I'm OK - You're OK


Thomas A. Harris - 1967
    “Happy childhood” notwithstanding, says Harris, most of us are living out the not ok feelings of a defenseless child wholly dependent on ok others (parents) for stroking and caring. At some stage early in our lives we adopt a “position” about ourselves which very significantly determines how we feel about ourselves, particularly in relation to other people. And for a huge portion of the population, that position is that I’m Not OK-You’re OK. This negative Life Position, shared by successful and unsuccessful people alike, contaminates our rational adult potential, leaving us vulnerable to the inappropriate, emotional reactions of our child and the uncritically learned behavior programmed into our parent. By exploring the four basic “life positions,” we can radically change our lives.

The Mindfulness Solution for Intense Emotions: Take Control of Borderline Personality Disorder with DBT


Cedar R. Koons - 2016
    If you suffer from intense emotions, you are not alone. Millions of Americans are diagnosed with emotion regulation disorders, such as borderline personality disorder (BPD) and other comorbid conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and severe depression. Developed by Marsha Linehan, DBT is a clinically proven, evidence-based treatment for intense emotions that can help you start feeling better right away. This is the first consumer-friendly book to offer Linehan’s new mindfulness skills to help you take control of your emotions, once and for all.In this book, you’ll learn seven powerful skills that highlight the unique connection between mindfulness and emotion regulation. Each skill is designed to help you find focus in the present moment, reduce impulsive behavior, and increase a sense of connection to your true self, even during times of extreme stress or difficulty.You can feel calmer, more grounded, and centered. If you’re ready, the mindfulness practices in this book will help you move away from a chaotic, emotion-driven life and cultivate a focused, intentional one.

Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay: A Step-by-Step Guide to Help You Decide Whether to Stay In or Get Out of Your Relationship


Mira Kirshenbaum - 1996
    A careful line of 36 questions and self-analysis techniques designed to get to the heart of relationship and marriage problems.  This straightforward and practical advice is designed for newer and older relationships, and presents a plethora of information and experience in a clear, concise manner.

Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less


Alex Soojung-Kim Pang - 2016
    Rest is something to do when the important things are done-but they are never done. Looking at different forms of rest, from sleep to vacation, Silicon Valley futurist and business consultant Alex Soojung-Kim Pang dispels the myth that the harder we work the better the outcome. He combines rigorous scientific research with a rich array of examples of writers, painters, and thinkers---from Darwin to Stephen King---to challenge our tendency to see work and relaxation as antithetical. "Deliberate rest," as Pang calls it, is the true key to productivity, and will give us more energy, sharper ideas, and a better life. Rest offers a roadmap to rediscovering the importance of rest in our lives, and a convincing argument that we need to relax more if we actually want to get more done.

Emotional Blackmail: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You


Susan Forward - 1997
    Emotional blackmailers know how much we value our relationships with them. They know our vulnerabilities and our deepest secrets. They can be our parents or partners, bosses or coworkers, friends or lovers. And no matter how much they care about us, they use this intimate knowledge to win the pay-off they want: our compliance.In Emotional Blackmail, bestselling author Susan Forward dissects the anatomy of a relationship damaged by manipulation to give blackmail targets the tools they need to fight back. In a clear, no-nonsense style, she outlines the specific steps readers can take, offering checklists, practice scenarios, and concrete communications techniques that will strengthen relationships and break the blackmail cycle for good.

Don't Let Your Emotions Run Your Life: How Dialectical Behavior Therapy Can Put You in Control


