The Myth of Closure: Ambiguous Loss in a Time of Pandemic and Change


Pauline Boss - 2021
    In this book, pioneering therapist Pauline Boss identifies these vague feelings of distress as caused by ambiguous loss, losses that remain unclear and hard to pin down, and thus have no closure. Collectively the world is grieving as the pandemic continues to change our everyday lives.With a loss of trust in the world as a safe place, a loss of certainty about health care, education, employment, lingering anxieties plague many of us, even as parts of the world are opening back up again. Yet after so much loss, our search must be for a sense of meaning, and not something as elusive and impossible as "closure."This book provides many strategies for coping: encouraging us to increase our tolerance of ambiguity and acknowledging our resilience as we express a normal grief, and still look to the future with hope and possibility.

Toxic Coworkers: How to Deal with Dysfunctional People on the Job


Alan A. Cavaiola - 2000
    As it happens, those of us who concluded “the guy’s just nuts” were right: a fair number of those impossible-to-get-along-with employees actually do have full-fledged personality disorders. In Toxic Coworkers, the authors help us to recognize a variety of common personality traits and disorders, understand how they come about, and learn to develop effective strategies for dealing with them. So the next time the narcissist who runs the front desk is bugging you, or you need to squeeze a favor out of the schizoid who handles inventory, you’ll know exactly what to do.

The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters


Priya Parker - 2018
    If we can understand what makes these gatherings effective and memorable, then we can reframe and redirect them to benefit everyone, host and guest alike. Parker defines a gathering as three or more people who come together for a specific purpose. When we understand why we gather, she says -- to acknowledge, to learn, to challenge, to change -- we learn how to organize gatherings that are relevant and memorable: from an effective business meeting to a thought-provoking conference; from a joyful wedding to a unifying family dinner. Drawing on her experience as a strategic facilitator who's worked with such organizations as the World Economic Forum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the retail company Fresh, Parker explains how ordinary people can create remarkable occasions, large and small. In dozens of fascinating examples, she breaks down the alchemy of these experiences to show what goes into the good ones and demonstrates how we can learn to incorporate those elements into all of our gatherings. The result is a book that's both journey and guide, full of big ideas with real-world applications that will change the way you look at a business meeting, a parent-teacher conference, and a backyard barbecue.

Lifetypes


Sandra Krebs Hirsh - 1989
    Based on the Myers-Briggs personality test, this guide will help readers develop a complete, accurate psychological self-portrait and show them how to achieve success in life.

Lonely: A Memoir


Emily White - 2010
    In the vein of popular favorites such as Girl, Interrupted and Manic, Lonely approaches loneliness in the way that Andrew Soloman’s The Noonday Demon approached depression, and lifts the veil on a mostly ignored population who often suffer their disorder in silence.

Widow to Widow: Thoughtful, Practical Ideas for Rebuilding Your Life


Genevieve Davis Ginsburg - 1997
    From learning to travel and eat alone to creating new routines to surviving the holidays and anniversaries that reopen emotional wounds, Ginsburg give guidance on:Dealing with anger and guiltMaintaining family relationshipsDating after widowhoodHandling moneyResponding to others' supportAnd moreWidow to Widow walks readers through the challenges of widowhood and encourages them on their path to building a new life.

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 Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life


Joseph E. LeDoux - 1996
    The Emotional Brain investigates the origins of human emotions and explains that many exist as part of complex neural systems that evolved to enable us to survive.

The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence


Gavin de Becker - 1996
    The new nanny gives a mother an uneasy feeling. A stranger in a deserted parking lot offers unsolicited help. The threat of violence surrounds us every day. But we can protect ourselves, by learning to trust—and act on—our gut instincts.In this empowering book, Gavin de Becker, the man Oprah Winfrey calls the nation's leading expert on violent behavior, shows you how to spot even subtle signs of danger—before it's too late. Shattering the myth that most violent acts are unpredictable, de Becker, whose clients include top Hollywood stars and government agencies, offers specific ways to protect yourself and those you love, including how to act when approached by a stranger, when you should fear someone close to you, what to do if you are being stalked, how to uncover the source of anonymous threats or phone calls, the biggest mistake you can make with a threatening person, and more. Learn to spot the danger signals others miss. It might just save your life.

The Anatomy of Peace: Resolving the Heart of Conflict


The Arbinger Institute - 2015
    The Anatomy of Peace asks, What if conflicts at home, conflicts at work, and conflicts in the world stem from the same root cause? What if we systematically misunderstand that cause? And what if, as a result, we unwittingly perpetuate the very problems we think we are trying to solve? Through an intriguing story we learn how and why we contribute to the divisions and problems we blame on others and the surprising way that these problems can be solved. Yusuf al-Falah, an Arab, and Avi Rozen, a Jew, each lost his father at the hands of the other's ethnic cousins. The Anatomy of Peace is the story of how they came together, how they help warring parents and children come together, and how we too can find our way out of the struggles that weigh us down. This second edition includes new sections enabling readers to go deeper into the book's key concepts; access to free digital study and discussion guides; and information about The Reconciliation Project, a highly successful global peace initiative based on concepts in The Anatomy of Peace.

I Don't Know: In Praise of Admitting Ignorance (Except When You Shouldn't)


Leah Hager Cohen - 2013
    Weaving entertaining, anecdotal reporting with eye-opening research, she considers both the ramifications of and alternatives to this ubiquitous habit in arenas as varied as education, finance, medicine, politics, warfare, trial courts, and climate change. But it’s more than just encouraging readers to confess their ignorance—Cohen proposes that we have much to gain by embracing uncertainty. Three little words can in fact liberate and empower, and increase the possibilities for true communication. So much becomes possible when we honor doubt.