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.

    Their addictions, learning disabilities, or emotional/behavioral issues have brought you to a moment of decision. Heartsick, anxious, and exhausted, questions bounce endlessly around your mind, “Will this work? Was this really necessary? Will she ever forgive me? Can we handle him at home when the time comes?” Dr. Tim Thayne delivers the answers in his groundbreaking book Not by Chance. As an owner/therapist of wilderness and residential programs, Thayne was frustrated when young people made monumental progress, only to return home where things quickly unraveled. His mission became to vastly improve long-term success by crafting and proving a model to coach parents on their power to lead out through full engagement during treatment and management of the transition home. Not by Chance engages readers through solid research, simple exercises, and captivating stories taken from Thayne’s own life and the living rooms of hundreds of American homes. This book serves up concrete tools, hope, confidence, and stamina for families, professionals and mentors. Topics include: • Why good programs work • How to boost—not undermine—treatment • Nine dangers waiting after discharge • How to identify natural mentors for your teen • What to do when the testing begins • When and how to grant back privileges and freedoms • How to ease your young adult’s transition from treatment to independent living • When you know you’ve succeeded If you are even considering out-of-home treatment for your teen, do not gamble with the outcomes. Not by Chance should claim its rightful place on your nightstand.

    Easy access to the Internet and social media has erased the boundaries that protect childhood from the unsavory aspects of adult life. Parents, too, are immersed in the digital world far more deeply than they realize. Whether they are incessantly chatting or texting on their smartphones, or working in front of their computer screens, they are increasingly missing in action from their children's lives. Meanwhile, kids long for more meaningful relationships not only with each other but with the grown-ups in their lives.The benefits of having infinite information at our fingertips are extraordinary, and we are connected more than ever, but as the focus of family has turned to the glow of the screen and quick-twitch communications, parents often feel they are losing control of family life, and worse, the means for meaningful connection with the children they love. As clinical psychologist Catherine Steiner-Adair shows, these chronic distractions can have deep and lasting effects. Children don't need adults constantly, but they do need parents to provide what tech cannot: close, meaningful interactions with family and friends. Drawing on real-life stories from her clinical and consulting work, Steiner-Adair offers insight and advice that can help parents achieve greater understanding, authority, and confidence as they come up against the tech revolution unfolding in their living rooms. With fresh eyes, an open mind and the will to act on what we see and learn, Steiner-Adair argues, we have the opportunity now to nourish our families and protect and prepare our children for meaningful life in a digital age that is here to stay.

    In Silent Souls Weeping, bestselling author and nationally-recognized journalist Jane Clayson Johnson hopes to change the LDS dialogue and cultural stigmas surrounding mental illness. She vulnerably shares her own experience with depression along with the experiences of many other Latter-day Saints, offering support to those suffering and understanding to those loving someone with depression.

    I was tired of being tired, burned out on busy. And, it seemed almost everyone I talked with was in the same boat: longing for connection, meaning, depth, but settling for busy.I am a wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend, neighbor, writer, and I know all too well that settling feeling. But over the course of the last few years, I’ve learned a way to live, marked by grace, love, rest, and play. And it’s changing everything.Present Over Perfect is an invitation to this journey that changed my life. I’ll walk this path with you, a path away from frantic pushing and proving, and toward your essential self, the one you were created to be before you began proving and earning for your worth.Written in Shauna’s warm and vulnerable style, this collection of essays focuses on the most important transformation in her life, and maybe yours too: leaving behind busyness and frantic living and rediscovering the person you were made to be. Present Over Perfect is a hand reaching out, pulling you free from the constant pressure to perform faster, push harder, and produce more, all while maintaining an exhausting image of perfection.Shauna offers an honest account of what led her to begin this journey, and a compelling vision for an entirely new way to live: soaked in grace, rest, silence, simplicity, prayer, and connection with the people that matter most to us.In these pages, you’ll be invited to consider the landscape of your own life, and what it might look like to leave behind the pressure to be perfect and begin the life-changing practice of simply being present, in the middle of the mess and the ordinariness of life.

    She gives her readers even more of what they love about the blog: lots of creative, helpful ideas and advice for moms on a budget along with stories from her own journey to discovering what the Good Life is really all about.

    Five years after he married Kristen, the love of his life, they learn that he has Asperger syndrome. The diagnosis explains David’s ever-growing list of quirks and compulsions, his lifelong propensity to quack and otherwise melt down in social exchanges, and his clinical-strength inflexibility. But it doesn’t make him any easier to live with.Determined to change, David sets out to understand Asperger syndrome and learn to be a better husband—no easy task for a guy whose inability to express himself rivals his two-year-old daughter's, who thinks his responsibility for laundry extends no further than throwing things in (or at) the hamper, and whose autism-spectrum condition makes seeing his wife's point of view a near impossibility.Nevertheless, David devotes himself to improving his marriage with an endearing yet hilarious zeal that involves excessive note-taking, performance reviews, and most of all, the Journal of Best Practices: a collection of hundreds of maxims and hard-won epiphanies that result from self-reflection both comic and painful. They include "Don’t change the radio station when she's singing along," "Apologies do not count when you shout them," and "Be her friend, first and always." Guided by the Journal of Best Practices, David transforms himself over the course of two years from the world’s most trying husband to the husband who tries the hardest, the husband he’d always meant to be.Filled with humor and surprising wisdom, The Journal of Best Practices is a candid story of ruthless self-improvement, a unique window into living with an autism-spectrum condition, and proof that a true heart can conquer all.

