This "little green book," as it has come to be known to hundreds of thousands of C.O.A.'s and A.C.O.A.'s, is meant to help the reader understand the roles children in alcoholic families adopt, the problems they face in adulthood as a result, and what they can do to break the pattern of destruction.

    Why would any sober Alcoholic return to the misery? Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud: Relapse and the Symptoms of Sobriety, shows why it's not just once... without pithy slogans or trademarked solutions... from a journalist who has been there. Here's a book explaining how and why relapse happens, how to hold it at bay and why every non-alcoholic should care, without reading like a clinical journal.This ★★★★★ read is for drinkers, ex-drinkers and anyone who knows an alcoholic celebrates and encourages sobriety while giving an ominous warning of the not-so-secret thief in the healthcare system. What are the Symptoms of Sobriety and how do Alcoholics and non-Alcoholics guard against them?What four overlooked stressors trip up recovery?Can you hit bottom sober? Informative and very personal, the narrative dashes along peaks of anger, joy, desperation, relief and hope interspersed with solid data on the disease and guidance for avoiding relapse traps.   Alcoholics and non-alcoholics sometimes believe sobriety is the silver lining to the cloud of alcoholism... but it's not enough to just stop drinking.(I)"I've been sober 23 years... this is the best recovery book I've read." -- One of more than a dozen five-star reviews on Amazon.

    Yet the dynamic between therapist and client remains an enigma. In Tales of Un-Knowing, Ernesto Spinelli presents eight tales of a therapeutic approach that has proven highly effective in assisting troubled individuals in confronting the problems of everyday life. According to Spinelli, therapy at its most fundamental level involves the act of revealing and reassessing the life stories that clients tell themselves in order to establish or maintain meaning in their lives. The role of the therapist is not only to listen, but to help the client to explicate and reconstruct this life story.Tales of Un-Knowing presents the lives of eight individuals whose experiences illuminate a variety of dilemmas and anxieties that most of us encounter at different points in our lives. We meet a man who refuses to grow old gracefully, a woman who fears that she is only loved for her body, and an octogenarian who lives simultaneously in the present and in the past. We also meet Giles, whose obsessive identification with Einstein led him to theorize about his sex until it became a living mathematics full of enthralling permutations and combinations. In the course of the book Spinelli tackles head on the last great taboo of therapeutic practice--sexual attraction between therapist and client.Existential therapy, then, requires that the therapist experience life through the client's eyes. This frequently leads to challenges to the therapist's own ways of being, and the underlying values, beliefs, and assumptions that maintain them. The term un-knowing refers to the challenge to the therapist, who must force him or herself to remain open to new interpretations of that which is familiar, and to treat the seemingly familiar as novel, unfixed in meaning, and accessible to previously unexamined possibilities.

    Leading authorities demonstrate effective ways to integrate psychological, interpersonal, and medical interventions. Every chapter includes detailed clinical examples illustrating the process of therapy and the factors that influence treatment outcomes.  Winner-- Society for Sex Therapy and Research (SSTAR) Health Professional Book Award

    Sober doesn't feel stony, or cold. Retired wreckhead Catherine Gray, author of surprise bestseller The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober , is now in her eighth sober year and has learned a damn sight more. This hotly anticipated sequel enlists the help of experts and case studies, turning a curious, playful gaze onto provocative questions. Is alcohol a parenting aid? Why are booze and cocaine such a horse and carriage? Once an addict, always an addict? How do you feel safe - from alcohol, others and yourself - in sobriety? Whether you're a dedicated boozehound, flirting with teetotalling, or already sober, this witty, gritty read may just change how you think about alcohol forever.

