How We Show Up


Book Description

An Invitation to Community and Models for Connection After almost every presentation activist and writer Mia Birdsong gives to executives, think tanks, and policy makers, one of those leaders quietly confesses how much they long for the profound community she describes. They have family, friends, and colleagues, yet they still feel like they're standing alone. They're "winning" at the American Dream, but they're lonely, disconnected, and unsatisfied. It seems counterintuitive that living the "good life"--the well-paying job, the nuclear family, the upward mobility--can make us feel isolated and unhappy. But in a divided America, where only a quarter of us know our neighbors and everyone is either a winner or a loser, we've forgotten the key element that helped us make progress in the first place: community. In this provocative, groundbreaking work, Mia Birdsong shows that what separates us isn't only the ever-present injustices built around race, class, gender, values, and beliefs, but also our denial of our interdependence and need for belonging. In response to the fear and discomfort we feel, we've built walls, and instead of leaning on each other, we find ourselves leaning on concrete. Through research, interviews, and stories of lived experience, How We Show Up returns us to our inherent connectedness where we find strength, safety, and support in vulnerability and generosity, in asking for help, and in being accountable. Showing up--literally and figuratively--points us toward the promise of our collective vitality and leads us to the liberated well-being we all want.




The Angry Therapist


Book Description

Tackling relationships, career, and family issues, John Kim, LMFT, thinks of himself as a life-styledesigner, not a therapist. His radical new approach, that he sometimes calls “self-help in a shot glass” is easy, real, and to the point. He helps people make changes to their lives so that personal growth happens organically, just by living. Let’s face it, therapy is a luxury. Few of us have the time or money to devote to going to an office every week. With anecdotes illustrating principles in action (in relatable and sometimes irreverent fashion) and stand-alone practices and exercises, Kim gives readers the tools and directions to focus on what's right with them instead of what's wrong. When John Kim was going through the end of a relationship, he began blogging as The Angry Therapist, documenting his personal journey post-divorce. Traditional therapists avoid transparency, but Kim preferred the language of "me too" as opposed to "you should." He blogged about his own shortcomings, revelations, views on relationships, and the world. He spoke a different therapeutic language —open, raw, and at times subversive — and people responded. The Angry Therapist blog, that inspired this book, has been featured in The Atlantic Monthly and on NPR.







The CBT Toolbox


Book Description

theoretically sound, yet practical and easy-to-use, The CBT Toolbox guides you through evidence-based exercises to help navigate the road to recovery. For a client's use on their own or for use in a therapeutic setting, this book will teach how to overcome unhealthy life patterns, providing fresh and proven approaches to help: identify triggers for a variety of psychological problems; create step by step plans to improve self-worth; dismiss dysfunctional thinking; track and monitor anger; find calm in stressful situations; defeat depression. Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) is the most empirically-supported form of treatment for a broad range of psychological problems. The CBT Toolbox is not a "one strategy fits all" book. Rather, you will receive exercises that integrate research with practical application for specific symptom sets with the necessary depth to create meaningful change. The CBT Toolbox will provide you with effective and easy-to-use tools for anxiety, depression, impulsive and destructive behaviors, problem solving, toxic relationships, stress management, and much more. --




The Group Therapist's Notebook


Book Description

Get innovative ideas and effective interventions for your group therapy Group work requires facilitators to use different skills than they would use in individual or family therapy. The Group Therapist’s Notebook: Homework, Handouts, and Activities for Use in Psychotherapy offers facilitators effective strategies to gather individuals who have their own unique needs together to form a group where each member feels comfortable exploring personal—and often painful—topics. This resource provides creative handouts, homework, and activities along with practical ideas and interventions appropriate for a variety of problems and population types. Each chapter gives detailed easy-to-follow instructions, activity contraindications, and suggestions for tracking the intervention in successive meetings. Every intervention is backed by a theoretical or practical rationale for use, and many chapters feature a helpful illustrative clinical vignette. Group work has several benefits, including the ability to treat a greater number of clients with fewer resources. Group therapy work also relies on various theories that may seem to be difficult to apply to clinical practice. The Group Therapist’s Notebook is a practical guide that builds a bridge between theory and practice with ease. The text provides help for psychotherapists who are either beginning group practice or already utilizing groups as part of their practice and need a fresh set of ideas. The workbook framework allows group specialists to generate approaches and modify exercises to fit the varying needs of their clients. This guide offers a wide variety of valid approaches that effectively address client concerns. The book provides therapists with tips and ideas for starting and facilitating a group, assists them through sets of interventions, activities, and assignments, then showcases a variety of interventions for needs-specific populations or problems. Special sections are included with interventions for teens, young adults, couples, and family groups. Interventions in The Group Therapist’s Notebook include: anger management skills ease feelings of shame and guilt substance use and abuse grief and loss positive body image guidance through change independence and belonging interpersonal skills coping skills crisis intervention strategies much, much more! The Group Therapist’s Notebook is an essential resource for both novice and more experienced practitioners working in the mental health field, including counselor educators, social workers, guidance counselors, prevention educators, and other group facilitators. Every nonprofit agency, counseling center, private practice, school, hospital, treatment facility, or training center that organizes and implements therapy groups of any type should have this guide in their library.