Scott E. Spradlin - 2003
    Some people oscillate between over-control and over-expression. Others stuff or hide their emotions for months before they finally blow their stack and “stand up for them selves” through overly aggressive behaviors. People diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD) for example, are are often emotionally sensitive, and may have problems with emotion dysregulation, but they aren’t the only ones who have trouble with managing emotions—we all do. There have probably been times in each of our lives when we can remember not being in our “right mind.”When we are regularly undone by our emotions, we become victims of damaged relationships, trapped circumstances, self-sabotage, and illness. Don't Let Your Emotions Run Your Life offers help to all of us who want to gain the upper hand on our feelings and our lives. Even high reactors, people disposed to experiencing strong, even overwhelming emotions on a regular basis, will find its strategies easy to use and effective at managing frequent emotional flare-ups.This book develops proven dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) techniques into worksheets, exercises, and assessments that show you how to pay attention to emotions when they arise, assess blocks to controlling them, and overcome them to eliminate overpowering feelings. Learn what emotional triggers exist in your environment and become less judgmental about yourself when you do experience a surge. Avoid or reduce the distress that strong emotions cause you. This workbook teaches you to reduce the impact of painful feelings and increase the effects of positive ones so that you can tolerate life's ongoing stresses and achieve a sense of calm coexistence with your emotions.

The Brain's Way of Healing: Remarkable Discoveries and Recoveries from the Frontiers of Neuroplasticity


Norman Doidge - 2015
    His revolutionary new book shows, for the first time, how the amazing process of neuroplastic healing really works. It describes natural, non-invasive avenues into the brain provided by the forms of energy around us—light, sound, vibration, movement—which pass through our senses and our bodies to awaken the brain’s own healing capacities without producing unpleasant side effects. Doidge explores cases where patients alleviated years of chronic pain or recovered from debilitating strokes or accidents; children on the autistic spectrum or with learning disorders normalizing; symptoms of multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, and cerebral palsy radically improved, and other near-miracle recoveries. And we learn how to vastly reduce the risk of dementia with simple approaches anyone can use. For centuries it was believed that the brain’s complexity prevented recovery from damage or disease. The Brain’s Way of Healing shows that this very sophistication is the source of a unique kind of healing. As he did so lucidly in The Brain That Changes Itself, Doidge uses stories to present cutting-edge science with practical real-world applications, and principles that everyone can apply to improve their brain’s performance and health.

The Way I See It: A Personal Look at Autism & Asperger's


Temple Grandin - 2008
    Temple Grandin's voice of experience is back to give parents and teachers specific, practical advice on helping young people on the autism spectrum. This collection of articles, written from 2000-present as an exclusive column in the national award-winning magazine, Autism Aspergers Digest, offers Temples invaluable personal and professional insights, from inside the world of autism, about autism. Temple voices her views on a wide variety of topics ranging from the nonverbal child to social functioning, early intervention to adult issues. The articles have been updated and Temple has added fresh commentary on the topics.

Undoing Depression: What Therapy Doesn't Teach You and Medication Can't Give You


Richard O'Connor - 1997
    This refreshingly sensible book teaches how to replace depressive patterns of thinking, relating, and behaving with a new and more effective set of skills.

If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him: The Pilgrimage Of Psychotherapy Patients


Sheldon B. Kopp - 1972
    Explore the true nature of the therapeutic relationship, and realize that the guru is no Buddha. He is just another human struggling. Understanding the shape of your own personal ills will lead you on your journey to recovery. Sheldon Kopp has a realistic approach to altering one's destiny and accepting the responsibility that grows with freedom.

The Anxiety Toolkit: Strategies for Fine-Tuning Your Mind and Moving Past Your Stuck Points


Alice Boyes - 2015
    The good news: while reducing your anxiety level to zero isn't possible or useful (anxiety can actually be helpful!), you can learn to successfully manage symptoms - such as excessive rumination, hesitation, fear of criticism and paralysing perfection.In The Anxiety Toolkit, Dr. Alice Boyes translates powerful, evidence-based tools used in therapy clinics into tips and tricks you can employ in everyday life. Whether you have an anxiety disorder, or are just anxiety-prone by nature, you'll discover how anxiety works, strategies to help you cope with common anxiety 'stuck' points and a confidence that - anxious or not - you have all the tools you need to succeed in life and work.

