Food and Loathing: A Life Measured Out in Calories


Betsy Lerner - 2003
     "Alternating between hilarious and heartbreaking" (People), Food and Loathing gives voice to one of the last taboo subjects and greatest stigmas of our time: being overweight. Lerner's revelations on the cult of thinness -- from the dreaded weigh-in at junior high gym class to the effects of inhaling Pepperidge Farm Goldfish at Olympic speeds -- are universally resonant, as is her belief that this is one battle no one should fight alone. Essential reading for anyone who has ever wielded a fork in despair or calculated her self-worth on the morning scale, "Lerner's lament is a triumph" (Publishers Weekly).

How You Can Survive When They're Depressed: Living and Coping with Depression Fallout


Anne Sheffield - 1998
    How You Can Survive When They're Depressed explores depression from the perspective of those who are closest to the sufferers of this prevalent disorder--spouses, parents, children, and lovers--and gives the successful coping strategies of many people who live with a clinical depressive or manic-depressive and often suffer in silence, believing their own problems have no claim to attention.Depression fallout is the emotional toll on the depressive's family and close friends who are unaware of their own stressful reactions and needs. Sheffield outlines the five stages of depression fallout: confusion, self-doubt, demoralization, anger, and finally, the desire to escape. Many people will find relief in the knowledge that their self-blame, guilt, sadness, and resentment are a natural result of living with a depressed person.         Sheffield brings together many real-life examples from the pioneering support group she attends at Beth Israel Medical Center of how people with depression fallout have learned to cope. From setting boundaries to maintaining an outside social life, she gives practical tactics for handling the challenges and emotional stresses on a day-to-day basis.

Smoking Cigarettes, Eating Glass: A Psychologist’s Memoir


Annita Perez Sawyer - 2015
    Discharged in 1966, after finally receiving proper psychiatric care, Sawyer kept her past secret and moved on to graduate from Yale University, raise two children, and become a respected psychotherapist. That is, until 2001, when she reviewed her hospital records and began to remember a broken childhood and the even more broken mental health system of the 1950s and 1960s.

The Gaslight Effect: How to Spot and Survive the Hidden Manipulation Others Use to Control Your Life


Robin Stern - 2007
    You constantly second-guess yourself.2. You wonder, “Am I being too sensitive?” a dozen times a day.3. You wonder frequently if you are a “good enough” girlfriend/wife/employee/friend/daughter.4. You have trouble making simple decisions.5. You think twice before bringing up innocent topics of conversation.6. You frequently make excuses for your partner’s behavior to friends and family.Your husband crosses the line in his flirtations with another woman at a dinner party. When you confront him, he asks you to stop being insecure and controlling. After a long argument, you apologize for giving him a hard time.Your boss backed you on a project when you met privately in his office, and you went full steam ahead. But at a large gathering of staff—including yours—he suddenly changes his tune and publicly criticizes your poor judgment. When you tell him your concerns for how this will affect your authority, he tells you that the project was ill-conceived and you’ll have to be more careful in the future. You begin to question your competence. Your mother belittles your clothes, your job, your friends, and your boyfriend. But instead of fighting back as your friends encourage you to do, you tell them that your mother is often right and that a mature person should be able to take a little criticism. If you think things like this can’t happen to you, think again. Gaslighting is when someone wants you to do what you know you shouldn’t and to believe the unbelieveable. It can happen to you and it probably already has. Gaslighting is an insidious form of emotional abuse and manipulation that is difficult to recognize and even harder to break free from.

Healing Developmental Trauma: How Early Trauma Affects Self-Regulation, Self-Image, and the Capacity for Relationship


Laurence Heller - 2012
    These five core capacities are associated with biologically based core needs that are essential to our physical and emotional well-being: the needs for connection, attunement, trust, autonomy, and love-sexuality. Recognizing these needs as well as five Adaptive Survival Styles set in motion when the core needs are not met early in life, authors Laurence Heller and Aline LaPierre cut through the seeming complexity of life’s problems.   Explaining that an impaired capacity for connection to self and to others and the ensuing diminished aliveness are the hidden dimensions that underlie most psychological and many physiological problems, they introduce the NeuroAffective Relational Model® (NARM), a resource-oriented, psychodynamically informed approach that, while not ignoring a person’s past, emphasizes working in the present moment. NARM uses somatic mindfulness to re-regulate the nervous system and to resolve identity distortions—such as low self-esteem, shame, and chronic self-judgment—caused by developmental and relational trauma. Heller and LaPierre demonstrate how this therapy helps clients establish connection to the parts of self that are organized, coherent and functional, integrating the role of connection on all levels of experience as it affects a person's physiology, psychology, and capacity for relationship.From the Trade Paperback edition.

