Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It


Jennifer Michael Hecht - 2013
    Despite distressing statistics that show suicide rates rising, the subject, long a taboo, is infrequently talked about. In this sweeping intellectual and cultural history, poet and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht channels her grief for two friends lost to suicide into a search for history’s most persuasive arguments against the irretrievable act, arguments she hopes to bring back into public consciousness. From the Stoics and the Bible to Dante, Shakespeare, Wittgenstein, and such twentieth-century writers as John Berryman, Hecht recasts the narrative of our “secular age” in new terms. She shows how religious prohibitions against self-killing were replaced by the Enlightenment’s insistence on the rights of the individual, even when those rights had troubling applications. This transition, she movingly argues, resulted in a profound cultural and moral loss: the loss of shared, secular, logical arguments against suicide. By examining how people in other times have found powerful reasons to stay alive when suicide seems a tempting choice, she makes a persuasive intellectual and moral case against suicide.

Archetypes: Who Are You?


Caroline Myss - 2013
    Archetypes are universal patterns of behavior that, once discovered, help you better understand yourself and your place in the world. In short, knowing your archetypes can transform your life.Within the pages of this book, Myss writes about ten primary archetypes that have emerged in today’s society: the Caregiver, the Artist/Creative, the Fashionista, the Intellectual, the Rebel, the Queen/Executive, the Advocate, the Visionary, the Athlete, and the Spiritual Seeker. In each chapter, she explains one individual archetype, showing how it has evolved and then in fascinating detail lays out the unique characteristics, the defining graces, the life challenges, and other information to help you understand if you are part of this archetype family and if so, how you can fully tap into its power. She also offers tips and practical advice on how to fully engage with your archetypes.Learning which archetypes best describe you is just the beginning. You can then use this knowledge to make more conscious decisions about everything from careers to relationships, avoiding common pitfalls of your personality type while playing up your strengths. The result is a happier, more authentic you. It’s never too late to change your life by embracing your archetypes to the fullest.So are you a Rebel? An Artist? A Visionary? Join us . . . and find yourself.

The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse


Ellen Bass - 1988
    Although the effects of child sexual abuse are long-term and severe, healing is possible.Weaving together personal experience with professional knowledge, the authors provide clear explanations, practical suggestions, and support throughout the healing process. Readers will feel recognized and encouraged by hundreds of moving first-person stories drawn from interviews and the authors' extensive work with survivors, both nationally and internationally.This completely revised and updated 20th anniversary edition continues to provide the compassionate wisdom the book has been famous for, as well as many new features:Contemporary research on trauma and the brainAn overview of powerful new healing tools such as imagery, meditation, and body-centered practicesAdditional stories that reflect an even greater diversity of survivor experiencesThe reassuring accounts of survivors who have been healing for more than twenty yearsThe most comprehensive, up-to-date resource guide in the fieldInsights from the authors' decades of experienceCherished by survivors, and recommended by therapists and institutions everywhere, The Courage to Heal has often been called the bible of healing from child sexual abuse. This new edition will continue to serve as the healing beacon it has always been.

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 Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook: Practical DBT Exercises for Learning Mindfulness, Interpersonal Effectiveness, Emotion Regulation, and Distress Tolerance


Matthew McKay - 2007
    Research shows that DBT can improve your ability to handle distress without losing control and acting destructively. In order to make use of these techniques, you need to build skills in four key areas-distress tolerance, mindfulness, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness.The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook, a collaborative effort from three esteemed authors, offers straightforward, step-by-step exercises for learning these concepts and putting them to work for real and lasting change. Start by working on the introductory exercises and, after making progress, move on to the advanced-skills chapters. Whether you are a professional or a general reader, whether you use this book to support work done in therapy or as the basis for self-help, you'll benefit from this clear and practical guide to better managing your emotions.This book has been awarded The Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies Self-Help Seal of Merit — an award bestowed on outstanding self-help books that are consistent with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) principles and that incorporate scientifically tested strategies for overcoming mental health difficulties. Used alone or in conjunction with therapy, our books offer powerful tools readers can use to jump-start changes in their lives.

Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents


Lindsay C. Gibson - 2015
    You may recall your childhood as a time when your emotional needs were not met, when your feelings were dismissed, or when you took on adult levels of responsibility in an effort to compensate for your parent’s behavior. These wounds can be healed, and you can move forward in your life.In this breakthrough book, clinical psychologist Lindsay Gibson exposes the destructive nature of parents who are emotionally immature or unavailable. You will see how these parents create a sense of neglect, and discover ways to heal from the pain and confusion caused by your childhood. By freeing yourself from your parents’ emotional immaturity, you can recover your true nature, control how you react to them, and avoid disappointment. Finally, you’ll learn how to create positive, new relationships so you can build a better life.Discover the four types of difficult parents:The emotional parent instills feelings of instability and anxietyThe driven parent stays busy trying to perfect everything and everyoneThe passive parent avoids dealing with anything upsettingThe rejecting parent is withdrawn, dismissive, and derogatory

The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts


Gary Chapman - 1990
    Staying in love—that’s the challenge! How can you keep your relationship fresh and growing amid the demands, conflicts, and just plain boredom of everyday life? In the #1 New York Times bestseller The 5 Love Languages, you’ll discover the secret that has transformed millions of relationships worldwide. Whether your relationship is flourishing or failing, Dr. Gary Chapman’s proven approach to showing and receiving love will help you experience deeper and richer levels of intimacy with your partner—starting today. The 5 Love Languages is as practical as it is insightful. Updated to reflect the complexities of relationships today, this new edition reveals intrinsic truths and applies relevant, actionable wisdom in ways that work. Includes the Couple's Personal Profile assessment so you can discover your love language and that of your loved one.

Healing Developmental Trauma: How Early Trauma Affects Self-Regulation, Self-Image, and the Capacity for Relationship


Laurence Heller - 2012
    These five core capacities are associated with biologically based core needs that are essential to our physical and emotional well-being: the needs for connection, attunement, trust, autonomy, and love-sexuality. Recognizing these needs as well as five Adaptive Survival Styles set in motion when the core needs are not met early in life, authors Laurence Heller and Aline LaPierre cut through the seeming complexity of life’s problems.   Explaining that an impaired capacity for connection to self and to others and the ensuing diminished aliveness are the hidden dimensions that underlie most psychological and many physiological problems, they introduce the NeuroAffective Relational Model® (NARM), a resource-oriented, psychodynamically informed approach that, while not ignoring a person’s past, emphasizes working in the present moment. NARM uses somatic mindfulness to re-regulate the nervous system and to resolve identity distortions—such as low self-esteem, shame, and chronic self-judgment—caused by developmental and relational trauma. Heller and LaPierre demonstrate how this therapy helps clients establish connection to the parts of self that are organized, coherent and functional, integrating the role of connection on all levels of experience as it affects a person's physiology, psychology, and capacity for relationship.From the Trade Paperback edition.

The Anxiety First Aid Kit: Quick Tools for Extreme, Uncertain Times


Rick HansonElizabeth M. Karle - 2020
    In these extreme and uncertain times, it’s natural to be in a constant state of mental and physical strain. Whether you’re dealing with job loss, a sick loved one, or just feeling the weight of the world during your 2 a.m. doomscroll—you need quick tools you can use right now, whenever and wherever you are, to lower stress and soothe anxiety. This emergency kit has you covered.Written by a dream team of mental health experts and grounded in evidence-based therapy, The Anxiety First Aid Kit offers powerful tools for triaging stress and anxiety in the moments when you need it most. You’ll find easy and doable ways to help you press pause on panic, and find your calm spot right away. You’ll discover in-the-moment interventions to help you relax before your anxiety and stress go into overdrive. And finally, you’ll learn how to make healthy and workable lifestyle changes to improve your mental health and increase resilience, so you can effectively deal with stressful situations in the future—no matter what life throws at you.Between pandemic-related economic fears, the frustrations of social distancing, indoor confinement, work and household double duties (now including homeschooling!), and the looming threat of serious illness, is it any wonder you’re feeling completely stressed out and anxious? If you need immediate relief, The Anxiety First Aid Kit has everything you need to manage stress and anxiety—right now.

