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The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals that Protect us from Violence
Gavin De Becker / ISBN 0-316-23502-4 / in paperback / hardback was $25
This book is a real life psychological thriller which educates about the
perils of having people in your life who do not respect you when you
say "No." If you have tried to end a relationship or know you want to
end a relationship with someone who is going to be really angry if
you do: this is the book to read. It tells you how to identify the
subtle signals that herald danger and how to avoid violent confrontations.
Becoming Attached: First
Relationships and How they Shape our Capacity to Love
Robert Karen, Ph.D. / ISBN 0-19-511501-5 / in paperback $17.95
Our early defenses develop during our formative years and set the
scene for how secure we feel. This book describes how children become
securely attached, anxiously attached or avoidant of attachment. The
history of how children's attachments came to be studied is included
as well as many anecdotal examples of the different ideas that are presented.
When you understand the underpinnings of how you react in intimate
relationships with others, you are more likely to develop insight
into how you can make different choices and live a different
quality of emotional life. This book enhances longer term therapy
and throws light on the way the same issues can crop up in relationship
after relationship. This book also helps to make sense of dynamics
in your family of origin.
Additionally, if your partner has issues with you it will help you
make sense of where these come from.
Last but not least, it is a wonderful book to guide new parents into
the process of constructive parenting so they can better raise secure
children who have good limits rather than insecure children who will
act out not only as children but possibly for all their lives.
Shame and Pride: Affect, Sex, and the Birth of the Self
Donald L. Nathanson / ISBN 0-393-03097-0 / Paperback $14.95
If you feel angry and ashamed and not as good as other people, this is
a really good book to read. It is also a good read for someone "who is not
in touch with their emotions," to use a rather hackneyed phrase. If you
find it difficult to articulate your emotions or to understand your
partner's emotions this book will help you. It is the CAT scan of emotional
life. It gives you a working look at how emotions operate, what triggers
emotions, our relationships with others and the biology of emotions. You
will learn about the nine basic emotional affects of: interest-excitement;
enjoyment-joy; surprise-startle; fear-terror; distress-anguish; anger-rage;
dissmell; disgust; and shame-humiliation and how nine elements determine our
feelings and our sense of self and how they color the ways we perceive others.
Don't Call it Love: Recovery from Sexual Addiction
Patrick Carnes, Ph.D. / ISBN 0-553-35138-9
This book talks about sexual addiction as a functional disorder. It is a
disorder when someone mistakes sexual activity for intimacy and thinks by
pursuing one they will achieve the closeness. It does not work so the sexual
behavior is pursued even more and more hence the addictive quality of the
pursuit. It is a sad disorder for the person addicted is destined for
loneliness and disappointment. The partner of someone sexually addicted
at first may feel their partner really is turned on by them but when the
pursuit of sex goes on and on regardless and without emotional intimacy
resulting these partners very often feel cheated and quit the relationship.
If you are in a pattern of rating your intimacy by the quantity of your
sexual life rather than appreciating sexuality as just one of several
ways to communicate intimately with your partner you may benefit from
reading this book. You don't need to be a fan of 12 step programs to
gain a great deal from this book. However, if you are inherently lonely,
feel like a failure at intimacy and use pornography or money to access
sex then you need to read this book.
The Imp of the Mind: Exploring the Silent Epidemic of Obesssive Bad Thoughts
Lee Baer, Ph.D. / ISBN 0-525-94562-8 / $23.95
This is a fascinating book which looks at the thoughts most of us have
and few of us own up to: the thoughts which even we think are "sick"
or "crazy." I have these thoughts when I am tired or stressed and
they signal to me that I need to slow down, go to bed early or otherwise
take care of myself. If you don't understand how to use these thoughts
as a red flag, you will suffer them and may be frightened of them. If
you read this book you will not be frightened again but realize how
your brain signals to you how to take care of yourself.
Thoughts like this are the hall mark of obsessive compulsive disorder.
Don't be afraid of talking about them to your psychologist who is
trained to help you cope with their existence in a way that benefits
you rather than damages you. Medication can be beneficial if it continues
to be a problem. But discuss, discuss, discuss…. and read this book…it
normalizes a quite scary process of breakthrough nasty thoughts.
