With easy-to-understand explanations, the first part teaches you about the unconscious mind and the role of psychological defenses in excluding difficult feelings from awareness. Individual chapters in the longer middle section explore the primary defense mechanisms one by one, with exercises to help you identify your own defenses at work. The final part offers guidance for how to "disarm" your defenses and cope more effectively with the unconscious feelings behind them. Psychological defense mechanisms are an inevitable and necessary part of the human experience; but when they become too pervasive or deeply entrenched, they may damage our personal relationships, restrict or distort our emotional lives and prevent us from behaving in ways that promote lasting self-esteem.

    "Because if you were, it would give all of us so much hope."Over the years, DBT had saved the lives of countless people fighting depression and suicidal thoughts, but Linehan had never revealed that her pioneering work was inspired by her own desperate struggles as a young woman. Only when she received this question did she finally decide to tell her story.In this remarkable and inspiring memoir, Linehan describes how, when she was eighteen years old, she began an abrupt downward spiral from popular teenager to suicidal young woman. After several miserable years in a psychiatric institute, Linehan made a vow that if she could get out of emotional hell, she would try to find a way to help others get out of hell too, and to build a life worth living. She went on to put herself through night school and college, living at a YWCA and often scraping together spare change to buy food. She went on to get her PhD in psychology, specializing in behavior therapy. In the 1980s, she achieved a breakthrough when she developed Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, a therapeutic approach that combines acceptance of the self and ways to change. Linehan included mindfulness as a key component in therapy treatment, along with original and specific life-skill techniques. She says, You can't think yourself into new ways of acting; you can only act yourself into new ways of thinking.Throughout her extraordinary scientific career, Marsha Linehan remained a woman of deep spirituality. Her powerful and moving story is one of faith and perseverance. Linehan shows, in Building a Life Worth Living, how the principles of DBT really work--and how, using her life skills and techniques, people can build lives worth living.

    Are you on a journey of personal development which is being held back by your emotional issues? This cutting-edge technique can help you release your emotional baggage so that you can return to joy.

    How is it possible to recover? Do those abused always go on to hurt others? This incredible bestseller has overturned the way we view trauma, by showing how the extraordinary power of resilience can heal damaged lives.Renowned psychoanalyst Boris Cyrulnik has dealt with many young victims of distress and he relates stories of children who have been abused, orphaned, fought in wars and escaped genocide, yet who have not only survived, but grown in the face of adversity. By the way we deal with our memories and emotions, he shows, we can reshape our lives and transform pain into something stronger - just as a grain of sand in an oyster becomes a pearl.Resilience is not just about resisting; it is about learning to live. This life-changing book points the way towards hope and happiness.

    Lieberman traces the field from its birth as a mystic pseudo-science through its adolescence as a cult of "shrinks" to its late blooming maturity — beginning after World War II — as a science-driven profession that saves lives. With fascinating case studies and portraits of the luminaries of the field — from Sigmund Freud to Eric Kandel — Shrinks is a gripping and illuminating read, and an urgent call-to-arms to dispel the stigma of mental illnesses by treating them as diseases rather than unfortunate states of mind.“A lucid popular history...At once skeptical and triumphalist. It shows just how far psychiatry has come.” —Julia M. Klein, Boston Globe

    It is designed to help them understand how the disorder affects their loved ones and recognize what they can do to get off the emotional roller coasters and take care of themselves.

    But it was only when his own son-in the throes of a manic episode-broke into a neighbor's house that he learned what happens to mentally ill people who break a law. This is the Earley family's compelling story, a troubling look at bureaucratic apathy and the countless thousands who suffer confinement instead of care, brutal conditions instead of treatment, in the "revolving doors" between hospital and jail. With mass deinstitutionalization, large numbers of state mental patients are homeless or in jail-an experience little better than the horrors of a century ago. Earley takes us directly into that experience-and into that of a father and award-winning journalist trying to fight for a better way.

    They understood that human questions demand human answers and that without understanding what it means to be human, there are no answers.Through the biographies and theories of luminaries ranging from Sigmund Freud to Erich Fromm, Frank Tallis show us how to think about companionship and parenting, identity and aging, and much more. Accessible yet erudite, The Act of Living is essential reading for anyone seeking answers to life's biggest questions.

