Marc Brackett, author of Permission to Feel, knows why. And he knows what we can do. "We have a crisis on our hands, and its victims are our children."Marc Brackett is a professor in Yale University's Child Study Center and founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. In his 25 years as an emotion scientist, he has developed a remarkably effective plan to improve the lives of children and adults - a blueprint for understanding our emotions and using them wisely so that they help, rather than hinder, our success and well-being. The core of his approach is a legacy from his childhood, from an astute uncle who gave him permission to feel. He was the first adult who managed to see Marc, listen to him, and recognize the suffering, bullying, and abuse he'd endured. And that was the beginning of Marc's awareness that what he was going through was temporary. He wasn't alone, he wasn't stuck on a timeline, and he wasn't "wrong" to feel scared, isolated, and angry. Now, best of all, he could do something about it.In the decades since, Marc has led large research teams and raised tens of millions of dollars to investigate the roots of emotional well-being. His prescription for healthy children (and their parents, teachers, and schools) is a system called RULER, a high-impact and fast-effect approach to understanding and mastering emotions that has already transformed the thousands of schools that have adopted it. RULER has been proven to reduce stress and burnout, improve school climate, and enhance academic achievement. This book is the culmination of Marc's development of RULER and his way to share the strategies and skills with readers around the world. It is tested, and it works.This book combines rigor, science, passion and inspiration in equal parts. Too many children and adults are suffering; they are ashamed of their feelings and emotionally unskilled, but they don't have to be. Marc Brackett's life mission is to reverse this course, and this book can show you how.

    Porges’s decades of research. A leading expert in developmental psychophysiology and developmental behavioral neuroscience, Porges is the mind behind the groundbreaking Polyvagal Theory, which has startling implications for the treatment of anxiety, depression, trauma, and autism. Adopted by clinicians around the world, the Polyvagal Theory has provided exciting new insights into the way our autonomic nervous system unconsciously mediates social engagement, trust, and intimacy.

    Night Falls Fast is tragically timely: suicide has become one of the most common killers of Americans between the ages of fifteen and forty-five.An internationally acknowledged authority on depressive illnesses, Dr. Jamison has also known suicide firsthand: after years of struggling with manic-depression, she tried at age twenty-eight to kill herself. Weaving together a historical and scientific exploration of the subject with personal essays on individual suicides, she brings not only her remarkable compassion and literary skill but also all of her knowledge and research to bear on this devastating problem. This is a book that helps us to understand the suicidal mind, to recognize and come to the aid of those at risk, and to comprehend the profound effects on those left behind. It is critical reading for parents, educators, and anyone wanting to understand this tragic epidemic.

    Addressing the task of disciplining children ages 2 through 12 without arguing, yelling, or spanking, this program offers easy-to- follow steps to immediately manage troublesome behaviour with reason, patience, and compassion.

    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.

    But Susan Forward pulls no punches when it comes to those whose deficiencies cripple their children emotionally. Her brisk, unreserved guide to overcoming the stultifying agony of parental manipulation—from power trips to guilt trips and all other killers of self worth—will help deal with the pain of childhood and move beyond the frustrating relationship patterns learned at home.Source: Amazon.com

    Forbes and B. Bryan Post address some of the most pressing and challenging issues faced by parents of children with histories of disrupted attachments. The authors have the ability to strip away the fog surrounding these troubled relationships, exposing the reality of children's reactions and dysregulated responses to the past traumatic experiences that so often underlie their difficulty in making close, affectional bonds. This clarity illuminates their therapeutic intervention in a manner that allows parent and child to hold onto the strategy, as they are caught up in the whirlwind of challenging behavior during the painful process of change. The authors address in detail the child's trauma (often associated with the adoption process), and they also address the painful struggle of the parents when a challenging child exposes the parents' own vulnerabilities to memories that they may have suppressed of their own past experiences. The immense value of this book is the clarity and simplicity of the authors' working model; the price of this clarity is that the hard truth is exposed with such intensity that some may shy away from facing reality and not benefit from their undoubted insights. The psychotherapeutic intervention described by the authors involves clinicians tapping into their own empathic capacities to help children feel supported to such a degree that a direct connection can be forged between the reality of children's traumatic experiences and the parents and/or clinicians being able to tolerate their pain, and so regulate the child's distress down to a manageable level. The recognition that another person can truly understand and tolerate their pain can be a major contribution to the client's therapeutic outcome. This book is an absolute necessity for every parent working through attachment issues, and for every professional (therapist, caseworker, teacher, policy maker, etc.) working with children who exhibit severe acting-out behaviors.

    The Emotionally Absent Mother will help you understand what was missing from your childhood, how this relates to your mother’s own history, and how you can fill the “mother gap” by:Examining the past with compassion for yourself and your motherFinding the child inside of you and learning to mother yourselfOpening to the archetype of the Good MotherAllowing friends and loved ones to provide support, guidance, and other elements of good mothering that you missedThrough reflections, exercises, and clear explanations, psychotherapist Jasmin Lee Cori helps adult sons and daughters heal the wounds left by mothers who failed to provide the essential ingredients that every child needs. She traces perceived personal “defects” back to mothering deficits, relieving self-blame. And, by teaching today’s undermothered adults to cultivate the mothering they missed, she helps them secure a happier future—for themselves and their children.

