Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic


Esther Perel - 2006
    She invites us to explore the paradoxical union of domesticity and sexual desire, and explains what it takes to bring lust home.In her 20 years of clinical experience, Perel has treated hundreds of couples whose home lives are empty of passion. They describe relationships that are open and loving, yet sexually dull. What is going on?In this explosively original book, Perel explains that our cultural penchant for equality, togetherness, and absolute candor is antithetical to erotic desire for both men and women. Sexual excitement doesn't always play by the rules of good citizenship. It is politically incorrect. It thrives on power plays, unfair advantages, and the space between self and other. More exciting, playful, even poetic sex is possible, but first we must kick egalitarian ideals and emotional housekeeping out of our bedrooms.While Mating in Captivity shows why the domestic realm can feel like a cage, Perel's take on bedroom dynamics promises to liberate, enchant, and provoke. Flinging the doors open on erotic life and domesticity, she invites us to put the "X" back in sex.©2006 Esther Perel (P)2006 HarperCollins Publishers

Loving Someone with Anxiety: Understanding and Helping Your Partner


Kate N. Thieda - 2013
    If your partner suffers from extreme anxiety, they may have panic attacks, constantly be voicing their worried thoughts, or may not be able to participate in social events because of a fear of social settings. No matter how compassionate you are, you may sometimes feel frustrated, unable to help, and even find your own life restricted—all of which can lead to conflict, resentment, miscommunication, and ultimately, an end to the relationship altogether.Loving Someone with Anxiety is one of the few books written specifically for the partners of people with anxiety disorders. The book is designed not only to aid you in helping your partner cope with anxiety and worry, but also to help you take care of your own needs. Inside, you’ll learn the importance of setting healthy boundaries, limiting codependent behaviors, and why taking over roles that make your partner anxious—such as answering the phone, driving, or doing the grocery shopping because your partner feels too anxious to be in public—can be extremely damaging for the both of you.Codependency in relationships with an anxious partner can lead to resentment, anger, and a sense of helplessness on your side. This book will help you and your partner overcome these negative behaviors, build better communication and a stronger personal connection.Written by a licensed professional counselor who specializes in helping the partners of those with mental illnesses, this book is the resource that you have been looking for to help you understand your anxious partner and keep anxiety from sabotaging your relationship.

The Emotionally Unavailable Man/Woman: A Blueprint for Healing


Patti Henry - 2004
    It details why men become emotionally unavailable and specifies the actions that can be taken by both men and women to realize improvement.The Emotionally Unavailable Man helps men get their "power," stop avoiding difficult situations, calm their partner's anger, learn how to say "No," set and maintain appropriate boundaries, be more effective at work, increase and enhance the sex in their relationship, and feel personal freedom and happiness.It helps women determine if their partner is capable of being emotionally available, decide what they can -- and cannot -- do to help, discover how to lose their anger, exercise mutuality and safety, learn how to recognize and confront their own resistances, restore hope about long-term change, and gain clarity about their future.

The Birth Order Book: Why You Are the Way You Are


Kevin Leman - 1984
    Leman offers readers a fascinating and often funny look at how birth order affects personality, marriage and relationships, parenting style, career, and children.

It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle


Mark Wolynn - 2016
    Anxiety. Chronic Pain. Phobias. Obsessive thoughts. The evidence is compelling: the roots of these difficulties may not reside in our immediate life experience or in chemical imbalances in our brains—but in the lives of our parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents. The latest scientific research, now making headlines, supports what many have long intuited—that traumatic experience can be passed down through generations. It Didn’t Start with You builds on the work of leading experts in post-traumatic stress, including Mount Sinai School of Medicine neuroscientist Rachel Yehuda and psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score. Even if the person who suffered the original trauma has died, or the story has been forgotten or silenced, memory and feelings can live on. These emotional legacies are often hidden, encoded in everything from gene expression to everyday language, and they play a far greater role in our emotional and physical health than has ever before been understood.   As a pioneer in the field of inherited family trauma, Mark Wolynn has worked with individuals and groups on a therapeutic level for over twenty years. It Didn’t Start with You offers a pragmatic and prescriptive guide to his method, the Core Language Approach. Diagnostic self-inventories provide a way to uncover the fears and anxieties conveyed through everyday words, behaviors, and physical symptoms. Techniques for developing a genogram or extended family tree create a map of experiences going back through the generations. And visualization, active imagination, and direct dialogue create pathways to reconnection, integration, and reclaiming life and health. It Didn’t Start With You is a transformative approach to resolving longstanding difficulties that in many cases, traditional therapy, drugs, or other interventions have not had the capacity to touch.

