Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life: How to Finally, Really Grow Up


James Hollis - 2005
    But adulthood presents varying levels of growth, and is rarely the respite of stability we expected. Turbulent emotional shifts can take place anywhere between the age of thirty-five and seventy when we question the choices we've made, realize our limitations, and feel stuck-- commonly known as the "midlife crisis." Jungian psycho-analyst James Hollis believes it is only in the second half of life that we can truly come to know who we are and thus create a life that has meaning. In Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life, Hollis explores the ways we can grow and evolve to fully become ourselves when the traditional roles of adulthood aren't quite working for us, revealing a new way of uncovering and embracing our authentic selves. Offering wisdom to anyone facing a career that no longer seems fulfilling, a long-term relationship that has shifted, or family transitions that raise issues of aging and mortality, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life provides a reassuring message and a crucial bridge across this critical passage of adult development.

The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook


Edmund J. Bourne - 1990
    Packed with the most effective skills for assessing and treating anxiety, this workbook can be used alone or as a supplement to therapy to help you develop a full arsenal of skills for quieting worried thoughts and putting yourself back in control.This new edition has been thoroughly updated with the latest anxiety research and medications, and also includes new therapeutic techniques that have been proven effective for the treatment of anxiety and anxiety-related conditions. Each worksheet in this book will help you learn the skills you need to manage your anxiety and start living more freely than you ever thought possible. With this workbook, you'll learn a range of proven methods for overcoming anxiety, such as relaxation and breathing techniques, challenging negative self-talk and mistaken beliefs, and imagery and real-life desensitization. In addition, you will learn how to make lifestyle, nutrition, and exercise changes and cultivate skills for preventing and coping with and preventing panic attacks.

Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy


Jessica Fern - 2020
    Using her nested model of attachment and trauma, she expands our understanding of how emotional experiences can influence our relationships. Then, she sets out six specific strategies to help you move toward secure attachments in your multiple relationships. Polysecure is both a theoretical treatise and a practical guide.

How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self


Nicole LePera - 2021
    Nicole LePera often found herself frustrated by the limitations of traditional psychotherapy. Wanting more for her patients—and for herself—she began a journey to develop a united philosophy of mental, physical and spiritual wellness that equips people with the interdisciplinary tools necessary to heal themselves. After experiencing the life-changing results herself, she began to share what she’d learned with others—and soon “The Holistic Psychologist” was born.Now, Dr. LePera is ready to share her much-requested protocol with the world. In How to Do the Work, she offers both a manifesto for SelfHealing as well as an essential guide to creating a more vibrant, authentic, and joyful life. Drawing on the latest research from a diversity of scientific fields and healing modalities, Dr. LePera helps us recognize how adverse experiences and trauma in childhood live with us, resulting in whole body dysfunction—activating harmful stress responses that keep us stuck engaging in patterns of codependency, emotional immaturity, and trauma bonds. Unless addressed, these self-sabotaging behaviors can quickly become cyclical, leaving people feeling unhappy, unfulfilled, and unwell.

True Grit


Bear Grylls - 2013
    But he's not the first.Take the American bombardier Louis Zamperini, who survived 47 days stranded at sea by catching and killing hungry sharks and drinking the warm blood of albatrosses ? only to be captured by the Japanese and horrifically tortured for years in their most brutal POW camps...Or Marcus Luttrell, a Navy SEAL who single-handedly took on a Taliban regiment before dragging his bleeding, bullet-ridden body for days through the harsh mountains of Afghanistan...Or Nando Parrado, one of the survivors of a horrific air-crash high in the ice-bound Andes, who only lived because he was willing to eat the flesh of his dead companions...In this gripping new book, Bear tells the stories of the adventurers, explorers, soldiers and spies whose refusal to quit in the most extreme situations has inspired him throughout his life. Some of them make uncomfortable reading - survival is rarely pretty. But all of them are tales of eye-watering bravery, death-defying resilience and extraordinary mental toughness by men and women who have one thing in common: true grit.What readers are saying about True Grit:***** 'Exhilarating . . . It kept me gripped throughout.'***** 'Inspirational stories of survival and endurance . . . kept me interested till the end.'***** 'To keep going, to keep hopeful, to never quit these are lessons in life that all of us need to hear.'

