Going Mad to Stay Sane


Book Description

Invites the reader to rethink their attitudes towards self-destructive behavior




Simplify


Book Description

Short, simple and refreshingly practical, Living Simply offers 21 Earth Warrior practices to help us live more consciously and to cope with the ever increasing pace of modern life. Bob Hillary shares the lessons he learned living off the grid, exploring his ‘wild edges’ and practicing a slower, more attuned way of life. How can we live more simply, learn to appreciate what we have and root our way of being in the Earth we have inherited? By living simply and becoming an Earth Warrior. As life keeps urging us to go faster, many of us are moving in the opposite direction... we are looking for SLOWNESS, for stillness, to live more natural, less complex lives. Bob Hillary spent a year living off grid, this experience taught him how to live simply. It meant; downscaling, re-wilding, un-teching and finding and doing things that are free. These philosophies provided a framework for the 21 practices he shares in this book. Each one covers the key idea, contains exercises and provides practical ways that will help you become an Earth Warrior. By living this way you will learn how to live in a more joyful, positive, simple and meaningfully way. Earth Warriors give, share and care. This is a manual for modern times, a guide to creating positive action, walking the right path and making the right choices.




Talking to 'Crazy'


Book Description

No matter how hard you try to reason with irrational people, it never works. So how do you talk to someone who just won't listen? You can't win by ignoring the insanity, and you can't argue it away. However, you can stop it cold. Top-ranked psychiatrist and communication expert Mark Goulston shows you just how to do so in this life-changing book for everyone trapped in maddening personal or professional relationships. Goulston unlocks the mysteries of the irrational mind, and explains how faulty thinking patterns develop. His keen insights are matched by a set of counterintuitive strategies proven to defuse crazy behavior, along with scripts, examples, and exercises that teach you how to use them. In Talking to “Crazy”, you will learn: Why people act the way they do How instinctive responses can exacerbate the situation, and what to do instead When to confront a problem and when to walk away How to activate the Sanity Cycle, which quickly transforms you from threat to ally How to use 14 simple yet effective communication techniques, including assertive submission flattery, the kiss-off, and more You can't reason with unreasonable people, but you can reach them. Talking to “Crazy” shows you just how easy it is to do it.




How to Stay Sane


Book Description

THE SCHOOL OF LIFE IS DEDICATED TO EXPLORING LIFE'S BIG QUESTIONS IN HIGHLY-PORTABLE PAPERBACKS, FEATURING FRENCH FLAPS AND DECKLE EDGES, THAT THE NEW YORK TIMES CALLS "DAMNABLY CUTE." WE DON'T HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS, BUT WE WILL DIRECT YOU TOWARDS A VARIETY OF USEFUL IDEAS THAT ARE GUARANTEED TO STIMULATE, PROVOKE, AND CONSOLE. An Economist Best Book of the Year Everyone accepts the importance of physical health; isn't it just as important to aim for the mental equivalent? Philippa Perry has come to the rescue with How to Stay Sane -- a maintenance manual for the mind. Years of working as a psychotherapist showed Philippa Perry what approaches produced positive change in her clients and how best to maintain good mental health. In How to Stay Sane, she has taken these principles and applied them to self-help. Using ideas from neuroscience and sound psychological theory, she shows us how to better understand ourselves. Her idea is that if we know how our minds form and develop, we are less at the mercy of unknown unconscious processes. In this way, we can learn to be the master of our feelings and not their slave. This is a smart, pithy, readable book that everyone with even a passing interest in their psychological health will find useful.




"Don't You Know Who I Am?"