The Emotionally Destructive Marriage: How to Find Your Voice and Reclaim Your Hope


Leslie Vernick - 2013
    Your stomach churns, your heart aches, and the tension in your marriage is making you feel weary and a little crazy. The constant criticism, disrespect, cruelty, deceit, and gross indifference are eroding your confidence and breaking your spirit.       For any woman caught in an emotionally destructive marriage, Leslie Vernick offers a personalized path forward. Based on decades of counseling experience, her intensely practical, biblical advice will show you how to establish boundaries and break free from emotional abuse. Learn to:   ·         identify damaging behaviors ·         gain the skills to respond wisely ·         promote healthy change ·         stay safe ·         understand when, why, and even how to leave ·         recognize that God sees and hates what is happening to you   Trying harder to be a perfect fantasy wife won’t help fix what’s wrong your marriage. Discover instead how you can initiate effective changes to stop the cycle of destruction and restore hope for the future.  “Women in an emotionally abusive marriage do not need another book on how to have a good marriage; those books rub salt in raw wounds. No, they desperately need this book so that they can diagnose just how bad their marriage is and then, with Leslie’s clear expertise, develop a plan that will either begin to turn their marriage around...or give them a wise route of escape.” —Dee Brestin, author of Idol Lies and The Friendships of Women

Not Marked: Finding Hope and Healing after Sexual Abuse


Mary E. DeMuth - 2013
    This isn't theory. Mary has lived it. She's traveled this path and offers a uniquely qualified, insider's view of the healing process.Then, Mary goes deeper because often you're not the only one who has suffered. Her husband, Patrick, comes alongside her and offers insights into how spouses can love a sexual abuse victim toward wholeness, and how this will bring your relationship a whole new level of strength.Not Marked will help you:· Find the courage to share your story maybe for the first time.· Stop comparing your brokenness to others' wholeness.· Understand the specific way God designed you to heal.· Identify safe people to entrust your healing journey to.· Embrace utter honestly about your abuse, even if that means anger toward God. · Discover how prayer helps you move from angst to alleluia.· Find the powerful antidote to bitterness.· Let go of accusatory thought patterns and grasp God's affection for you. · Uncover an ancient pathway to healing.· Live the effervescent life you've longed for but could never quite grasp. You do not have to be forever marked by sexual abuse.You are resilient even if you believe all your strength is gone. You are worthy of being made whole even if you can't believe it's possible. And you are a stunning work of amazingness even though your heart can't even start to grasp that. Yet.This is your time. The moment to start the journey of the unmarked life!For more information on this book, please visit the website: http://www.marydemuth.com/not-marked-...

A Beautiful, Terrible Thing: A Memoir of Marriage and Betrayal


Jen Waite - 2017
    In a raw, first-person account, Waite recounts each heartbreaking discovery, every life-destroying lie, and reveals what happens once the dust finally settles on her demolished marriage.After a disturbing email sparks Waite's suspicion that her husband is having an affair, she tries to uncover the truth and rebuild trust in her marriage. Instead, she finds more lies, infidelity, and betrayal than she could have imagined. Waite obsessively analyzes her relationship, trying to find a single moment from the last five years that isn't part of the long-con of lies and manipulation. With a dual-timeline narrative structure, we see Waite's romance bud, bloom, and wither simultaneously, making the heartbreak and disbelief even more affecting.

Anger: Handling a Powerful Emotion in a Healthy Way


Gary Chapman - 2007
    . . again.Getting angry is easy. Daily irritations, frustrations, and pain poke at us. Feelings of disappointment, hurt, rejection, and embarrassment prod in us. And once the unwieldy cluster of emotions of anger are aroused, our thoughts and actions can feel out of control and impossible to manage.Dr. Gary Chapman, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The 5 Love Languages®, offers helpful-and sometimes surprising-insights into why you get angry and what you can do about it. Using real-life stories and practical principles, Chapman explains how you can channel anger in ways that are healthy and productive. You'll also be equipped to help those you love (including your children) deal with their own anger, as well as effectively deal with those long-simmering feelings of anger toward people in your past.Includes an assessment that will help you discover your personal propensity toward handling anger and how to effectively tame it when it arises.

Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love


Sue Johnson - 2008
    In Hold Me Tight, Dr. Sue Johnson presents Emotionally Focused Therapy to the general public for the first time. Johnson teaches that the way to save and enrich a relationship is to reestablish safe emotional connection and preserve the attachment bond. With this in mind, she focuses on key moments in a relationship-from "Recognizing the Demon Dialogue" to "Revisiting a Rocky Moment" -- and uses them as touch points for seven healing conversations.Through case studies from her practice, illuminating advice, and practical exercises, couples will learn how to nurture their relationships and ensure a lifetime of love.

The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country's Foremost Relationship Expert


John M. Gottman - 1999
    Here is the culmination of his life's work: the seven principles that guide couples on the path toward a harmonious and long-lasting relationship. Packed with practical questionnaires and exercises, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work is the definitive guide for anyone who wants their relationship to attain its highest potential.

Neglected But Undefeated: The Life Of A Boy Who Never Knew A Mother's Love


Jonathan Anthony Burkett - 2007
    One young man going through trials and tribulations, feeling unloved, unwanted, never needed, and unexpected, from a lady that he had finally understood was his true mother. The one he was told loved him the most in the world no matter what she does and says to him. Growing up and feeling like there was and cannot be any future and purpose for him because he felt and was being told that he could die and day to come. For reasons of that he couldn't control his feelings and seizures that were occurring because of the hatred he felt towards him from the one that loved him the most in this world.

No More Bullies: For Those Who Wound or Are Wounded


Frank E. Peretti - 2003
    It's being undersized or oversized or less than beautiful. It's knowing you are vulnerable and that someone is ready to take advantage of your weakness. It's the fraternity you never wanted to join-the fellowship of the wounded spirit. And Frank Peretti is a member, too.In this powerful book, Frank Peretti shares his deeply personal story of growing up different, and the persecution he suffered because of it. And from this reservoir of memories he urges:those being abused to speak up and seek helpthose in authority to take notice- and actionthe "strong" kids to stand up and protect the weak- not prey upon themall of us to stop thinking of abuse as "normal" or as "kids being kids"This groundbreaking work shows how we all - bullies and victims alike - can find both healing and forgiveness from the anguish and torment associated with the growing epidemic of bullying.

Growing Yourself Back Up: Understanding Emotional Regression


John H. Lee - 2001
    . . you feel rage . . . fear . . . sweaty palms . . . unbidden tears . . . you feel like a kid . . .We've all experienced moments when we lose control of a situation and ourselves. Now, in Growing Yourself Back Up, the first book to explain the idea of emotional regression to the general reader, bestselling author John Lee identifies the circumstances that cause these seemingly uncontrollable feelings and shows how they are directly tied to our experience as children.No adult, explains Lee, need ever experience the helpless feelings of childhood again. Here are his proven methods and visualization exercises, developed in his popular workshops, for recognizing, preventing, and diffusing regression in ourselves and others. He teaches, for example, that adults cannot be abandoned, they can only be left; if we're feeling abandoned we're regressing. He also reminds us that no matter how overwhelmed we are, adults always have options; if we believe we don't, we're in a regression.Growing Yourself Back Up will show you how to:* develop strong emotional boundaries and convey them to others* learn the Detour Method that reverses regression* confront without regressing* communicate with the authority figures who push your buttons* minimize regression at family functionsLee offers hope--as well as practical strategies that work--for conquering those childlike feelings of powerlessness that are almost always rooted in regression.

Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself


Melody Beattie - 1986
    The healing touchstone of millions, this modern classic by one of America's best-loved and most inspirational authors holds the key to understanding codependency and to unlocking its stultifying hold on your life.Is someone else's problem your problem? If, like so many others, you've lost sight of your own life in the drama of tending to someone else's, you may be codependent--and you may find yourself in this book--Codependent No More.The healing touchstone of millions, this modern classic by one of America's best-loved and most inspirational authors holds the key to understanding codependency and to unlocking its stultifying hold on your life.With instructive life stories, personal reflections, exercises, and self-tests, Codependent No More is a simple, straightforward, readable map of the perplexing world of codependency--charting the path to freedom and a lifetime of healing, hope, and happiness.Melody Beattie is the author of Beyond Codependency, The Language of Letting Go, Stop Being Mean to Yourself, The Codependent No More Workbook and Playing It by Heart.