The Therapist's Toolbox


Book Description

Aimed at practice with individual adults and couples, this manual is a collection of nonsense, helpful techniques drawn from Susan E. Carrell's vast experience throughout her career. Each technique is complete and easy to implement in a single session. The author's jargon-free, down-to-earth writing style makes each technique easy to understand and effective to use. Carrell provides treatment objective and diagnostic aids to help the clinician meet requirements for treatment planning, as well extensive examples from her own practice.




My Therapist Says


Book Description

From the team behind the super-popular Instagram @MyTherapistSays comes this humorous guide that chronicles the exhausting task of navigating the daily, anxiety-ridden struggle that we fondly call life. Including hilarious memes MTS is known and loved for, along with checklists, prompts, questions from readers, and more, My Therapist Says is the guide you need to achieve your goals, one wrong turn at a time. Have you ever wanted something, pursued it (albeit not quite as gracefully as you would’ve hoped), failed, and then genuinely asked yourself the question, “Am I delusional?” Well, that’s how I began penning this magnum opus. Like the Buddhist’s have their Tripitaka, you have…moi. And my therapist, though it’s unlikely she’ll admit this in public. On the receiving end of a ghosting session? Needing a way to leave a work function without looking like a buzzkill? Having a hard time developing amnesia about your last relationship? Fear not, as I cover everything from circumstantial etiquette to blissful delusion when necessary. So, grab a pen, a box of tissues, a glass of wine, and your bestie, because sh*t is about to get real. And remember, be yourself, be kind, and all that jazz, unless you’re a Susan*. If that’s the case, try to be literally anyone else. Ugh, my therapist hates that I wrote that. *Susan: Noun and verb. Unpleasant, annoying, and delusional, the Susan is somebody who is literally awful in every way, is liked by no one, but has no clue, no matter how many open clues you give her. If you roll your eyes at this, you’re probably a Susan. Uses: Susaning, Susanism. For even more on navigating the mystical tornado of life, get the companion coloring book: My Therapist Says...to Color: Ignore Reality and Color Over 50 Designs Because You Can't Even.




Psychotherapy Skills and Methods That Work


Book Description

While we know that psychotherapy works, there is hearty debate about what makes it work. In the past, rival arguments have maintained that psychotherapy proves effective because of the treatment approach, patient contributions, or the therapeutic relationship. Psychotherapy Skills and Methods That Work argues that clinical skills and methods also play a crucial role and that what therapists do has major consequences for improving practice. Psychotherapy Skills and Methods That Work is the result of a multiyear, interorganizational Task Force commissioned to identify, compile, and disseminate the research evidence and clinical practices on psychotherapist skills and methods used across theoretical orientations. Edited by renowned scholars Clara E. Hill and John C. Norcross, this book provides original research reviews on the effectiveness of 27 specific psychotherapy skills and methods, including affirmation, self-disclosure, role induction, between-session homework, empathic reflections, mindfulness and acceptance, emotion regulation, and cognitive restructuring. Each chapter on a therapy skill or method features clinical examples, diversity considerations, training implications, and bulleted therapeutic practices, while the final chapter summarizes the research evidence for the effectiveness of these skills/methods and emphasizes implications for clinical training and practice. Forcefully demonstrating what therapists do to help clients change and live more effective lives, Psychotherapy Skills and Methods That Work will serve as a go-to guide for psychotherapy practitioners of all persuasions and professions, as well as graduate students and psychotherapy researchers.