    Serving as ready-to-use treatment packages, chapters describe basic cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) techniques and how to tailor them to each disorder. Also featured are diagnostic flow charts; therapist forms for assessment and record keeping; client handouts and homework sheets; and session-by-session case examples. Tips for troubleshooting common therapeutic roadblocks are presented, as are strategies for ensuring third-party payment authorization. The searchable CD-ROM enables clinicians to rapidly generate individualized treatment plans, print extra copies of therapist and client forms, find the facts about commonly prescribed medications, and learn more about cognitive-behavioral techniques. Facilitating effective treatment that is adapted to the realities of the typical outpatient setting, including the demands of managed care, this book and CD-ROM will be prized by novice and experienced clinicians alike.

    I also wrote it from the viewpoint of someone who has discovered many silver linings in the long, windy, bumpy road of recovering from Cptsd. I felt encouraged to write this book because of thousands of e-mail responses to the articles on my website that repeatedly expressed gratitude for the helpfulness of my work. An often echoed comment sounded like this: At last someone gets it. I can see now that I am not bad, defective or crazy…or alone! The causes of Cptsd range from severe neglect to monstrous abuse. Many survivors grow up in houses that are not homes – in families that are as loveless as orphanages and sometimes as dangerous. If you felt unwanted, unliked, rejected, hated and/or despised for a lengthy portion of your childhood, trauma may be deeply engrained in your mind, soul and body. This book is a practical, user-friendly self-help guide to recovering from the lingering effects of childhood trauma, and to achieving a rich and fulfilling life. It is copiously illustrated with examples of my own and my clients’ journeys of recovering. This book is also for those who do not have Cptsd but want to understand and help a loved one who does. This book also contains an overview of the tasks of recovering and a great many practical tools and techniques for recovering from childhood trauma. It extensively elaborates on all the recovery concepts explained on my website, and many more. However, unlike the articles on my website, it is oriented toward the layperson. As such, much of the psychological jargon and dense concentration of concepts in the website articles has been replaced with expanded and easier to follow explanations. Moreover, many principles that were only sketched out in the articles are explained in much greater detail. A great deal of new material is also explored. Key concepts of the book include managing emotional flashbacks, understanding the four different types of trauma survivors, differentiating the outer critic from the inner critic, healing the abandonment depression that come from emotional abandonment and self-abandonment, self-reparenting and reparenting by committee, and deconstructing the hierarchy of self-injuring responses that childhood trauma forces survivors to adopt. The book also functions as a map to help you understand the somewhat linear progression of recovery, to help you identify what you have already accomplished, and to help you figure out what is best to work on and prioritize now. This in turn also serves to help you identify the signs of your recovery and to develop reasonable expectations about the rate of your recovery. I hope this map will guide you to heal in a way that helps you to become an unflinching source of kindness and self-compassion for yourself, and that out of that journey you will find at least one other human being who will reciprocally love you well enough in that way.

    This therapeutic theory is founded on the idea that people have many interacting narratives that go into making up their sense of who they are, and that the issues they bring to therapy are not restricted to (or sited within) the clients themselves, but rather are influenced and shaped by cultural discourses about identity and power.

    Developing our sense of compassion can affect many areas of our lives, in particular our relationships with other people. In this book, Professor Paul Gilbert explores how our minds have developed to survive in dangerous and threatening environments by becoming sensitive and quick to react to perceived threats. This can sometimes lead to problems in how we respond to life's challenges and scientific evidence has demonstrated that compassion towards oneself and others can lead to an increased sense of happiness and wellbeing - particularly valuable when we are feeling stressed. Based on evolutionary research and scientific studies of how the brain processes emotional information, this compassionate approach offers an appealing alternative to the traditional western view of compassion, which sometimes sees it as a sign of weakness and can encourage self-criticism and a hard-nosed drive to achieve.

    Thoughts Without a Thinker is a major contribution to today's exploding discussion of how Eastern spirituality can enhance Western psychology. In it, Mark Epstein argues that the contemplative traditions of the East can be extremely beneficial to patients, not just in helping them recognize their problems, but by giving them the strength to heal. Clearly written and very accessible, this enlightening guide explains the unique psychological contributions of the teachings of Buddhism, describes the path of meditation in contemporary psychological language, and lays out the possibility of a meditation-inspired psychotherapy.