Treating People Well: The Extraordinary Power of Civility at Work and in Life


Lea Berman - 2018
    Their daily experiences at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue taught them valuable lessons about how to work productively with people from different walks of life and points of view. These Washington insiders share what they’ve learned through first person examples of their own glamorous (and sometimes harrowing) moments with celebrities, foreign leaders and that most unpredictable of animals—the American politician.This book is for you if you feel unsure of yourself in social settings, if you’d like to get along more easily with others, or if you want to break through to a new level of cooperation with your boss and coworkers. They give specific advice for how to exude confidence even when you don’t feel it, ways to establish your reputation as an individual whom people like, trust, and want to help, and lay out the specific social skills still essential to success - despite our increasingly digitized world. Jeremy and Lea prove that social skills are learned behavior that anyone can acquire, and tell the stories of their own unlikely paths to becoming the social arbiters of the White House, while providing tantalizing insights into the character of the first ladies and presidents they served.This is not a book about old school etiquette; they explain the things we all want to know, like how to walk into a roomful of strangers and make friends, what to do about a difficult colleague who makes you dread coming to work each day, and how to navigate the sometimes-treacherous waters of social media in a special chapter on “Virtual Manners.” For lovers of White House history, this is a treasure of never-before-published anecdotes from the authors and their fellow former social secretaries as they describe pearl-clutching moments with presidents and first ladies dating back to the Johnson administration.The authors make a case for the importance of a return to treating people well in American political life, maintaining that democracy cannot be sustained without public civility.Foreword by Laura Bush

Do What You Are : Discover the Perfect Career for You Through the Secrets of Personality Type


Paul D. Tieger - 1992
    Do What You Are introduces Personality Type - how you process information, make decisions and interact with the world around you - and shows you which of the 16 types describes you best. It lists dozens of occupations that are popular with people of your type. Then, using workbook exercises and real-life examples to highlight the strengths and pitfalls of each personality type, it shows you step-by-step how touse your unique strengths to customise your job search,ensuring the best results in the shortest period of time.And if you plan to stay in your job, Do What You Are provides savvy advice for getting the most out of your current career.Every other career guide offers generic, one-size-fits-all advice. But because it is based on personality type, Do What You Are helps you determine what you need to be more successful and satisfied.

Human Magnet Syndrome: Why We Love People Who Hurt Us


Ross Rosenberg - 2013
    However, when Codependents and Emotional Manipulators meet, they are enveloped in a magnetic and seductive "love force," that begins like a fairytale, but later unfolds into a painful "seesaw" of love/pain and hope/disappointment. This book will help the reader make sense of the ubiquitous attraction that affects each and every person who desires to find the romantic partner of their dreams and answers why patient, giving and selfless individuals (Codependents) are predictably attracted to self-centered, selfish and controlling partners (Emotional Manipulators). This unique, fresh and innovative relationship model will explore the traits, symptoms and origins of both Codependency and various Emotional Manipulation Disorders.

Games People Play


Eric Berne - 1964
    More than five million copies later, Dr. Eric Berne’s classic is as astonishing–and revealing–as it was on the day it was first published. This anniversary edition features a new introduction by Dr. James R. Allen, president of the International Transactional Analysis Association, and Kurt Vonnegut’s brilliant Life magazine review from 1965.We play games all the time–sexual games, marital games, power games with our bosses, and competitive games with our friends. Detailing status contests like “Martini” (I know a better way), to lethal couples combat like “If It Weren’t For You” and “Uproar,” to flirtation favorites like “The Stocking Game” and “Let’s You and Him Fight,” Dr. Berne exposes the secret ploys and unconscious maneuvers that rule our intimate lives.Explosive when it first appeared, Games People Play is now widely recognized as the most original and influential popular psychology book of our time. It’s as powerful and eye-opening as ever.

