Book picks similar to
Touched by Suicide: Hope and Healing After Loss by Michael F. Myers
psychology
suicide
grief
non-fiction
Grieving a Suicide: A Loved One's Search for Comfort, Answers & Hope
Albert Y. Hsu - 2002
It is one of the most serious public health crises of modern times, claiming over one million lives worldwide every year. Those who have lost a loved one to suicide experience tremendous shock and trauma, with a confusing mix of emotions--anger, guilt, grief and despair. Suicide also raises heartrending questions: Why did this happen? Why didn't we see it coming? Many also wonder if those who choose suicide are doomed to an eternity separated from God and loved ones. Some may even start asking whether life is worth living at all. After his father's death by suicide, Albert Hsu wrestled with the intense emotional and spiritual questions surrounding suicide. While acknowledging that there are no easy answers, Hsu draws on the resources of the Christian faith to point suicide survivors to the God who offers comfort in our grief and hope for the future. If you have lost a loved one to suicide or provide pastoral care to those left behind, this book is an essential companion for the journey toward healing.
The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves
Stephen Grosz - 2012
These beautifully rendered tales illuminate the fundamental pathways of life from birth to death.A woman finds herself daydreaming as she returns home from a business trip; a young man loses his wallet. We learn, too, from more extreme examples: the patient who points an unloaded gun at a police officer, the compulsive liar who convinces his wife he's dying of cancer. The stories invite compassionate understanding, suggesting answers to the questions that compel and disturb us most about love and loss, parents and children, work and change. The resulting journey will spark new ideas about who we are and why we do what we do.
Miracle Mindset: A Mother, Her Son, and Life's Hardest Lessons
J.J. Virgin - 2017
She’ll share the lessons she learned that can help you create your own resilient mindset.In 2012, JJ Virgin was in a hospital room next to her sixteen-year-old son who was struck by a hit-and-run driver and left for dead. She was told by doctors that he wouldn’t last through the night and to let him go. With every reason to give up, JJ chose instead to invest her energy into the hope that her son would not just survive, but thrive. In Miracle Mindset, she shares the lessons that gave her the courage to overcome the worst moment of her life. During this difficult time, she learned valuable personal lessons that helped her rebuild her life and find success and purpose in herself, her work, and teach her sons and community how to face their own obstacles and trials. Lessons like “Don’t Wish It Were Easier, Make Yourself Stronger” and “Your Limitations will Become Your Life” will lead you to your own personal power and purpose, even when the deck seems stacked against you. With true stories from her life, her clients, and other well-known thought leaders, she can help you transform your mindset and your daily habits to endure the difficult battles that life sends your way. Insightful, personal, and completely relatable, Miracle Mindset proves that miracles are possible when you show up, remain positive, and do the work.
This Naked Mind: Control Alcohol, Find Freedom, Discover Happiness / Change Your Life & The Alcohol Experiment
Annie Grace - 2019
Packed with surprising insight into the reasons we drink, it will open your eyes to the startling role of alcohol in our culture. Annie Grace brilliantly weaves psychological, neurological, cultural, social and industry factors with her extraordinarily candid journey resulting in a must read for anyone who drinks. This book, without scare tactics, pain or rules, gives you freedom from alcohol. By addressing causes rather than symptoms it is a permanent solution rather than lifetime struggle. The Alcohol Experiment: There are a million reasons why you might drink. It tastes great. You feel more sociable. Sex is better. It helps you relax. But are you really in control? Whether you’re reading this because you know you drink too much and want to quit, or whether you just want to cut back for a while, this book is for you.The Alcohol Experiment is a 30-day programme with a difference. Each day, it will show you a new way of thinking about booze, and ask you to look a little closer at why we drink, what we get out of it, and whether it’s really the alcohol that’s giving us what we want.
Stress Free for Good: 10 Scientifically Proven Life Skills for Health and Happiness
Fred Luskin - 2004
. .Radically reduce stressIncrease your physical vitalityImprove your quality of lifeNow you can. We live in an age of stress. Each day at work and at home as we struggle to take care of the basics, constant stress significantly affects our ability to lead healthy and happy lives. We struggle with stomach pain, headaches, mood swings, fatigue, depression, high blood pressure, and even heart failure. Not only does stress damage our physical and emotional well-being, but our relationships and productivity suffer as well. What, if anything, can we do to stop this cycle?There is a multitude of books, magazine features, TV programs, videotapes, meditation classes, and seminars, all aimed at stopping stress. But until now there has never been a scientifically based program that not only starts working within seconds but also creates a foundation to help remove stress and the symptoms associated with it from your life for good.Dr. Fred Luskin and Dr. Kenneth R. Pelletier spent years at the Stanford University School of Medicine developing ten proven skills for eliminating the stress, anxiety, and pain that occur in daily life. Delivering skills that have been honed and tested among a diverse group of Americans, Stress Free for Good is easy to use and starts working immediately. Offering more than just the promise of breaking even and eliminating daily stress, these ten skills provide a foundation for living a healthier and happier life. This is not only a practical and accessible guide to conquering the stress in our lives once and for all, it is also the last stress aid you will ever need.
