A Starving Madness


Book Description

Stories have the power to change lives. These compelling tales of seven women and one man are a revealing look at the complexity of eating disorders, the process of psychotherapy, and the healing power of the relationship between therapist and client. Sufferers, their loved ones, and caregivers will benefit from the insights provided by this beautifully written collection.




A Starving Madness


Book Description

Stories have the power to change lives. These compelling tales of seven women and one man are a revealing look at the complexity of eating disorders, the process of psychotherapy, and the healing power of the relationship between therapist and client. Sufferers, their loved ones, and caregivers will benefit from the insights provided by this beautifully written collection.




The Girl in the Red Boots


Book Description

Can a mother be both loving and selfish? Caring and thoughtless? Deceitful and devoted? These are the questions that fuel psychologist Dr. Judy Rabinor’s quest to understand her ambivalence toward her mother. While leading a seminar exploring the importance of the mother-daughter relationship, Dr. Judy Rabinor, an eating disorder expert, is blindsided by a memory of a childhood trauma. Realizing how this buried trauma has resonated through her life, she sets off to heal herself. The Girl in the Red Boots weaves together tales from Rabinor’s psychotherapy practice and her life, helping readers understand how painful childhood experiences can linger and leave emotional scars. In the process, Rabinor traces her own journey becoming a wounded healer and ultimately making peace with her mother, and herself. Not a traditional self-help book outlining “steps” to reconcile or forgive one’s mother, The Girl in the Red Boots is a poignant memoir filled with hard-won life lessons, including the fact that it’s never too late to let go of hurts and disappointments and develop compassion for yourself—and even for your mother.




Hunger for Connection


Book Description

Who develops which eating disorder and why? When do eating disorders begin and what fuels them? In Hunger for Connection, psychoanalyst and eating-disorder specialist Alitta Kullman expands on the "body/mind" personality organization she calls the "perseverant personality," illustrating how food and thought are linked from infancy, and for some, can become the primary source of nurturance and thought-processing for a lifetime—leading to what we call an eating disorder. Writing in a highly accessible style, Kullman brings humor and gentleness to her interactions with patients, offering health professionals and mainstream readers alike an essential guide to understanding and/or working with cyclical eating disorders of all types. From psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and counsellors, to eating disorder specialists, researchers, and students, Hunger for Connection not only provides guidelines for therapists of varying theoretical orientations and levels of expertise, but help and hope to people suffering with eating disorders and those who care for and about them.




Starved


Book Description




Reckless Years


Book Description

"A raw, propulsive memoir about a woman trying to reinvent her life who finds that being free to make any choice means being free to make every mistake.."--




Hungry Ghosts


Book Description

The lives of Vic Woods and Ruth Wolfe, working-class teenagers from Liverpool and London, are profoundly disrupted by the arrival of World War II. Ruth’s journey leads her to aerial photographic interpretation, though her aspirations for advancement are denied, while Vic’s wartime experiences with bomber command haunt him long after the war is over. Their post-war marriage and tumultuous relationship with their son, James, make for a gripping narrative of trauma, conflict and, ultimately, love. Set against the backdrop of World War II and the social upheaval of the late 1960s, Hungry Ghosts transports readers into the drama of two pivotal eras in history, exploring the intergenerational impact of war, particularly on the intricate relationships between fathers and sons. Hungry Ghosts is not just a war story; it’s a timeless exploration of family bonds and the indelible scars left by war.




Wasted


Book Description

Why would a talented young woman enter into a torrid affair with hunger, drugs, sex, and death? Through five lengthy hospital stays, endless therapy, and the loss of family, friends, jobs, and all sense of what it means to be "normal," Marya Hornbacher lovingly embraced her anorexia and bulimia -- until a particularly horrifying bout with the disease in college put the romance of wasting away to rest forever. A vivid, honest, and emotionally wrenching memoir, Wasted is the story of one woman's travels to reality's darker side -- and her decision to find her way back on her own terms.




The Body of Chris


Book Description

Finalist in Religious Non-Fiction and Spirituality for 2016 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Struggling with lifelong disordered eating and adolescent addiction, Chris Cole had his first psychotic episode at the age of eighteen, suddenly believing he was the Second Coming of Christ. He lost his identity and tried to perform miracles and was ultimately arrested in the lobby of his college dormitory—all while convinced he was being taken to his crucifixion. Even when sanity returned, he could not help but contemplate God's involvement. For years, Chris danced with delusion, but he eventually surrendered to his humanity and learned to embrace reality. The Body of Chris explores mental illness—from bipolar disorder to substance use to binge eating—in one man’s search for salvation. From his oldest wounds to his renewed spirituality, author Chris Cole tells his story with unflinching honesty in hopes of reaching people who suffer from mental illness and those who love them.




Crazy Like Us


Book Description

“A blistering and truly original work of reporting and analysis, uncovering America’s role in homogenizing how the world defines wellness and healing” (Po Bronson). In Crazy Like Us, Ethan Watters reveals that the most devastating consequence of the spread of American culture has not been our golden arches or our bomb craters but our bulldozing of the human psyche itself: We are in the process of homogenizing the way the world goes mad. It is well known that American culture is a dominant force at home and abroad; our exportation of everything from movies to junk food is a well-documented phenomenon. But is it possible America's most troubling impact on the globalizing world has yet to be accounted for? American-style depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and anorexia have begun to spread around the world like contagions, and the virus is us. Traveling from Hong Kong to Sri Lanka to Zanzibar to Japan, acclaimed journalist Ethan Watters witnesses firsthand how Western healers often steamroll indigenous expressions of mental health and madness and replace them with our own. In teaching the rest of the world to think like us, we have been homogenizing the way the world goes mad.