Emotional Intelligence 2.0


Travis Bradberry - 2003
    The book contains proven strategies from a decade-long effort to accurately measure and increase emotional intelligence. Trusted by upper-echelon leaders inside companies worldwide, these strategies will enable you to capitalize on the skills responsible for 58% of performance in all types of jobs.Includes a passcode for online access to the world's bestselling emotional intelligence test, the Emotional Intelligence Appraisal®, which will show you where your EQ stands today and what you can do to begin maximizing it immediately.Rooted in sound research involving more than 500,000 responses, this new edition of the test will:--Pinpoint which of the book's 66 emotional intelligence strategies will increase your EQ the most.--Reveal the specific behaviors responsible for your EQ scores.--Allow you to test yourself a second time to measure how much your EQ has increased from your efforts.The book's smooth narrative style turns rigorous research into memorable stories and practical strategies that anyone can use to his or her advantage.With 90% of top performers high in EQ, and EQ twice as important as IQ in getting where you want to go in life, who can afford to ignore it?What people are saying about it:"Emotional Intelligence 2.0 is a fast read with compelling anecdotes and good context in which to understand and improve your score."--Newsweek"Surveys of 500,000 people on the role of emotions in daily life have enabled the authors to hone EQ assessment to a 28-question online survey that can be completed in seven minutes."--The Washington Post"Read worthy strategies for improving emotional intelligence skills make this our how-to book of the week. It's nice to know that average IQ doesn't limit a person to average performance. And who can resist an online quiz with instant feedback?"--Newsday"Gives abundant, practical findings and insights with emphasis on how to develop EQ. Research shows convincingly that EQ is more important than IQ."--Stephen R. Covey, author, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People"This book can drastically change the way you think about success...read it twice."--Patrick Lencioni, author, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team"At last a book that gives how to's rather than just what to's. We need no more convincing that emotional intelligence is at the core of life success. What we need are practical ways of improving it. Bradberry and Greaves brilliant new book is a godsend. It will change your life."--Joseph Grenny, New York Times bestselling coauthor of Crucial Conversations"Emotional intelligence is an extremely important skill for personal and professional success. This book is excellent and the learning included in the free online test is cutting-edge. I strongly recommend it."--Ken Blanchard, bestselling business book author of all time; coauthor The One Minute Manager®"I distributed the book to my entire team. We found it very helpful in our dealings with each other and our internal customers. With all the new buzzwords over the past few years, the heart and soul of a company's culture is how they support and promote emotional intelligence. Those with foresight see that emotional intelligence will separate the good companies from the great ones. This book is a wonderful tool for a grass roots approach. If your desire is to be a truly resonate leader that people will trust and follow, this is an opportunity that cannot only change your professional career, but also your personal relationships."--Regina Sacha, vice president, human resources, FedEx Custom Critical"In the fast lane of business life today, people spend more time on computer keyboards, blackberries and conference calls than they do in face-to-face communication. We're expected to piece together broken conversations, cryptic voicemails, and abbreviated text messages to figure out how to proceed. In this increasingly complex web, emotional intelligence is more important than ever before. This book is filled with invaluable insights and information that no one can afford to ignore."--Rajeev Peshawaria, executive director, Goldman Sachs International

Strange Situation: A Mother's Journey Into the Science of Attachment


Bethany Saltman - 2020
    . . searingly honest, brazenly fresh, and startlingly rich."--Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday DemonWhen professional researcher and writer Bethany Saltman gave birth to her daughter, Azalea, she loved her deeply but felt as if something was missing. Looking back at her lonely childhood, dangerous teenage years, and love-addicted early adulthood, Saltman thought maybe she was broken.Then she discovered the science of attachment, the field of psychology that explores the question of why--from an evolutionary point of view--love exists between parents and children. Saltman went on a ten-year journey visiting labs, archives, and training sessions, while learning the meaning of "delight" from Mary Ainsworth, one of psychology's most important but unsung researchers, who died in 1999.Saltman went deep into the history and findings from Ainsworth's famous laboratory procedure, the Strange Situation, which, like an X-ray, is still used today by scientists around the world to catch a glimpse of the internal workings of attachment. In this simple twenty-minute procedure, a baby and a caregiver enter an ordinary room with two chairs and some toys. During a series of comings and goings, a trained observer studies the minutiae of the pair's back-and-forth with each other.Through the science of attachment, what Saltman discovered was a radical departure from everything she thought she knew--about love and about her own family, her story, and herself. She was far from broken--she saw that love is too powerful to ever break.Strange Situation is a scientific, lyrical, life-affirming exploration of love. Not only will readers be taken on an emotional ride through one mother's reckoning with her own past and her family's future, but they will also be given the tools with which to better understand their own life histories and their relationships today.

Empty


Susan Burton - 2020
    She just knew she felt her best when she was empty, "like a straw", as she says "something you could blow through."For almost thirty years, Susan Burton has hidden her obsession with food and the secret life of compulsive eating and starving that dominated her adolescence. This is the relentlessly honest, fiercely intelligent story of living with both anorexia and binge-eating disorder, moving past her shame, and learning to tell her secret.When Burton was thirteen, her stable life in suburban Michigan was turned upside down by her parents' abrupt divorce, and she moved to Colorado with her mother and sister. She seized on this move west as an adventure and an opportunity to reinvent herself from middle-school nerd to popular teenage girl. But she hadn't escaped unscathed, and in the fallout from her parents' breakup, an inherited fixation on thinness went from "peculiarity to pathology." She entered into a painful cycle of anorexia and binge eating that formed a subterranean layer to her sunny life. She went from success to success--she went to Yale, scored a dream job at a magazine right out of college, and married her college boyfriend. But in college the compulsive eating got worse--she'd binge, swear it would be the last time, and then, hours later, do it again--and after she graduated she descended into anorexia, her attempt to "quit food."Binge eating is more prevalent than anorexia or bulimia, but there is less research and little storytelling to help us understand it. In tart, soulful prose Susan Burton strikes a blow for the importance of this kind of story; brings to life an indelible cast of characters; and tells an exhilarating story of longing, compulsion and hard-earned self-revelation.