    A boundary is a personal property line that marks those things for which we are responsible. In other words, boundaries define who we are and who we are not. Boundaries impact all areas of our lives: Physical boundaries help us determine who may touch us and under what circumstances -- Mental boundaries give us the freedom to have our own thoughts and opinions -- Emotional boundaries help us to deal with our own emotions and disengage from the harmful, manipulative emotions of others -- Spiritual boundaries help us to distinguish God's will from our own and give us renewed awe for our Creator -- Often, Christians focus so much on being loving and unselfish that they forget their own limits and limitations. When confronted with their lack of boundaries, they ask: - Can I set limits and still be a loving person? - What are legitimate boundaries? - What if someone is upset or hurt by my boundaries? - How do I answer someone who wants my time, love, energy, or money? - Aren't boundaries selfish? - Why do I feel guilty or afraid when I consider setting boundaries? Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend offer biblically-based answers to these and other tough questions, showing us how to set healthy boundaries with our parents, spouses, children, friends, co-workers, and even ourselves.

    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.

    He uses fascinating, inspiring stories from his practice to help readers uncover the hidden stresses in their own lives and learn about treatments.

    This was a girl who succeeded at everything she tried, and who was only getting started.But when Maddy began her long-awaited college career, her parents noticed something changed. Previously indefatigable Maddy became withdrawn, and her thoughts centered on how she could change her life. In spite of thousands of hours of practice and study, she contemplated transferring from the school that had once been her dream. When Maddy's dad, Jim, dropped her off for the first day of spring semester, she held him a second longer than usual. That would be the last time Jim would see his daughter.What Made Maddy Run began as a piece that Kate Fagan, a columnist for espnW, wrote about Maddy's life. What started as a profile of a successful young athlete whose life ended in suicide became so much larger when Fagan started to hear from other college athletes also struggling with mental illness. This is the story of Maddy Holleran's life, and her struggle with depression, which also reveals the mounting pressures young people, and college athletes in particular, face to be perfect, especially in an age of relentless connectivity and social media saturation.

    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.

    The parent has become unavailable, the teen responds in kind, and a negative, often destructive cycle of communication begins. Well, the truth of the matter is, you can physically be right next to someone and still not really be available to them. If you need them to be something they’re not, if you are harsh, criticizing and judging, if your anxiety is center stage, then you are not truly available.The available parent of a teenager is open to discussion, offering advice and problem-solving, but not insisting on it. He allows his child to make some mistakes, setting limits, primarily where health and safety are concerned. He never lectures – he is available but not controlling. The available parent is self-aware, and keeps his own emotions in check when dealing with his teen. He is unconditionally loving and accepting, and open to new and different ways of thinking. As such, he is neither cruel nor dismissive, ever. The available parent is

    I bump along, in fits and starts, on a perpetual path to finding better ways for me and my mate, Anxiety, to get around. It's everything I do.Sarah Wilson—bestselling author and entrepreneur, intrepid solver of problems and investigator of how to live a better life—has helped over 1.2 million people across the world to quit sugar. She has also been an anxiety sufferer her whole life.In her new book, she directs her intense focus and fierce investigatory skills onto this lifetime companion of hers, looking at the triggers and treatments, the fashions and fads. She reads widely and interviews fellow sufferers, mental health experts, philosophers, and even the Dalai Lama, processing all she learns through the prism her own experiences.Sarah pulls at the thread of accepted definitions of anxiety, and unravels the notion that it is a difficult, dangerous disease that must be medicated into submission. Ultimately, she re-frames anxiety as a spiritual quest rather than a burdensome affliction, a state of yearning that will lead us closer to what really matters.Practical and poetic, wise and funny, this is a small book with a big heart. It will encourage the myriad sufferers of the world's most common mental illness to feel not just better about their condition, but delighted by the possibilities it offers for a richer, fuller life.

    Caroline's revelation will change the way you think. This book is the owner's manual for how our brains work."--Matthew and Laurie Crouch, Trinity Broadcasting Network"Caroline Leaf has given us a real jewel, translating modern brain science into language accessible to everyone."--David I. Levy, MD, neurosurgeon, author of Gray Matter"[Caroline] explains how our choices work scientifically, but in a practical way that makes something that is really hard to do much easier and more tangible."--Christine Caine, founder of the A21 Campaign; director of Equip and Empower Ministries; author of Undaunted"We encourage you to act on the wisdom found in Switch On Your Brain and begin the incredible journey of thinking God's way."--Robert and Debbie Morris, pastors of Gateway Church; authors of The Blessed Life, The Blessed Marriage, and The Blessed Woman"Dr. Leaf's teaching is not only life changing but life saving as it makes the renewing of the mind so real. I am so very grateful for the wisdom contained within these pages."--Darlene Zschech, singer-songwriter; author of The Art of Mentoring"Each of us is full of untapped potential when it comes to our ability to think and process our way through life. I pray that Caroline's years of research and passion in this realm of unfolding science will be a blessing to you."--Bobbie Houston, senior pastor, Hillsong Church