Psych 101: Psychology Facts, Basics, Statistics, Tests, and More!


Paul Kleinman - 2012
    Psych 101 cuts out the boring details and statistics, and instead, gives you a lesson in psychology that keeps you engaged - and your synapses firing.From personality quizzes and the Rorschach Blot Test to B.F. Skinner and the stages of development, this primer for human behavior is packed with hundreds of entertaining psychology basics and quizzes you can't get anywhere else.So whether you're looking to unravel the intricacies of the mind, or just want to find out what makes your friends tick, Psych 101 has all the answers - even the ones you didn't know you were looking for.

The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity—and Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race


Daniel Z. Lieberman - 2018
    In pursuit of these things, it is undeterred by emotion, fear, or morality. Dopamine is the source of our every urge, that little bit of biology that makes an ambitious business professional sacrifice everything in pursuit of success, or that drives a satisfied spouse to risk it all for the thrill of someone new. Simply put, it is why we seek and succeed; it is why we discover and prosper. Yet, at the same time, it’s why we gamble and squander. From dopamine’s point of view, it’s not the having that matters. It’s getting something—anything—that’s new. From this understanding—the difference between possessing something versus anticipating it—we can understand in a revolutionary new way why we behave as we do in love, business, addiction, politics, religion – and we can even predict those behaviors in ourselves and others. In The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity—and will Determine the Fate of the Human Race, George Washington University professor and psychiatrist Daniel Z. Lieberman, MD, and Georgetown University lecturer Michael E. Long present a potentially life-changing proposal: Much of human life has an unconsidered component that explains an array of behaviors previously thought to be unrelated, including why winners cheat, why geniuses often suffer with mental illness, why nearly all diets fail, and why the brains of liberals and conservatives really are different.

How to Stop Feeling Like Sh*t: 14 Habits that Are Holding You Back from Happiness


Andrea Owen - 2018
    From listening to the imposter complex and bitchy inner critic to catastrophizing and people-pleasing, Andrea Owen--a nationally sought-after life coach--crystallizes what's behind these invisible, undermining habits. With each chapter, she kicks women's gears out of autopilot and empowers them to create happier, more fulfilling lives. Powerfully on-the-mark, the chapters are short and digestible, nicely bypassing weighty examinations in favor of punch-points of awareness.

Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind


Judson Brewer - 2021
    Whether facing issues as public as a pandemic or as personal as having kids at home and fighting the urge to reach for the wine bottle every night, we are feeling overwhelmed and out of control. But in this timely book, Judson Brewer explains how to uproot anxiety at its source using brain-based techniques and small hacks accessible to anyone.We think of anxiety as everything from mild unease to full-blown panic. But it's also what drives the addictive behaviors and bad habits we use to cope (e.g. stress eating, procrastination, doom scrolling and social media). Plus, anxiety lives in a part of the brain that resists rational thought. So we get stuck in anxiety habit loops that we can't think our way out of or use willpower to overcome. Dr. Brewer teaches us map our brains to discover our triggers, defuse them with the simple but powerful practice of curiosity, and to train our brains using mindfulness and other practices that his lab has proven can work.Distilling more than 20 years of research and hands-on work with thousands of patients, including Olympic athletes and coaches, and leaders in government and business, Dr. Brewer has created a clear, solution-oriented program that anyone can use to feel better - no matter how anxious they feel.

Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain


David Eagleman - 2011
    If the conscious mind—the part you consider you—accounts for only a tiny fraction of the brain’s function, what is all the rest doing? This is the question that David Eagleman—renowned neuroscientist and acclaimed author of Sum—answers in a book as accessible and entertaining as it is deeply informed by startling, up-to-the-minute research.

