscience, biology, psychology, hypnosis, behavioral conditioning, and quantum physics to demystify the workings of the placebo effect . . . and show how the seemingly impossible can become possible.

The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure


Jonathan Haidt - 2018
    These three Great Untruths are part of a larger philosophy that sees young people as fragile creatures who must be protected and supervised by adults. But despite the good intentions of the adults who impart them, the Great Untruths are harming kids by teaching them the opposite of ancient wisdom and the opposite of modern psychological findings on grit, growth, and antifragility. The result is rising rates of depression and anxiety, along with endless stories of college campuses torn apart by moralistic divisions and mutual recriminations. This is a book about how we got here. First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt take us on a tour of the social trends stretching back to the 1980s that have produced the confusion and conflict on campus today, including the loss of unsupervised play time and the birth of social media, all during a time of rising political polarization. This is a book about how to fix the mess. The culture of “safety” and its intolerance of opposing viewpoints has left many young people anxious and unprepared for adult life, with devastating consequences for them, for their parents, for the companies that will soon hire them, and for a democracy that is already pushed to the brink of violence over its growing political divisions. Lukianoff and Haidt offer a comprehensive set of reforms that will strengthen young people and institutions, allowing us all to reap the benefits of diversity, including viewpoint diversity. This is a book for anyone who is confused by what’s happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live and work and cooperate across party lines.

The Mood Cure: The 4-Step Program to Take Charge of Your Emotions--Today


Julia Ross - 2002
    Drawing on thirty years of experience, she presents breakthrough solutions to overcoming depression, anxiety, irritability, stress, and other negative emotional states that are diminishing the quality of our lives. Her comprehensive program is based on the use of four mood-building amino acids and other surprisingly potent nutrient supplements, plus a diet rich in good-mood foods such as protein, healthy fat, and certain key vegetables. Including an individualized mood-type questionnaire, The Mood Cure has all the tools to help you get started today and feel better tomorrow.

Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief: A Revolutionary Approach to Understanding and Healing the Impact of Loss


Claire Bidwell Smith - 2018
    Significant loss and unresolved grief are primary underpinnings of anxiety, something that grief expert Claire Bidwell Smith discovered in her own life and in her practice with her therapy clients. Now, using research and real life stories, Smith breaks down the physiology of anxiety, giving you a concrete foundation of understanding in order to help you heal. Starting with the basics of What Is Anxiety? and What Is Grief? and moving to concrete approaches such as Making Amends, Taking Charge, and Retraining Your Brain, Anxiety takes a big step beyond Elisabeth KüRoss's widely accepted five stages to unpack everything from our age-old fears about mortality to the bare vulnerability a loss can make us feel. With concrete tools and coping strategies for panic attacks, getting a handle on anxious thoughts, and more, Smith bridges these two emotions in a way that is deeply empathetic and eminently practical.

Children of the Self-Absorbed: A Grown-Up's Guide to Getting over Narcissistic Parents


Nina W. Brown - 2000
    Children of the Self-Absorbed helps readers sort out what happened to them as the result of a destructive childhood living with a self-absorbed parent. Through challenging self-exploration exercises, Brown helps readers to work toward building healthy self-esteem and to develop a new repetoire of protective and coping strategies. Readers learn how to identify destructive patterns that their parents may have had, evaluate attitudes and behaviors that may be hampering their own adult relationships, deal with self-doubt and other negative feelings, and explore techniques and stragegies for rebuilding their confidence and self-esteem.

Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being


Martin E.P. Seligman - 2011
    Traditionally, the goal of psychology has been to relieve human suffering, but the goal of the Positive Psychology movement, which Dr. Seligman has led for fifteen years, is different—it’s about actually raising the bar for the human condition. Flourish builds on Dr. Seligman’s game-changing work on optimism, motivation, and character to show how to get the most out of life, unveiling an electrifying new theory of what makes a good life—for individuals, for communities, and for nations. In a fascinating evolution of thought and practice, Flourish refines what Positive Psychology is all about. While certainly a part of well-being, happiness alone doesn’t give life meaning. Seligman now asks, What is it that enables you to cultivate your talents, to build deep, lasting relationships with others, to feel pleasure, and to contribute meaningfully to the world? In a word, what is it that allows you to flourish? “Well-being” takes the stage front and center, and Happiness (or Positive Emotion) becomes one of the five pillars of Positive Psychology, along with Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment—or PERMA, the permanent building blocks for a life of profound fulfillment. Thought-provoking in its implications for education, economics, therapy, medicine, and public policy—the very fabric of society—Flourish tells inspiring stories of Positive Psychology in action, including how the entire U.S. Army is now trained in emotional resilience; how innovative schools can educate for fulfillment in life and not just for workplace success; and how corporations can improve performance at the same time as they raise employee well-being. With interactive exercises to help readers explore their own attitudes and aims, Flourish is a watershed in the understanding of happiness as well as a tool for getting the most out of life. On the cutting edge of a science that has changed millions of lives, Dr. Seligman now creates the ultimate extension and capstone of his bestselling classics, Authentic Happiness and Learned Optimism.

The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook: Your Self-Treatment Guide for Pain Relief


Clair Davies - 2001
    Trigger point therapy is one of the most intriguing and fastest-growing bodywork styles in the world. Medical doctors, chiropractors, and alternative health practitioners are all beginning to use this technique to relieve the pain of individuals suffering from undiagnosable soft tissue pain-a condition that studies have shown to be the cause of nearly 25 percent of all doctor visits. The technique involves applying a gentle, sweeping stroke to trigger points, places in muscle or connective tissue where a lack of oxygen causes swelling. These points are easily located by general readers and create pain throughout the body in predictable patterns characteristic to each muscle, producing discomfort ranging from mild to severe. The stimulation of the point causes an increase in the oxygen level in the area and often produces instant relief. The first edition of The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook has made a huge impact in the use of this dynamic technique. This is the first major revision of the overnight classic, a complete update that includes new information specifically for massage professionals as well as a detailed discussion of progressive muscle relaxation techniques that can reinforce the therapeutic power of trigger point work.

Psycho-Cybernetics, A New Way to Get More Living Out of Life


Maxwell Maltz - 1960
    So are failure and misery. But negative habits can be changed--and Psycho-Cybernetics shows you how!This is your personal audio guide to the amazing power of Psycho-Cybernetics--a program based on one of the world s classic self-help books, a multimillion-copy bestseller proven effective by readers worldwide. Presenting positive attitude as a means for change, Maltz s teaching has the ring of common sense. Psycho-Cybernetics-is the original text that defined the mind/body connection the concept that paved the way for most of today s personal empowerment programs. Turn crises into creative opportunities, dehypnotize yourself from false beliefs, and celebrate new freedom from fear and guilt.Testimonials and stories are interspersed with advice from Maltz, as well as techniques for relaxation and visualization. Dr. Maxwell Maltz teaches you his techniques of emotional surgery --the path to a dynamic new self-image and self-esteem and to achieving the success and happiness you deserve!

Elephants on Acid: And Other Bizarre Experiments


Alex Boese - 2007
    In Elephants on Acid, Boese details the results of this scientific trial, as well as answers to the questions: Why can't people tickle themselves? Would the average dog summon help in an emergency? Will babies instinctually pick a well-balanced diet? Is it possible to restore life to the dead? Read on to find out...