    From our earliest years, we develop an attachment style that follows us through life, replaying in our daily emotional landscape, our relationships, and how we feel about ourselves. And in the wake of a traumatic event—such as a car accident, severe illness, loss of a loved one, or experience of abuse—that attachment style can deeply influence what happens next. In The Power of Attachment, Dr. Diane Poole Heller, a pioneer in attachment theory and trauma resolution, shows how overwhelming experiences can disrupt our most important connections— with the parts of ourselves within, with the physical world around us, and with others. The good news is that we can restore and reconnect at all levels, regardless of our past. Here, you’ll learn key insights and practices to help you: • Restore the broken connections caused by trauma • Get embodied and grounded in your body • Integrate the parts of yourself that feel wounded and fragmented • Emerge from grief, fear, and powerlessness to regain strength, joy, and resiliency • Reclaim access to your inner resources and spiritual nature "We are fundamentally designed to heal," teaches Dr. Heller. "Even if our childhood is less than ideal, our secure attachment system is biologically programmed in us, and our job is to simply find out what’s interfering with it—and learn what we can do to make those secure tendencies more dominant." With expertise drawn from Dr. Heller’s research, clinical work, and training programs, this book invites you to begin that journey back to wholeness.

    The author uses a single case example to demonstrate how to conceptualize patients according to the cognitive model, plan treatment, conduct an initial session, structure therapy within and across sessions, incorporate homework, and use cognitive and behavioral techniques. Instructors will appreciate the book's emphasis on formulating cases, making decisions within therapy sessions, diagnosing problems in therapy, and using advanced techniques to modify core beliefs and underlying assumptions. Transcripts in every chapter richly illustrate the narrative.

    F. Heller reveal how an understanding of attachment theory-the most advanced relationship science in existence today-can help us find and sustain love. Attachment theory forms the basis for many bestselling books on the parent/child relationship, but there has yet to be an accessible guide to what this fascinating science has to tell us about adult romantic relationships-until now.Attachment theory owes its inception to British psychologist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby, who in the 1950s examined the tremendous impact that our early relationships with our parents or caregivers has on the people we become. Also central to attachment theory is the discovery that our need to be in a close relationship with one or more individuals is embedded in our genes.In Attached, Levine and Heller trace how these evolutionary influences continue to shape who we are in our relationships today. According to attachment theory, every person behaves in relationships in one of three distinct ways:*ANXIOUS people are often preoccupied with their relationships and tend to worry about their partner's ability to love them back.*AVOIDANT people equate intimacy with a loss of independence and constantly try to minimize closeness.*SECURE people feel comfortable with intimacy and are usually warm and loving.Attached guides readers in determining what attachment style they and their mate (or potential mates) follow. It also offers readers a wealth of advice on how to navigate their relationships more wisely given their attachment style and that of their partner. An insightful look at the science behind love, Attached offers readers a road map for building stronger, more fulfilling connections.

    . . that are remarkably fresh and helpful.”—New York Times Book ReviewThe classic groundbreaking book on family therapy by acclaimed experts Augustus Y. Napier, Ph.D., and Carl Whitaker, M.D.This extraordinary book presents scenarios of one family’s therapy experience and explains what underlies each encounter. You will discover the general patterns that are common to all families—stress, polarization and escalation, scapegoating, triangulation, blaming, and the diffusion of identity—and you will gain a vivid understanding of the intriguing field of family therapy.

    They track the clients' associations, fantasies, and signs of psychic conflict, distress, and defenses. Yet while the majority of therapists are trained to notice the appearance and even the movements of the client's body, thoughtful engagement with the client's embodied experience has remained peripheral to traditional therapeutic interventions. Trauma and the Body is a detailed review of research in neuroscience, trauma, dissociation, and attachment theory that points to the need for an integrative mind-body approach to trauma. The premise of this book is that, by adding body-oriented interventions to their repertoire, traditionally trained therapists can increase the depth and efficacy of their clinical work. Sensorimotor psychotherapy is an approach that builds on traditional psychotherapeutic understanding but includes the body as central in the therapeutic field of awareness, using observational skills, theories, and interventions not usually practiced in psychodynamic psychotherapy. By synthesizing bottom-up and top down interventions, the authors combine the best of both worlds to help chronically traumatized clients find resolution and meaning in their lives and develop a new, somatically integrated sense of self.Topics addressed include: Cognitive, emotional, and sensorimotor dimensions of information processing • modulating arousal • dyadic regulation and the body • the orienting response • defensive subsystems • adaptation and action systems • treatment principles • skills for working with the body in present time • developing somatic resources for stabilization • processing

    Having experienced grief from both sides—as both a therapist and as a woman who witnessed the accidental drowning of her beloved partner—Megan writes with deep insight about the unspoken truths of loss, love, and healing. She debunks the culturally prescribed goal of returning to a normal, "happy" life, replacing it with a far healthier middle path, one that invites us to build a life alongside grief rather than seeking to overcome it. On this unabridged audio recording read by the author, Megan offers stories, research, life tips, and creative and mindfulness-based practices to guide us through an experience we all must face. With Megan’s gentle but direct guidance, you’ll learn: • Why well-meaning advice, therapy, and spiritual wisdom so often end up making it harder for people in grief • How challenging the myths of grief—doing away with stages, timetables, and unrealistic ideals about how grief should unfold—allows us to accept it as a mystery to be honored instead of a problem to solve • Practical guidance for managing stress, improving sleep, and decreasing anxiety without trying to "fix" your pain Many people who have suffered a loss feel judged, dismissed, and misunderstood by a culture that wants to "solve" grief. Megan writes, "Grief no more needs a solution than love needs a solution." It’s OK That You’re Not OK is a book for grieving people, those who love them, and all those seeking to love themselves—and each other—better.

    Traditional techniques of play therapy are reviewed for their application to this population. Throughout, numerous therapeutic aids are described to enhance the child's capacity to communicate verbally or symbolically. To help clinicians translate theory into daily practice, the book presents six detailed clinical vignettes that offer step-by-step guidelines for assessment and intervention in different situations of abuse or neglect.