    In response, he probes the hidden layers of personality to reveal the core of man's integration--a basic and inborn sense of value. Man's Search for Himself is an illuminating view of our predicament in an age of overwhelming anxieties and gives guidance on how to choose, judge, and act during such times.

    “Ego state therapy” refers to a powerful, flexible therapy that helps clients integrate and reconcile these distinct aspects of themselves.This book offers a grab bag of ego state interventions—simple, practical techniques for a range of client issues—that any therapist can incorporate in his or her practice. In her characteristic wise, compassionate, and user-friendly writing style, Robin Shapiro explains what ego states are, how to access them in clients, and how to use them for a variety of treatment issues. After covering foundational interventions for accessing positive adult states, creating internal caregivers, and working with infant and child states in Part I: Getting Started With Ego State Work, Shapiro walks readers step-by-step through a variety of specific interventions for specific problems, each ready for immediate application with clients. Part II: Problem-Specific Interventions includes chapters devoted to working with trauma, relationship challenges, personality disorders, suicidal ideation, and more.Ego state work blends easily, and often seamlessly, with most other modalities. The powerful techniques and interventions in this book can be used alone or combined with other therapies. They are suitable for garden-variety clients with normal developmental issues like self-care challenges, depression, grief, anxiety, and differentiation from families and peer groups. Many of the interventions included in this book are also effective with clients across the dissociation spectrum—dissociation is a condition particularly well suited to ego state work—including clients who suffer trauma and complex trauma. Rich with case examples, this book is both a pragmatic introduction for clinicians who have never before utilized parts work and a trove of proven interventions for experienced hands to add to their therapeutic toolbox. Welcome to a powerful, flexible resource to help even the most difficult clients build a sense of themselves as adult, loveable, worthwhile, and competent.

    The more I drank to relieve my shame-based loneliness and hurt, the more I felt ashamed.” Shame is the motivator behind our toxic behaviors: the compulsion, co-dependency, addiction and drive to superachieve that breaks down the family and destroys personal lives. This book has helped millions identify their personal shame, understand the underlying reasons for it, address these root causes and release themselves from the shame that binds them to their past failures. Key Features This is not just a recovery book. Among other things, it is a classic book on identifying and working through unresolved family issues. Includes affirmations, visualizations, inner voice and feeling exercises. Strong supporting studies make this a popular book with counselors and other professionals. Completely updated and revised

    “Because generations of self-interested therapists told us so?”Through ten linked stories, we follow Hazanov as he navigates the maze of psychological theories he’s been taught, facing the alarming dissonance between them and the tragic reality of his patients’ lives. "How does psychotherapy work? And why do people not get any better?" Frustrated by fancy jargon and unrealistic depictions, Hazanov is on a quest to dispel the myths of psychotherapy and discover its essence. In The Fear of Doing Nothing he illuminates the intimacy, vulnerability and messiness of the therapeutic encounter, providing his answer to the question of what psychotherapy is.

    He is also the Head Teaching Fellow for the most popular course at Harvard, “Positive Psychology,” which is taken by more than 1,000 students per semester and led by Professor Tal Ben-Shahar.  Shawn received his B.A. in English from Harvard and a Master’s from Harvard Divinity School in Christian and Buddhist Ethics. Part of his interest in positive psychology stems from a troubling fact: studies have shown that many of Harvard’s undergraduates suffer from depression at some point in their college careers. One Day University is a unique educational experience  that brings intellectuals together to learn from top rated professors at Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia and other prestigious universities. Chosen for their excellent teaching abilities as rated by their students, these great thinkers represent a wide variety of academic disciplines and share their knowledge in 60 minute, highly entertaining lectures. Offering the ability to learn the highlights of academic thought in world affairs, politics, history, science, art, and more; One Day University is a way to truly enjoy the thrill of learning without the pressures of tests and the high price tag of college tuition. Once reserved only for students who could attend the lectures in New York and other major cities, One Day University courses are now available to everyone from the comfort of their own homes in Kindle format.