Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness: Practices for Safe and Transformative Healing


David A. Treleaven - 2018
    At the same time, trauma remains a fact of life: the majority of us will experience a traumatic event in our lifetime, and up to 20% of us will develop posttraumatic stress. This means that anywhere mindfulness is being practiced, someone in the room is likely to be struggling with trauma.At first glance, this appears to be a good thing: trauma creates stress, and mindfulness is a proven tool for reducing it. But the reality is not so simple.Drawing on a decade of research and clinical experience, psychotherapist and educator David Treleaven shows that mindfulness meditation—practiced without an awareness of trauma—can exacerbate symptoms of traumatic stress. Instructed to pay close, sustained attention to their inner world, survivors can experience flashbacks, dissociation, and even retraumatization.This raises a crucial question for mindfulness teachers, trauma professionals, and survivors everywhere: How can we minimize the potential dangers of mindfulness for survivors while leveraging its powerful benefits?Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness offers answers to this question. Part I provides an insightful and concise review of the histories of mindfulness and trauma, including the way modern neuroscience is shaping our understanding of both. Through grounded scholarship and wide-ranging case examples, Treleaven illustrates the ways mindfulness can help—or hinder—trauma recovery.Part II distills these insights into five key principles for trauma-sensitive mindfulness. Covering the role of attention, arousal, relationship, dissociation, and social context within trauma-informed practice, Treleaven offers 36 specific modifications designed to support survivors’ safety and stability. The result is a groundbreaking and practical approach that empowers those looking to practice mindfulness in a safe, transformative way.

It's OK That You're Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn't Understand


Megan Devine - 2017
    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.

The Fast Metabolism Diet: Lose 20 Pounds in 4 Weeks and Keep It Off Forever by Unleashing Your Body's Natural Fat-Burning Power


Haylie Pomroy - 2013
     On this plan you’re going to eat a lot—three full meals and at least two snacks a day—and you’re still going to lose weight. What you’re not going to do is count a single calorie or fat gram, or go carb-free or ban entire food groups. Instead, you’re going to rotate what you eat throughout each week according to a simple and proven plan carefully designed to induce precise physiological changes that will set your metabolism on fire. In four weeks you’ll not only see the weight fall off, but don’t be surprised to find your cholesterol drop, blood sugar stabilize, energy increase, sleep improve, and stress melt away as well. Complete with four weeks of meal plans and more than fifty recipes—including vegetarian, organic, and gluten-free options—this is the silver bullet for the chronic dieter who has tried every fad diet and failed, for the first-time dieter attempting to boost their metabolism, and for anyone who wants to naturally and safely eat his or her way to a skinnier, healthier self.

Chained to the Desk: A Guidebook for Workaholics, Their Partners and Children, and the Clinicians Who Treat Them


Bryan E. Robinson - 2007
    The man or woman who works eighteen-hour days and eats his or her meals on the run between appointments is usually viewed with a combination of respect and awe. But for many, this lifestyle leads to family problems, a decline in work productivity, and ultimately to physical and mental collapse.Chained to the Desk, best-selling author and widely respected family therapist Bryan E. Robinson's groundbreaking book, originally published in 1998, was the first comprehensive portrait of the workaholic. Thousands benefited from this innovative book, which profiles the myths behind this greatly misunderstood disorder and the inner psychological battle that work addicts wage against themselves. Intended for anyone touched by what Robinson calls "the best-dressed problem of the twenty-first century," the author also provides an inside look into the impact on those who live and work with them --partners, spouses, children, and colleagues--as well as the appropriate techniques for clinicians who treat them.In this new and updated edition, Robinson portrays the many different kinds of workaholism, drawing on hundreds of case reports from his own original research and years of clinical practice. From California to the Carolinas, men and women tell of their agonizing bouts with workaholism and the devastations left in its wake, struggles made all the more challenging in a world where the computer, cell phone, and Blackberry allow twenty-four-hour access to the office, even on weekends and from vacation spots. Adult children of workaholics describe their childhood pain and the lifelong legacies they still carry, and the spouses or partners of workaholics reveal the isolation and loneliness of their vacant relationships. Employers and business colleagues discuss the cost to the company when workaholism dominates the workplace.Chained to the Desk both counsels and consoles. It provides a step-by-step guide to help readers spot workaholism, understand it, and recover. Robinson presents strategies for workaholics and their loved ones on how to cope, and for people in the workplace on how to distinguish between work efficiency and workaholism.

Why Won’t You Apologize?: Healing Big Betrayals and Everyday Hurts


Harriet Lerner - 2017
    Harriet Lerner has been studying apologies—and why some people won’t give them—for more than two decades. Now she offers compelling stories and solid theory that bring home how much the simple apology matters and what is required for healing when the hurt we’ve inflicted (or received) is far from simple. Readers will learn how to craft a deeply meaningful “I’m sorry” and avoid apologies that only deepen the original injury.Why Won’t You Apologize? also addresses the compelling needs of the injured party—the one who has been hurt by someone who won’t apologize, tell the truth, or feel remorse. Lerner explains what drives both the non-apologizer and the over-apologizer, as well as why the people who do the worst things are the least able to own up. She helps the injured person resist pressure to forgive too easily and challenges the popular notion that forgiveness is the only path to peace of mind. With her trademark humor and wit, Lerner offers a joyful and sanity-saving guide to setting things right.

Addictive Thinking: Understanding Self-Deception


Abraham J. Twerski - 1990
    Excuses, self-deception and addictive logic can harm your recovery and relationships. Don't let it.In addiction, a person with a substance use disorder undergoes a negative change in thinking and behavioral patterns. A person’s character is overthrown by addictive thinking: displacement, projection, shame, and hypersensitivity are addiction’s survival mechanisms. With Addictive Thinking, both addicts and loved ones familiarize themselves with these addictive signatures and more, and begin the fight for recovery. With more than 200,000 copies of Addictive Thinking sold worldwide, the eminent Abraham Twerski, M.D., outlines the destructive and terrifying illogic that marries a person with a substance use disorder to his addiction. “Stinking thinking” and irrational thought are byproducts of addiction and they only worsen with time. Twerski, with a deep psychological understanding, steps in to explain and contextualize all of the actions that arise from addictive thinking. It might be easier to point at abnormal behavior from an addict and simply think, “there she goes again.” But there is reason and consistency underneath the pandemonium. If nothing is learned, if nothing is done, an addict’s rock bottom will continue to sink. By educating oneself about the addictive illogic and its reasoning, one will understand why the person behaves as she does and how everyone in her life becomes controlled by addiction. Then control can be taken back.