Beat the Blues Before They Beat You


Book Description

Do you feel plagued by negative thoughts about yourself, overwhelmed by loneliness, paralyzed by a fear of failure? If so, you're not alone. Depression affects millions of people worldwide, regardless of race, gender, age, and socioeconomic class. These numbers have been steadily rising, and sadly, most people who feel the unbearable pain, hopelessness, and self-criticism of depression never seek treatment. If not you, then someone you know most likely hides within these statistics, suffering in silence. The good news is that with effective treatment you can overcome depression--and once you do, you will be better equipped to prevent its recurrence.In his new book, Beat the Blues Before They Beat You, world-renowned cognitive therapist and best-selling author Robert Leahy shows how you can alleviate the effects of major depressive disorders. By redefining your relationship with depression, you can learn to change your attitude and responses toward these unpleasant, intrusive thoughts. Using mindful awareness practices and thought exercises, the troubling images you experience can be looked at in a new light.In a clear and easy-to-read manner, Leahy outlines the causes, symptoms, and treatments for depression, combining real-life patient stories and simple step-by-step instructions to help you understand your depression so you will know how best to treat it. Learn what triggers your moods. Figure out how to defeat feelings of fatigue, hopelessness, and worthlessness. Design a plan to develop self-confidence. Determine what treatments--both medication and therapy--are available to prevent relapse. Beat the Blues Before They Beat You is a collection of the most powerful tools in cognitive therapy to help you curb your thoughts and behaviors, so you can begin to feel good again. You don't have to wait for someone to rescue you. You can rescue yourself.




Battling the Blues, Grades 3-8


Book Description

Depression is a serious mental health problem that affects one in thirty-three children and one in eight adolescents. This handbook explains in understandable terms what depression is and provides practical coping strategies so that children and teens can gain a greater sense of control in their lives. This resource is divided into two sections--one for adult professionals and caregivers, the other for children and teens.




Battling the Blues


Book Description

'A legend of the game' - Anthony Seibold 'He's a player that never lets his team down' - Billy Slater Darius Boyd broke into the Brisbane Broncos NRL team in 2006 straight out of high school and was part of the premiership-winning team in his debut season. He'd go on to win another premiership with the Dragons in 2010, claiming the Clive Churchill Medal for man of the match and forever stamping his name as an elite champion of the game. He has played 28 State of Origins for Queensland and taken the field in 23 Tests for Australia - never playing in a losing Australian team. In 15 seasons at the top level, Darius has won nearly every honour the sport can award and is undeniably an NRL great. But listing statistics, awards and premierships doesn't reveal the battles that Darius Boyd has faced off the field. A teenager with a troubled background, he started his career with innate footy talent but also the emotional baggage of an unknown father, the devastating loss of loved ones, and a mother who was walking a mental health tightrope herself, which as a kid he didn't understand. As his talent shone on the field and his profile increased, Darius struggled. Hiding years of depression and unhappiness, playing footy was his escape. But no one can run from themselves forever. The horrific spinal injury to good mate and Newcastle Knights teammate Alex McKinnon was the catalyst that finally broke Darius. Realising he needed help for his anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts, he turned his back on football, checked into a mental health facility and began to mend his life and himself. Now, as he heads into retirement, Darius Boyd is sharing his story, to celebrate his triumphs on the field but, more importantly for him, revealing how to deal with depression, overcome adversity and live with mental illness. He reflects on excerpts from his private journal which charted his journey from the depths of despair to a life of gratitude. It is a heartfelt message he now takes across the NRL and into boardrooms, schools and footy clubs in a quest to keep our young men alive. BATTLING THE BLUES is a raw, honest and inspiring memoir that takes us into the heart of an NRL champion and his fight to conquer his demons and live a better life.




Getting Over the Blues


Book Description

One in five women will experience clinical depression in her lifetime. Christian counselor Leslie Vernick offers words of hope and encouragement as she helps women understand the symptoms of depression, what causes depression, and what steps they can take not only to get better but to grow stronger. Employing godly wisdom and surprising insights, Leslie addresses the following: Depression is revealing something about you. Listen to it. Growth takes time and practice. Things are not hopeless, you are not helpless, and you are not worthless. Getting over the Blues is a timely resource for women battling depression and the men and women who love them and want to understand what they are going through.




