Gleaned from Pema Chdrn's best-selling books, these passages explore topics of loving-kindness, mindfulness, "nowness," letting go, and working with painful emotions. They also offer meditation instructions for heightening awareness and overcoming habitual patterns that block happiness. By the end of the cycle of teachings, the listener will have completed the basic training for becoming a "warrior-bodhisattva," one who courageously takes up the path of awakening compassion.

    The DSM is the bible of psychiatry; the go-to place to find out who is sick and who is not. Because it will radically stretch the boundaries of what is and what is not a psychiatric illness, DSM 5 will dramatically change how lives are lived. Under DSM 5's new definitions, millions of people now considered normal will be diagnosed as mentally ill, causing unnecessary, costly, and sometimes dangerous treatments for misidentified 'patients' who don't really need them.Will the DSM 5 destroy what is considered normal?Frances argues that DSM 5 offers a radical and reckless set of proposals that will overnight turn 'normal' people into 'mental patients'. Everyday aches, pains, disappointments, stresses, and existential sufferings are being reframed as mental illnesses with such exuberance that it is getting hard for anyone to get through life without a psychiatric diagnosis. Is grief a useful, inevitable and poignant sign of a broken heart or is it Major Depressive Disorder? Are temper tantrums a normal part of childhood or a sign of mental illness? Are you nervous about an upcoming presentation or job interview or do you have Mixed Anxiety Depression? If you don't remember a face or a fact once in a while, do you have Dementia?Frances maintains we all have psychiatric symptoms from time to time, but this doesn't mean we are all flirting with mental illness. Whenever we arbitrarily add a new 'disease', we subtract from what previously was 'normal' and lose something of ourselves in the process. Not all human suffering can or should be labeled and treated away. The grief and sorrows, the stresses, the disappointments, the aches and pains, the slings and arrows, the innate and acquired inequalities, the set-backs, the stumbles, the emotional gut-shots; this is part of life and of living in a complex and not always fair society- they should not all to be explained away as psychiatric disease.

    In this concise book, you will learn how to do Motivational Interviewing (MI), the evidence-based, client-centered counseling approach that has demonstrated effectiveness for a range of psychological, behavioral, and health related issues. Rather than the counselor arguing for the client to change, the MI approach helps elicit client's own arguments for behavior change. Some of the topics covered include: how to prepare for an MI session, how to assess your client's motivation using two simple questions, how to ask powerful, strategic questions that move a client toward healthy behavior change, how to handle "resistance" or discord in the therapeutic relationship, and how to give information and advice in the MI consistent way that is acceptable to the client. The author, an experienced psychologist, psychotherapist, public speaker, and MI instructor, shows how simple counseling techniques, taught in any beginning counseling class, can be powerful when used strategically to tap into cliients' own motivation. Anyone who works with people including doctors, nurses, psychologists, addiction counselors, social workers, case managers, family advocates, lay counselors, correctional staff, dentists, life coaches, dietitians, nutritional counselors, physical therapists and others would benefit from the information in this book. The second edition updates the information and concepts presented in the first edition based on recently published texts of MI and adds a useful glossary.

    But it was only when his own son-in the throes of a manic episode-broke into a neighbor's house that he learned what happens to mentally ill people who break a law. This is the Earley family's compelling story, a troubling look at bureaucratic apathy and the countless thousands who suffer confinement instead of care, brutal conditions instead of treatment, in the "revolving doors" between hospital and jail. With mass deinstitutionalization, large numbers of state mental patients are homeless or in jail-an experience little better than the horrors of a century ago. Earley takes us directly into that experience-and into that of a father and award-winning journalist trying to fight for a better way.