Book Description

“Don’t You Know Who I Am?” has become the mantra of the famous and infamous, the entitled and the insecure. It’s the tagline of the modern narcissist. Health and wellness campaigns preach avoidance of unhealthy foods, sedentary lifestyles, tobacco, drugs, and alcohol, but rarely preach avoidance of unhealthy, difficult or toxic people. Yet the health benefits of removing toxic people from your life may have far greater benefits to both physical and psychological health. We need to learn to be better gatekeepers for our minds, bodies, and souls. Narcissism, entitlement, and incivility have become the new world order, and we are all in trouble. They are not only normalized but also increasingly incentivized. They are manifestations of pathological insecurity—insecurities that are experienced at both the individual and societal level. The paradox is that we value these patterns. We venerate them through social media, mainstream media, and consumerism, and they are endemic in political, corporate, academic, and media leaders. There are few lives untouched by narcissists. These relationships infect those who are in them with self-doubt, despair, confusion, anxiety, depression, and the chronic feeling of being “not enough,” all of which make it so difficult to step away and set boundaries. The illusion of hope and the fantasy of redemption can result in years of second chances, and despondency when change never comes. It’s time for a wake-up call. It’s time to stem the tide of narcissism, entitlement, and antagonism, and take our lives back.




Mad Girl


Book Description

THE NUMBER 1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER AND RICHARD & JUDY BOOK CLUB 2017 PICK A new Sunday Times bestseller from Bryony Gordon, Telegraph columnist and author of the bestselling The Wrong Knickers. For readers who enjoyed Matt Haig's Reasons to Stay Alive and Ruby Wax's Sane New World, Mad Girl is a shocking, funny, unpredictable, heart-wrenching, raw and jaw-droppingly truthful celebration of life with mental illness. 'I loved it. A brilliant fast and funny and frank look at something that absolutely needs to be talked about in this way' Matt Haig Bryony Gordon has OCD. It's the snake in her brain that has told her ever since she was a teenager that her world is about to come crashing down: that her family might die if she doesn't repeat a phrase 5 times, or that she might have murdered someone and forgotten about it. It's caused alopecia, bulimia, and drug dependency. And Bryony is sick of it. Keeping silent about her illness has given it a cachet it simply does not deserve, so here she shares her story with trademark wit and dazzling honesty. A hugely successful columnist for the Telegraph, a bestselling author, and a happily married mother of an adorable daughter, Bryony has managed to laugh and live well while simultaneously grappling with her illness. Now it's time for her to speak out. Writing with her characteristic warmth and dark humour, Bryony explores her relationship with her OCD and depression as only she can. Mad Girl is a shocking, funny, unpredictable, heart-wrenching, raw and jaw-droppingly truthful celebration of life with mental illness.




Alchemy and Psychotherapy


Book Description

Alchemical symbols are part of popular culture, most recently popularised in the Harry Potter books. Alchemy intrigued Carl Jung, the founder of analytical psychology. It inspired him as he wrote ‘the Red Book’ - the journal of his voyage of internal discovery. He devoted much of his life to it, using alchemical symbols as metaphors for unconscious processes. Alchemy and Psychotherapy explores the issue of alchemy in the consulting room and its application to social and political issues. This book argues against the dominant discourse in contemporary psychotherapy - scientific materialism - and for the discovery of spiritual meaning. Alchemy and Psychotherapy has four main sections: ‘Alchemy and meaning’ - looks at the history of alchemy, particularly the symbol of the coniunctio - sacred marriage - a metaphor for the therapeutic relationship. 'The symbolic attitude’ - explores working with dreams, fairytales, astrology and the body: each of which is a symbolic language. ‘The spirit and the natural world’ - discusses the concept of 'burn out' - of therapists, our ecological resources, the mystical aspects of quantum physics and the philosophical underpinning of symbol formation. ‘Clinical Applications’ - shows alchemy’s use with victims of abuse, those struggling to secure gender identity, in anorexia and in ‘social healing’ - atonement and restorative justice - which apply the idea of the coniunctio. Alchemy and Psychotherapy is illustrated throughout with clinical examples, alchemical pictures and poetry which emphasise that alchemy is both a creative art and a science. Bringing together contributors from a wide range of disciplines, Dale Mathers and contributors show that therapy is both art and science, that the consulting room is the alchemical laboratory, and that their research is their creative engagement. Alchemy and Psychotherapy will be a valuable resource for practitioners, students at all levels of psychotherapy, analytical psychology, psychoanalysis and creative, art-based therapies and for creative practitioners (in film, literature and performing arts) who draw on Jung’s ideas.