Mindfulness for Two: An Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Approach to Mindfulness in Psychotherapy


Kelly G. Wilson - 2009
    You can learn to skillfully conceptualize cases and structure interventions for your clients. You can have every skill and advantage as a therapist, but if you want to make the most of every session, both you and your client need to show up in the therapy room. Really show up. And this kind of mindful presence can be a lot harder than it sounds.Mindfulness for Two is a practical and theoretical guide to the role mindfulness plays in psychotherapy, specifically acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). In the book, author Kelly Wilson carefully defines mindfulness from an ACT perspective and explores its relationship to the six ACT processes and to the therapeutic relationship itself. With unprecedented clarity, he explains the principles that anchor the ACT model to basic behavioral science. The latter half of the book is a practical guide to observing and fostering mindfulness in your clients and in yourself-good advice you can put to use in your practice right away. Wilson, coauthor of the seminal Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, guides you through this sometimes-challenging material with the clarity, humor, and warmth for which he is known around the world. More than any other resource available, Mindfulness for Two gets at the heart of Wilson's unique brand of experiential ACT training.The book includes a DVD-ROM with more than six hours of sample therapy sessions with a variety of therapists on QuickTime video, DRM-free audio tracks of Wilson leading guided mindfulness exercises, and more. To find out more, please visit www.mindfulnessfortwo.com.

Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression - and the Unexpected Solutions


Johann Hari - 2018
    He was told—like his entire generation—that his problem was caused by a chemical imbalance in his brain. As an adult, trained in the social sciences, he began to investigate this question—and he learned that almost everything we have been told about depression and anxiety is wrong. Across the world, Hari discovered social scientists who were uncovering the real causes—and they are mostly not in our brains, but in the way we live today. Hari’s journey took him from the people living in the tunnels beneath Las Vegas, to an Amish community in Indiana, to an uprising in Berlin—all showing in vivid and dramatic detail these new insights. They lead to solutions radically different from the ones we have been offered up until now.Just as Chasing the Scream transformed the global debate about addiction, with over twenty million views for his TED talk and the animation based on it, Lost Connections will lead us to a very different debate about depression and anxiety—one that shows how, together, we can end this epidemic.

Take Charge of Bipolar Disorder: A 4-Step Plan for You and Your Loved Ones to Manage the Illness and Create Lasting Stability


Julie A. Fast - 2006
    However, only 20% of those with the illness are able to gain long term control over their lives with medication alone. Now, bipolar disorder expert Julie A. Fast, who was diagnosed with the illness at age 31, and specialist John Preston, Psy.D., have developed an effective program that helps readers promote stability, reduce the risk of suicide, increase work ability, decrease health care costs, and improve relationships. The book guides those with bipolar disorder and their loved ones toward a comprehensive personal treatment plan by incorporating:medications and supplementslifestyle changesbehavior modificationsguidelines on assembling an effective support team.By helping readers gather these powerful resources, TAKE CHARGE OF BIPOLAR DISORDER delivers a dynamic program to treat this dangerous, but ultimately manageable illness.

Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It


Ethan Kross - 2021
    Tell a stranger that you talk to yourself, and you're likely to get written off as eccentric. But the truth is that we all have a voice in our head. When we talk to ourselves, we often hope to tap into our inner coach but find our inner critic instead. When we're facing a tough task, our inner coach can buoy us up: Focus--you can do this. But, just as often, our inner critic sinks us entirely: I'm going to fail. They'll all laugh at me. What's the use?In Chatter, acclaimed psychologist Ethan Kross explores the silent conversations we have with ourselves. Interweaving groundbreaking behavioral and brain research from his own lab with real-world case studies--from a pitcher who forgets how to pitch, to a Harvard undergrad negotiating her double life as a spy--Kross explains how these conversations shape our lives, work, and relationships. He warns that giving in to negative and disorienting self-talk--what he calls "chatter"--can tank our health, sink our moods, strain our social connections, and cause us to fold under pressure.But the good news is that we're already equipped with the tools we need to make our inner voice work in our favor. These tools are often hidden in plain sight--in the words we use to think about ourselves, the technologies we embrace, the diaries we keep in our drawers, the conversations we have with our loved ones, and the cultures we create in our schools and workplaces.Brilliantly argued, expertly researched, and filled with compelling stories, Chatter gives us the power to change the most important conversation we have each day: the one we have with ourselves.