Click: The Magic of Instant Connections


Ori Brafman - 2010
    You meet someone new—at a party or at work—and you just hit it off. There is an instant sense of camaraderie. In a word, you “click.” From the bestselling authors of Sway, Click is a fascinating psychological investigation of the forces behind what makes us click with certain people, or become fully immersed in whatever activity or situation we’re involved in.    From two co-workers who fall head over heels for each other while out to dinner and are married a month later (and fifteen years later remain just as in love), to a team of scientists who changed the world with the magic of their invention, these kinds of peak experiences, when our senses are completely focused on the moment, are something that individuals—and companies—strive to achieve. After all, when you’re in the “zone,” you’re happier and more productive. Why is it that we click in certain situations and with certain people, but not with others? Can this kind of magical connection be consciously encouraged?  Is there a way to create such peak experiences, whether on a date or in your job?   According to Ori and Rom Brafman, there is.  In a powerful, story-driven narrative that weaves together cutting-edge research in psychology and sociology, the Brafmans explore what it means to “click”: the common factors present when our brain and senses are fully engaged. They identify five “accelerators” that increase the likelihood of these kinds of magic connections in our work and relationships.  From actors vying for a role on a popular TV series to police officers negotiating with hostage takers, we learn how one can foster an environment where we can click with another person and shape our thinking, behavior, and emotions.  A fascinating journey into how we engage with the world around us, Click will transform our thinking about those moments when we are in the zone and everything seems to fall into place. Acclaim for Sway:“A provocative new book about the psychological forces that lead us to disregard facts or logic and behave in surprisingly irrational ways.” –New York Times “A unique and compulsively readable look at unseen behavioral trends.” –Fortune"A breathtaking book that will challenge your every thought, Sway hovers above the intersection of Blink and Freakonomics."--Tom Rath, coauthor of the New York Times #1 bestseller How Full Is Your Bucket?“[An] engaging journey through the workings—and failings—of the mind…Their stories of senselessness…are as fascinating as the lessons we learn from them.” –Fast Company"Count me swayed--but in this instance by the pull of entirely rational forces. Ori and Rom Brafman have done a terrific job of illuminating deep-seated tendencies that skew our behavior in ways that can range from silly to deadly. We'd be fools not to learn what they have to teach us."--Robert B. Cialdini, author of New York Times bestseller Influence"If you think you know how you think, you'd better think again! Take this insightful, delightful trip to the sweet spot where economics, psychology, and sociology converge, and you'll discover how our all-too-human minds actually work."--Alan M. Webber, founding editor of Fast Company

Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life


Susan David - 2016
      The path to fulfillment, whether at work or at home, is almost never a straight line. Ask anyone who has achieved their biggest goals or who thrives in their relationships, and you’ll hear stories of many unexpected detours along the way. What separates those who rise to these challenges and those who get derailed? The answer is agility—emotional agility.Emotional agility is a four-step approach that allows us to navigate life’s twists and turns with self-acceptance, clear-sightedness, and an open mind. In her more than twenty years of research, Susan David has found that no matter how intelligent, resilient, or creative people are, when they ignore how situations or interactions make them feel, they miss opportunities to gain insight, getting hooked by thoughts, emotions, and habits that prevent them from reaching their full potential. Emotionally agile people experience the same stresses and setbacks as anyone else, but they know how to adapt, aligning their actions with their values and making small changes that lead to a life of growth.Drawing on her extensive professional research, her international consulting work, and her own experiences growing up in Apartheid-era South Africa and losing her father at a young age, David shows how anyone can become more emotionally agile and thrive in an uncertain world. Written with authority, wit, and empathy, Emotional Agility will help you live your most successful life, whoever you are and whatever you face. Take the FREE Emotional Agility Insights Quiz here: https://bitly.com/ea-quiz

Data, A Love Story: How I Gamed Online Dating to Meet My Match


Amy Webb - 2013
    Most don’t find true love. Thanks to Data, a Love Story, their odds just got a whole lot better. Data, A Love Story: How I Gamed Online Dating to Meet My Match is a lively, thought-provoking memoir about how one woman “gamed” the world of online dating—and met her eventual husband.