Get Me Out of Here: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder
Rachel Reiland - 2002
A mother, wife, and working professional, Reiland was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder at the age of 29—a diagnosis that finally explained her explosive anger, manipulative behaviors, and self-destructive episodes including bouts of anorexia, substance abuse, and promiscuity. A truly riveting read with a hopeful message.
Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved
Kate Bowler - 2018
She lost thirty pounds, chugged antacid, and visited doctors for three months before she was finally diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer.As she navigates the aftermath of her diagnosis, Kate pulls the reader deeply into her life, which is populated with a colorful, often hilarious collection of friends, pastors, parents, and doctors, and shares her laser-sharp reflections on faith, friendship, love, and death. She wonders why suffering makes her feel like a loser and explores the burden of positivity. Trying to relish the time she still has with her son and husband, she realizes she must change her habit of skipping to the end and planning the next move. A historian of the "American prosperity gospel"--the creed of the mega-churches that promises believers a cure for tragedy, if they just want it badly enough--Bowler finds that, in the wake of her diagnosis, she craves these same "outrageous certainties." She wants to know why it's so hard to surrender control over that which you have no control. She contends with the terrifying fact that, even for her husband and child, she is not the lynchpin of existence, and that even without her, life will go on.On the page, Kate Bowler is warm, witty, and ruthless, and, like Paul Kalanithi, one of the talented, courageous few who can articulate the grief she feels as she contemplates her own mortality.
Joy's Way: A Map for the Transformational Journey: An Introduction to the Potentials for Healing with Body Energies
W. Brugh Joy - 1979
W. Brugh Joy was a distinguished and respected member of the Los Angeles medical community. In that year he contracted a life-threatening disease that culminated in an illuminating meditation, which caused him to give up his medical practice abruptly. Six weeks later he discovered that his illness was totally cured. This experience pushed him to further his explorations into realms of healing involving body energies, the chakra system, meditation, and higher levels of consciousness.In part, Joy's Way is the story of an extraordinary personal transformation. More significantly, it is a book that shows vividly the process of individual and group transformation and that rattles and re-forms the reader's concepts of the nature of reality. It expands our vision of our own unrealized potential to be conscious beings who are alert to multiple realities, and introduces us to the seemingly miraculous abilities associated with energy fields radiating from the human body.Joy's Way contains fascinating and beautiful insights into the awakening process, into teachers (inner and outer), psi phenomena, the holographic aspects of consciousness, observer and witness states, dream analysis, the Tarot and I Ching, visualization, the chakras, meditation and healing, transformational psychology, and the transformation of humanity. In addition, this book clearly describes exercises and techniques that show readers how to feel the radiating body-energy fields and how to transfer this energy to another person.
Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction
Maia Szalavitz - 2016
But despite the unprecedented attention, our understanding of addiction is trapped in unfounded 20th century ideas, addiction as a crime or as brain disease, and in equally outdated treatment.Challenging both the idea of the addict's "broken brain" and the notion of a simple "addictive personality," The New York Times Bestseller, Unbroken Brain, offers a radical and groundbreaking new perspective, arguing that addictions are learning disorders and shows how seeing the condition this way can untangle our current debates over treatment, prevention and policy. Like autistic traits, addictive behaviors fall on a spectrum -- and they can be a normal response to an extreme situation. By illustrating what addiction is, and is not, the book illustrates how timing, history, family, peers, culture and chemicals come together to create both illness and recovery- and why there is no "addictive personality" or single treatment that works for all.Combining Maia Szalavitz's personal story with a distillation of more than 25 years of science and research, Unbroken Brain provides a paradigm-shifting approach to thinking about addiction.Her writings on radical addiction therapies have been featured in The Washington Post, Vice Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, in addition to multiple other publications. She has been interviewed about her book on many radio shows including Fresh Air with Terry Gross and The Brian Lehrer show.
Adaptability: How to Survive Change You Didn't Ask for
M.J. Ryan - 2009
"Change is hard," we say, and it is even harder when change is thrust upon us. In today's tough times, we may be forced to reinvent our career or downsize our lives; at any point in life, we may lose a love or a dream. Our first reaction to change we didn't ask for may be to rail against fate. But what if we could see past today's turmoil and spot the opportunities that lie within unasked-for change? That is the promise of "AdaptAbility, " bestselling author and executive coach M. J. Ryan's paradigm-shifting new book on not merely surviving but thriving when change is required. Why is it so hard to accept change? Paradoxically, it is for the very reason that our brains usually work so well; we are designed to learn something and make it automatic. The problem is that when circumstances change, our "efficient" brains keep trying to do things the same old way. In "AdaptAbility, " Ryan provides strategies to retrain your brain and optimize your response to change, step by step: by first accepting the new reality, then expanding your options, and finally, taking effective action. She offers cutting-edge tools for becoming calmer, less fearful, and more flexible, creative, and resourceful in your thinking. Best of all, as your "adapt-ability" increases, so does your confidence that you will be able to face whatever life sends your way and find new ways to flourish. M. J. Ryan, internationally recognized as a leading change expert, is one of the creators of the "New York Times" bestselling Random Acts of Kindness series and the author of "This Year I Will . . ., The Happiness Makeover, The Power of Patience, Trusting Yourself, "and "Attitudes of Gratitude, " among other books. A member of Professional Thinking Partners, she specializes in coaching individuals and teams around the world. She has appeared on the" Today "show and CNN, and is a contributing editor to "Good Housekeeping "and "Health." She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and daughter. Visit her website at www.mj-ryan.com.