The Blues of Flats Brown


Book Description

"Myers' fun picture book about a junkyard dog turned celebrated blues musician works wonderfully... thanks to Charles Turner's spirited narration and Mark "Dog" Deffenbaugh's bluesy guitar strumming...Turner's energetic narration keeps the story humming along. Deffenbaugh's guitar work pleases the ear, and his performance of 'The New York City Blues' (music and lyrics by Myers) is the program's highlight. This story about the joys of blues music has found a format that serves it very well." - School Library Journal




November Blues


Book Description

When November Nelson loses her boyfriend, Josh, to a pledge stunt gone horribly wrong, she thinks her life can't possibly get any worse. But Josh left something behind that will change November's life forever, and now she's faced with the biggest decision she could ever imagine. How in the world will she tell her mom? And how will Josh's parents take the news? She's never needed a friend more. Jericho Prescott lost his best friend when he lost his cousin, Josh, and the pain is almost more than he can bear. His world becomes divided into "before" and "after" Josh's death. He finds the only way he can escape the emptiness he feels is to quit doing the things that made him happy when his cousin was alive, such as playing his beloved trumpet, and take up football, where he hopes the physical pain will suppress the emotional. But will hiding behind shoulder pads really help? And will his gridiron obsession prevent him from being there for his cousin's girlfriend when she needs him most? This sequel to The Battle of Jericho is a no-holds-barred look at what happens when life doesn't go as planned, by the acclaimed author of the 2007 Coretta Scott King Award winner Copper Sun.




Book of Blues


Book Description

Best known for his "Legend of Duluoz" novels, including On the Road and The Dharma Bums, Jack Kerouac is also an important poet. In these eight extended poems, Kerouac writes from the heart of experience in the music of language, employing the same instrumental blues form that he used to fullest effect in Mexico City Blues, his largely unheralded classic of postmodern literature. Edited by Kerouac himself, Book of Blues is an exuberant foray into language and consciousness, rich with imagery, propelled by rythm, and based in a reverent attentiveness to the moment. "In my system, the form of blues choruses is limited by the small page of the breastpocket notebook in which they are written, like the form of a set number of bars in a jazz blues chorus, and so sometimes the word-meaning can carry from one chorus into another, or not, just like the phrase-meaning can carry harmonically from one chorus to the other, or not, in jazz, so that, in these blues as in jazz, the form is determined by time, and by the musicians spontaneous phrasing & harmonizing with the beat of time as it waves & waves on by in measured choruses." —Jack Kerouac




Carbon Blues


Book Description

Climate change is the most serious crisis of our time. As history is being written in fire in California and Greece, in the warming waters of the Gulf of Mexico, and in the melting ice of the Arctic and Antarctica, Carbon Blues demystifies current debates on climate change, discussing everything from carbon dioxide increases in the atmosphere caused by cars, coal, and oil to global warming and worsening natural disasters. A detailed examination of the history of climate change and its present and future consequences, Carbon Blues traces the essential economic importance of coal in the nineteenth century and oil in the twentieth, emphasizing the role of the automobile and the internal combustion engine in the dereliction of our planet. Exposing campaigns to mislead the public, Mike Mason reveals that the fatal consequences of CO2 and NO2 have been widely known for decades but successfully discounted and manipulated by the carbon lobby led by Exxon, BP, figures such as the Koch brothers, and democratically elected governments. The book underlines the disturbing truth: that despite current attempts to remediate climate change, the harm already done - melting polar ice and the warming and rising of the seas - will be virtually irreversible. As the fight against climate change comes to a head, Carbon Blues searches for fruitful ways forward.




Blues Legacy


Book Description

Chicago blues musicians parlayed a genius for innovation and emotional honesty into a music revered around the world. As the blues evolves, it continues to provide a soundtrack to, and a dynamic commentary on, the African American experience: the legacy of slavery; historic promises and betrayals; opportunity and disenfranchisement; the ongoing struggle for freedom. Through it all, the blues remains steeped in survivorship and triumph, a music that dares to stare down life in all its injustice and iniquity and still laugh--and dance--in its face. David Whiteis delves into how the current and upcoming Chicago blues generations carry on this legacy. Drawing on in-person interviews, Whiteis places the artists within the ongoing social and cultural reality their work reflects and helps create. Beginning with James Cotton, Eddie Shaw, and other bequeathers, he moves through an all-star council of elders like Otis Rush and Buddy Guy and on to inheritors and today's heirs apparent like Ronnie Baker Brooks, Shemekia Copeland, and Nellie "Tiger" Travis. Insightful and wide-ranging, Blues Legacy reveals a constantly adapting art form that, whatever the challenges, maintains its links to a rich musical past.




Boxing the Blues Away


Book Description

Unusual recovery from postpartum depression.