Verity


Book Description

Whose truth is the lie? Stay up all night reading the sensational psychological thriller that has readers obsessed, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Too Late and It Ends With Us. #1 New York Times Bestseller · USA Today Bestseller · Globe and Mail Bestseller · Publishers Weekly Bestseller Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling writer on the brink of financial ruin when she accepts the job offer of a lifetime. Jeremy Crawford, husband of bestselling author Verity Crawford, has hired Lowen to complete the remaining books in a successful series his injured wife is unable to finish. Lowen arrives at the Crawford home, ready to sort through years of Verity’s notes and outlines, hoping to find enough material to get her started. What Lowen doesn’t expect to uncover in the chaotic office is an unfinished autobiography Verity never intended for anyone to read. Page after page of bone-chilling admissions, including Verity's recollection of the night her family was forever altered. Lowen decides to keep the manuscript hidden from Jeremy, knowing its contents could devastate the already grieving father. But as Lowen’s feelings for Jeremy begin to intensify, she recognizes all the ways she could benefit if he were to read his wife’s words. After all, no matter how devoted Jeremy is to his injured wife, a truth this horrifying would make it impossible for him to continue loving her.




Waiting for an Echo


Book Description

“A haunting and harrowing indictment . . . [a] significant achievement.” —The New York Times Book Review L.A. Times Book Prize Finalist * New York Times Book Review Paperback Row * Time Best New Books July 2020 Waiting for an Echo is a riveting, rarely seen glimpse into American jails and prisons. It is also a damning account of policies that have criminalized mental illness, shifting large numbers of people who belong in therapeutic settings into punitive ones. Dr. Christine Montross has spent her career treating the most severely ill psychiatric patients. This expertise—the mind in crisis—has enabled her to reckon with the human stories behind mass incarceration. A father attempting to weigh the impossible calculus of a plea bargain. A bright young woman whose life is derailed by addiction. Boys in a juvenile detention facility who, desperate for human connection, invent a way to communicate with one another from cell to cell. Overextended doctors and correctional officers who strive to provide care and security in environments riddled with danger. Our methods of incarceration take away not only freedom but also selfhood and soundness of mind. In a nation where 95 percent of all inmates are released from prison and return to our communities, this is a practice that punishes us all.




The Book of Two Ways


Book Description

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of Small Great Things and A Spark of Light comes a “powerful” (The Washington Post) novel about the choices that alter the course of our lives. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY MARIE CLAIRE Everything changes in a single moment for Dawn Edelstein. She’s on a plane when the flight attendant makes an announcement: Prepare for a crash landing. She braces herself as thoughts flash through her mind. The shocking thing is, the thoughts are not of her husband but of a man she last saw fifteen years ago: Wyatt Armstrong. Dawn, miraculously, survives the crash, but so do all the doubts that have suddenly been raised. She has led a good life. Back in Boston, there is her husband, Brian, their beloved daughter, and her work as a death doula, in which she helps ease the transition between life and death for her clients. But somewhere in Egypt is Wyatt Armstrong, who works as an archaeologist unearthing ancient burial sites, a career Dawn once studied for but was forced to abandon when life suddenly intervened. And now, when it seems that fate is offering her second chances, she is not as sure of the choice she once made. After the crash landing, the airline ensures that the survivors are seen by a doctor, then offers transportation to wherever they want to go. The obvious destination is to fly home, but she could take another path: return to the archaeological site she left years before, reconnect with Wyatt and their unresolved history, and maybe even complete her research on The Book of Two Ways—the first known map of the afterlife. As the story unfolds, Dawn’s two possible futures unspool side by side, as do the secrets and doubts long buried with them. Dawn must confront the questions she’s never truly asked: What does a life well lived look like? When we leave this earth, what do we leave behind? Do we make choices . . . or do our choices make us? And who would you be if you hadn’t turned out to be the person you are right now?