Forty Thousand to One
Ben Petrick - 2012
Over the past year, author and former Major League baseball player Ben Petrick has developed a loyal readership for his stories about his remarkable life, beginning with his meteoric rise from prep hero to big-league catcher; to the concealment of his stunning Parkinson's diagnosis after his rookie season; to his return home to a very private life with his wife and daughter; and finally to his decision to undergo a highly risk procedure to lessen his symptoms — not once, but twice.
Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
Katherine May - 2020
These periods of dislocation can be lonely and unexpected. For May, her husband fell ill, her son stopped attending school, and her own medical issues led her to leave a demanding job. Wintering explores how she not only endured this painful time, but embraced the singular opportunities it offered.A moving personal narrative shot through with lessons from literature, mythology, and the natural world, May’s story offers instruction on the transformative power of rest and retreat. Illumination emerges from many sources: solstice celebrations and dormice hibernation, C.S. Lewis and Sylvia Plath, swimming in icy waters and sailing arctic seas.Ultimately Wintering invites us to change how we relate to our own fallow times. May models an active acceptance of sadness and finds nourishment in deep retreat, joy in the hushed beauty of winter, and encouragement in understanding life as cyclical, not linear. A secular mystic, May forms a guiding philosophy for transforming the hardships that arise before the ushering in of a new season.
Insane Energy for Lazy People: A Complete System for Becoming Incredibly Energetic
Andrii Sedniev - 2018
It is based on 10 years of research and experiments to figure out what can increase the personal energy of an average lazy person several times. Elements of this system are used by the most energetic people in the world including entrepreneurs, athletes and children. You will gain numerous insights and learn energy techniques accompanied by engaging stories, scientific researches and real-life examples. The concepts of the system are aimed at changing your mindset, maximizing your personal energy and increasing the amount of happy moments in your life. Once you become more energetic you may feel like you have a jet engine inside and can accomplish within a day more than an average person can within a week.
The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work
Shawn Achor - 2010
If we can just find that great job, win that next promotion, lose those five pounds, happiness will follow. But recent discoveries in the field of positive psychology have shown that this formula is actually backward: Happiness fuels success, not the other way around. When we are positive, our brains become more engaged, creative, motivated, energetic, resilient, and productive at work. This isn’t just an empty mantra. This discovery has been repeatedly borne out by rigorous research in psychology and neuroscience, management studies, and the bottom lines of organizations around the globe. In The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor, who spent over a decade living, researching, and lecturing at Harvard University, draws on his own research—including one of the largest studies of happiness and potential at Harvard and others at companies like UBS and KPMG—to fix this broken formula. Using stories and case studies from his work with thousands of Fortune 500 executives in 42 countries, Achor explains how we can reprogram our brains to become more positive in order to gain a competitive edge at work. Isolating seven practical, actionable principles that have been tried and tested everywhere from classrooms to boardrooms, stretching from Argentina to Zimbabwe, he shows us how we can capitalize on the Happiness Advantage to improve our performance and maximize our potential. Among the principles he outlines: • The Tetris Effect: how to retrain our brains to spot patterns of possibility, so we can see—and seize—opportunities wherever we look. • The Zorro Circle: how to channel our efforts on small, manageable goals, to gain the leverage to gradually conquer bigger and bigger ones. • Social Investment: how to reap the dividends of investing in one of the greatest predictors of success and happiness—our social support network A must-read for everyone trying to excel in a world of increasing workloads, stress, and negativity, The Happiness Advantage isn’t only about how to become happier at work. It’s about how to reap the benefits of a happier and more positive mind-set to achieve the extraordinary in our work and in our lives.From the Hardcover edition.
Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
Judith Lewis Herman - 1992
In the intervening years, Herman’s volume has changed the way we think about and treat traumatic events and trauma victims. In a new afterword, Herman chronicles the incredible response the book has elicited and explains how the issues surrounding the topic have shifted within the clinical community and the culture at large. Trauma and Recovery brings a new level of understanding to a set of problems usually considered individually. Herman draws on her own cutting-edge research in domestic violence as well as on the vast literature of combat veterans and victims of political terror, to show the parallels between private terrors such as rape and public traumas such as terrorism. The book puts individual experience in a broader political frame, arguing that psychological trauma can be understood only in a social context. Meticulously documented and frequently using the victims’ own words as well as those from classic literary works and prison diaries, Trauma and Recovery is a powerful work that will continue to profoundly impact our thinking.