    In Letters to a Young Therapist, Dr. Pipher shares what she has learned in thirty years as a therapist, helping warring families, alienated adolescents, and harried professionals restore peace and beauty to their lives. Letters to a Young Therapist gives voice to her practice with an exhilarating mix of storytelling and sharp-eyed observation. And while her letters are addressed to an imagined young therapist, every one of us can take something away from them. Long before "positive psychology" became a buzzword, Dr. Pipher practiced a refreshingly inventive therapy--fiercely optimistic, free of dogma or psychobabble, and laced with generous warmth and practical common sense. But not until now has this gifted healer described her unique perspective on how therapy can help us revitalize our emotional landscape in an increasingly stressful world. Whether she's recommending daily swims for a sluggish teenager, encouraging a timid husband to become bolder, or simply bearing witness to a bereaved parent's sorrow, Dr. Pipher's compassion and insight shine from every page of this thoughtful and engaging book.

    Unemploment and isolation as a result of the pandemic can fuel these negative feelings. Darlene Lancer's book offers help for this particularly hard time.Learn how to heal from the destructive hold of shame and codependency by implementing eight steps that will empower the real you and lead to healthier relationships. Shame: the torment you feel when you’re exposed, humiliated, or rejected; the feeling of not being good enough. It’s a deeply painful and universal emotion, yet is not frequently discussed. For some, shame lurks in the unconscious, undermining self-esteem, destroying confidence, and leading to codependency. These codependent relationships--where we overlook our own needs and desires as we try to care for, protect, or please another--often cover up abuse, addiction, or other harmful behaviors. Shame and codependency feed off one another, making us feel stuck, never able to let go, move on, and become the true self we were meant to be. In Conquering Shame and Codependency, Darlene Lancer sheds new light on shame: how codependents’ feelings and beliefs about shame affect their identity, their behavior, and how shame can corrode relationships, destroying trust and love. She then provides eight steps to heal from shame, learn to love yourself, and develop healthy relationships.

    Bowen’s persistent inquiry and devotion to family observation, in spite of obstacles and frustrations, have resulted in a theory that has radically changed our ways of looking at all behavior.

    Alexander Lowen teaches how the conflict between the ego and the body produces splits in the personality that affects all aspects of an individual's existence. The Betrayal of the Body teaches about the neurotic and schizoid personalities. Chapters include: The Schizoid Disturbance; The Problem of Identity; The Forsaken Body; The Psychology of Desperation; Illusion and Reality; Demons and Monsters. Understanding the importance of healing the mind-body split through the recovery of an emotionally fulfilling mind-body relationship is demonstrated with case studies.

    First published a decade ago, it is still the book that motherless daughters of all ages look to for understanding and comfort and that they press into each other's hands. Building on interviews with hundreds of mother-loss survivors, this life-affirming book is now newly expanded to reflect the author's personal experience with the continued legacy of mother loss; now married and a mother of young children herself, Edelman better understands how the effects of mother loss change over time and in light of new relationships. A work of stunning courage and honesty, Motherless Daughters is a must read for the millions of women whose mothers have gone, but whose need for healing, mourning, and mothering remains. It is a timeless classic.

    Exploring how individuals come to have this shortcoming, why you get drawn into their perilous orbit, and what you can do to break free, Hotchkiss describes the "Seven Deadly Sins of Narcissism" and their origins. You will learn to recognize these hallmarks of unhealthy narcissism -- Shamelessness, Magical Thinking, Arrogance, Envy, Entitlement, Exploitation, Bad Boundaries -- and to understand the roles that parenting and culture play in their creation. Whether the narcissist in question is a coworker, spouse, parent, or child, Why Is It Always About You? provides abundant practical advice for anyone struggling to break narcissism's insidious spread to the next generation, and for anyone who encounters narcissists in everyday life.

    Brave Girl Eating is an intimate, shocking, compelling, and ultimately uplifting look at the ravages of a mental illness that affects more than 18 million Americans.