Madness: a Memoir


Kate Richards - 2013
    It never apologises. Sometimes it is a shadow, ever present, without regard for the sun. Sometimes it is a well of dark water with no bottom, or a levitation device to the stars.Madness, a memoir is an insight into what it's like to live with psychosis over a period of ten years, in which bouts of acute illness are interspersed with periods of sanity. The world is beautiful and terrifying and sometimes magical. The sanctity of life is at times precious and at times precarious and always fragile. It's a story of learning to manage illness with courage and creativity, of achieving balance and living well. It is for everyone now living within the world of madness, for everyone touched by this world, and for everyone seeking to further his or her understanding of it, whether you think of madness as a biological illness of the brain or an understandable part of the continuum of the human condition.

Mothers Who Can't Love: A Healing Guide for Daughters


Susan Forward - 2013
    Subjected to years of criticism, competition, role-reversal, smothering control, emotional neglect and abuse, these women are plagued by anxiety and depression, relationship problems, lack of confidence and difficulties with trust. They doubt their worth, and even their ability to love.Forward examines the Narcissistic Mother, the Competitive Mother, the Overly Enmeshed mother, the Control Freak, Mothers who need Mothering, and mothers who abuse or fail to protect their daughters from abuse. Filled with compelling case histories, Mothers Who Can’t Love outlines the self-help techniques Forward has developed to transform the lives of her clients, showing women how to overcome the pain of childhood and how to act in their own best interests. Warm and compassionate, Mothers Who Can’t Love offers daughters the emotional support and tools they need to heal themselves and rebuild their confidence and self-respect.

The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression


Andrew Solomon - 2000
    His contribution to our understanding not only of mental illness but also of the human condition is truly stunning.The Noonday Demon examines depression in personal, cultural, and scientific terms. Drawing on his own struggles with the illness and interviews with fellow sufferers, doctors and scientists, policymakers and politicians, drug designers and philosophers, Solomon reveals the subtle complexities and sheer agony of the disease. He confronts the challenge of defining the illness and describes the vast range of available medications, the efficacy of alternative treatments, and the impact the malady has had on various demographic populations around the world and throughout history. He also explores the thorny patch of moral and ethical questions posed by emerging biological explanations for mental illness.The depth of human experience Solomon chronicles, the range of his intelligence, and his boundless curiosity and compassion will change the reader's view of the world.

F*ck No!: How to Stop Saying Yes When You Can't, You Shouldn't, or You Just Don't Want To


Sarah Knight - 2019
    Whether you're a People-Pleaser, Overachiever, Pushover, or have serious FOMO, bestselling "anti-guru" Sarah Knight helps you say what you really mean without being really mean--or burning out for fear of missing out.Life is so much better when you say no with confidence--and without guilt, fear, or regret. F*ck No! delivers practical strategies that give you the power to decline, and concrete examples that put the words right into your mouth. You'll discover:The joy of noNo-Tips for all occasionsHow to set boundariesFill-in-the-blank F*ckNotesThe No-and-Switch, the Power No--and how to take no for an answer yourselfAnd much more!Praise for Sarah Knight and the No F*cks Given Guides"Self-help to swear by." --Boston Globe"Genius." --Vogue"Hilarious, irreverent, and no-nonsense." --Bustle

Beyond Behaviors: Using Brain Science and Compassion to Understand and Solve Children's Behavioral Challenges


Mona Delahooke - 2019
    

Troubled: The Failed Promise of America's Behavioral Treatment Programs


Kenneth R. Rosen - 2021
    Desperate parents of these “troubled teens” fear it’s their only option. The private, largely unregulated behavioral boot camps break their children down, a damnation the children suffer forever.New York Times journalist Kenneth R. Rosen knows firsthand the brutal emotional, physical, and sexual abuse carried out at these programs. He lived it. In Troubled, Rosen shares more than his experience of lockdown and its aftermath as he unspools the stories of four graduates on their own scarred, faulted journey through the programs into adulthood. Based on three years of reporting and more than one hundred interviews with other clients, their parents, psychologists, and health-care professionals, Troubled combines harrowing storytelling with investigative journalism to expose the disturbing truth about the massively profitable, sometimes fatal, grossly unchecked redirection industry.Not without hope, Troubled ultimately delivers an emotional, crucial tapestry of coming of age, neglect, exploit, trauma, and fraught redemption.