    It doesn’t take much--just hearing of someone else’s accomplishments, being criticized, getting into an argument, making a mistake at work--to make us feel that we are not okay. Beginning to understand how our lives have become ensnared in this trance of unworthiness is our first step toward reconnecting with who we really are and what it means to live fully. --from Radical AcceptanceRadical Acceptance“Believing that something is wrong with us is a deep and tenacious suffering,” says Tara Brach at the start of this illuminating book. This suffering emerges in crippling self-judgments and conflicts in our relationships, in addictions and perfectionism, in loneliness and overwork--all the forces that keep our lives constricted and unfulfilled. Radical Acceptance offers a path to freedom, including the day-to-day practical guidance developed over Dr. Brach’s twenty years of work with therapy clients and Buddhist students.Writing with great warmth and clarity, Tara Brach brings her teachings alive through personal stories and case histories, fresh interpretations of Buddhist tales, and guided meditations. Step by step, she leads us to trust our innate goodness, showing how we can develop the balance of clear-sightedness and compassion that is the essence of Radical Acceptance. Radical Acceptance does not mean self-indulgence or passivity. Instead it empowers genuine change: healing fear and shame and helping to build loving, authentic relationships. When we stop being at war with ourselves, we are free to live fully every precious moment of our lives.From the Hardcover edition.

    The introduction calls it a conceptual frame around which to organize your data and your impressions . . . a suggested path.

    And yet, this extremely common human experience is so poorly understood. What are we to make of this time-honored taboo—universally forbidden yet universally practiced? Why do people cheat—even those in happy marriages? Why does an affair hurt so much? When we say infidelity, what exactly do we mean? Do our romantic expectations of marriage set us up for betrayal? Is there such a thing as an affair-proof marriage? Is it possible to love more than one person at once? Can an affair ever help a marriage? Perel weaves real-life case stories with incisive psychological and cultural analysis in this fast-paced and compelling book.For the past ten years, Perel has traveled the globe and worked with hundreds of couples who have grappled with infidelity. Betrayal hurts, she writes, but it can be healed. An affair can even be the doorway to a new marriage—with the same person. With the right approach, couples can grow and learn from these tumultuous experiences, together or apart.Affairs, she argues, have a lot to teach us about modern relationships—what we expect, what we think we want, and what we feel entitled to. They offer a unique window into our personal and cultural attitudes about love, lust, and commitment. Through examining illicit love from multiple angles, Perel invites readers into an honest, enlightened, and entertaining exploration of modern marriage in its many variations.Fiercely intelligent, The State of Affairs provides a daring framework for understanding the intricacies of love and desire. As Perel observes, “Love is messy; infidelity more so. But it is also a window, like no other, into the crevices of the human heart.”

    "Lost in the Mirror" takes readers behind the erratic behavior of this puzzling disorder, examining its underlying causes and revealing the unimaginable pain and fear beneath its surface.

    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.

    Co-Creating Change includes clinical vignettes that illustrate hundreds of therapeutic impasses taken from actual sessions, showing how to understand patients and how to intervene effectively. The book provides clear, systematic steps for assessing patients' needs and intervening to develop an effective relationship for change. Co-Creating Change presents an integrative theory that uses elements of behavior therapy, cognitive therapy, emotion-focused therapy, psychoanalysis, and mindfulness. This empirically validated treatment is effective with a wide range of patients.

    Elisabeth Kubler-Ross's groundbreaking On Death and Dying, Susan Anderson's book clearly defines the five phases of a different kind of grieving--grieving over a lost relationship. An experienced professional who has specialized in helping people with loss, heartbreak, and abandonment for more than two decades, Susan Anderson gives this subject the serious attention it deserves. The Journey From Abandonment to Healing is designed to help all victims of emotional breakups--whether they are suffering from a recent loss, or a lingering wound from the past; whether they are caught up in patterns that sabotage their own relationships, or they're in a relationship where they no longer feel loved. From the first stunning blow to starting over, it provides a complete program for abandonment recovery.

    DBT is expressly designed for—and shown to be effective with—clients with serious, multiple problems and a history of treatment failure. The book provides an accessible introduction to DBT while enabling therapists of any orientation to integrate elements of this evidence-based approach into their work with emotionally dysregulated clients. Experienced DBT clinician and trainer Kelly Koerner clearly explains how to formulate individual cases; prioritize treatment goals; and implement a skillfully orchestrated blend of behavioral change strategies, validation strategies, and dialectical strategies.