Death : The Final Stage of Growth
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross / ISBN 0-13-197012-7 / [below $20]
If you have experienced the death of someone close to you, you may now be faced with friends,
relatives and your own expectations about how you might "get over" the grief. Grieving
is a valuable part of being human. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross was one of the first writers to
help people in this society understand their grieving process. She writes simply and
directly about how by accepting our finiteness we can grow to appreciate the value of
the life we have and the life of the person who is now lost to us.
Elizabeth does not espouse one religious belief over another or try to convert the reader
to a particular point of view. Her goal is to honor the value of grieving for how it can bring
closeness in the life you have.
A recommended read for anyone who knows someone dying and does not know what to say to
the dying person or to other people around the dying person and for anyone who
is personally grieving a death.
Death of a Mother: Daughter's Stories
Edited by Rosa Ainley / ISBN 0-04-440928-1 / paperback $13.00
Many of us never imagine what it will be like when we can no longer contact or
ignore our mothers. During teenage years, we struggle with separation individuation:
a process of becoming our own person. For many of us, the last thing we want to
happen is for us to be "like our mother." Maturity is the process of realizing
how much influence our mother has had on how we behave and think. My mother died
too soon, before I made peace with accepting that she loved me and wanted the
best for me. I have lived all my adult life without a mother. Perhaps you have
too, or are still caught in rebellion, compliant approval seeking, hate or guilt.
This book helps to bring some insight into the many various ways how as a daughter
we experience our mother.
If you have a fraught relationship with your mother, this book brings you face to
face with thoughts of how you might react to her death while there is still time
to make a positive difference in your relationship. If you mother has already
died, read this book to discover that this loss is one that is different for everybody.
The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to recognize it and how to respond
Patricia Evans / ISBN 1-55850-582-2
Those of you who have been to therapy know that I will help you understand how
familiarity with abuse in a family of origin or in a teenage relationship reduces
abuse in an adult relationship to something familiar. People who come from homes
where there has never been abuse are so horrified when it occurs in a "love"
relationship they leave rather more quickly unless they are trapped in the relationship
by poverty, pregnancy, shame or religious convictions.
This book spells out what verbal abuse is, how it occurs and what you can do about
it in the early or later stages. You will read about your rights as a human being
and how true love means care not an excuse to yell, name-call, threaten or sneer.
You will also understand the escalating nature of abuse as respect and dignity are
undermined and feelings of depression: helplessness and hopelessness take over.
If you have been yelled at, sworn at, criticized constantly or otherwise spoken to
in a manner that you know your partner would never dare use if his/her boss/friend
was present: or if your children cry or are upset by the abuse: you need to read this book.
Secret Survivors: Uncovering incest and its aftereffects in women
E. Sue Blume / ISBN 0-471-61843-8
Incest is a breach of trust, that can have long term, damaging effects on the way women
relate in intimate relationships. The term incest covers a variety of intrusive molesting
behaviors that an abuser forces, persuades, cajoles, threatens, beats or buys from a
trusting victim. The victim may be persuaded they like the behavior, or they may hate the
behavior. But, the secretive, underhand nature of the molester always signals the fact
that their behavior is illicit, bad, dirty or wrong.
Victims often feel they are illicit, bad, dirty or wrong. This book directly addresses
the ways in which victims emotionally defend themselves as a way of surviving the
damage of the incest. It does not measure how one physical act may be better or
worse than another kind of victimization but concentrates instead on the long term
emotional adaptations victims make to survive their past.
This book focuses on how you can understand the effects your particular experience
has had on you and points the way to some of the things you can do to heal from those
wounds. This is probably the most helpful book to foster insight and make sense of
your own reactions.
When you read this book, be prepared to jot down thoughts and feelings that come up
as you read so you can reflect on them in therapy or in the weeks to come.
Learned Optimism
Martin E. Seligman, Ph.D. / ISBN 0-394-57915-1 / Hardback $19.95
Depression is a state of mind and a physiological condition. One of the ways to counter
depression is to foster a positive state of mind. This book tells the ways in which
positive attitudes contribute to both emotional and physical health. It also gives
some good ideas about how to acquire and use positive attitudes and the benefits you
will reap if you do.
This book is interesting and easy to read.
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