The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully


Frank Ostaseski - 2017
    Death is always with us, in the marrow of every passing moment. She is the secret teacher hiding in plain sight, helping us to discover what matters most in life.Life and death are a package deal. They cannot be pulled apart and we cannot truly live unless we are aware of death. The Five Invitations is an exhilarating meditation on the meaning of life and how maintaining and ever-present consciousness of death can bring us closer to our truest selves. As a renowned teacher of compassionate care-giving and the cofounder of the Zen Hospice Project, Frank Ostaseski has sat on the precipice of death with more than a thousand people. In The Five Invitations, he distills the lessons gleaned over the course of his career, offering an evocative and stirring guide that points a radical path to transformation.The Five Invitations:-Don’t Wait-Welcome Everything, Push Away Nothing-Bring Your Whole Self to the Experience-Find a Place of Rest in the Middle of Things-Cultivate Don’t Know MindThese invitations show us how to wake up fully to our lives. They can be understood as best practices for anyone coping with death or navigating any sort of transition or crisis; they guide us toward appreciating life’s preciousness. Death can be a valuable companion on the road to living well, forging a rich and meaningful life, and letting go of regret. The Five Invitations is a powerful and inspiring exploration of the essential wisdom dying has to impart to all of us.

No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering


Thich Nhat Hanh - 2014
    In No Mud, No Lotus, Thich Nhat Hanh offers practices and inspiration for transforming suffering and finding true joy. Thich Nhat Hanh acknowledges that because suffering can feel so bad, we try to run away from it or cover it up by consuming. We find something to eat or turn on the television. But unless we’re able to face our suffering, we can’t be present and available to life, and happiness will continue to elude us. Nhat Hanh shares how the practices of stopping, mindful breathing, and deep concentration can generate the energy of mindfulness within our daily lives. With that energy, we can embrace pain and calm it down, instantly bringing a measure of freedom and a clearer mind. No Mud, No Lotus introduces ways to be in touch with suffering without being overwhelmed by it. With his signature clarity and sense of joy, Thich Nhat Hanh helps us recognize the wonders inside us and around us that we tend to take for granted and teaches us the art of happiness.

Eastern Body, Western Mind: Psychology and the Chakra System As a Path to the Self


Anodea Judith - 1996
    This groundbreaking work in transpersonal psychology has been revised and redesigned for a more accessible presentation. Arranged schematically, the book uses the inherent structure of the chakra system as a map upon which to chart our Western understanding of individual development. Each chapter focuses on a single chakra, starting with a description of its characteristics, then exploring its particular childhood developmental patterns, traumas and abuses, and how to heal and maintain balance. Illuminated with personal anecdotes and case studies, Eastern Body, Western Mind seamlessly merges the East and West, science and philosophy, and psychology and spirituality into a compelling interpretation of the chakra system and its relevance for Westerners today.Revised edition of the groundbreaking New Age book that seamlessly integrates Western psychology and the Eastern chakra system, including a new introduction from the author.Applies the chakra system to important modern social realities and issues such as addiction, codependence, family dynamics, sexuality, and personal empowerment.

Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist's Memoir


Irvin D. Yalom - 2017
    Yalom puts himself on the couch in a lapidary memoir.Irvin D. Yalom has made a career of investigating the lives of others. In this profound memoir, he turns his writing and his therapeutic eye on himself. He opens his story with a nightmare: He is twelve and is riding his bike past the home of an acne-scarred girl. Like every morning, he calls out, hoping to befriend her, "Hello Measles!" But in his dream, the girl's father makes Yalom understand that his daily greeting had hurt her. For Yalom, this was the birth of empathy; he would not forget the lesson. As Becoming Myself unfolds, we see the birth of the insightful thinker whose books have been a beacon to so many. This is not simply a man's life story, Yalom's reflections on his life and development are an invitation for us to reflect on the origins of our own selves and the meanings of our lives.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections


C.G. Jung - 1961
    G. Jung undertook the telling of his life story. At regular intervals he had conversations with his colleague and friend Aniela Jaffé, and collaborated with her in the preparation of the text based on these talks. On occasion, he was moved to write entire chapters of the book in his own hand, and he continued to work on the final stages of the manuscript until shortly before his death on June 6, 1961.