Healing through the Dark Emotions

Author: Miriam Greenspan
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 0834824272
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 338

Book Description
Nautilus Book Award Gold Winner A psychotherapist offers “crucial” guidance on how to “alter fundamentally our fearful relationship to deep feelings,” from depression and anxiety to grief and fear (Los Angeles Times) We are all touched at some point by the dark emotions of grief, fear, or despair. In an age of global threat, these emotions have become widespread and overwhelming. While conventional wisdom warns us of the harmful effects of “negative” emotions, this revolutionary book offers a more hopeful view: there is a redemptive power in our worst feelings. Seasoned psychotherapist Miriam Greenspan argues that it’s the avoidance and denial of the dark emotions that results in the escalating psychological disorders of our time: depression, anxiety, addiction, psychic numbing, and irrational violence. And she shows us how to trust the wisdom of the dark emotions to guide, heal, and transform our lives and our world. Drawing on inspiring stories from her psychotherapy practice and personal life, and including a complete set of emotional exercises, Greenspan teaches the art of emotional alchemy by which grief turns to gratitude, fear opens the door to joy, and despair becomes the ground of a more resilient faith in life. “This remarkable book has taught me a whole new way of thinking.” —Harold Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People “A beautiful piece of work destined to become a perennial classic.” —Martha Beck, author of The Joy Diet

Finding Hope in the Darkness of Grief

Author: Diamante Lavendar
Publisher: Balboa Press
ISBN: 1982205695
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 85

Book Description
This earthly plane offers much for us to learn: happiness, wisdom, loss, heartbreak, and enlightenment. It is a Pandora's box of emotions, situations, opportunities, and failures, all wrapped into a package we call life. Nobody is immune, but everyone has the opportunity to grow tall or wither like a flower in harsh light. It's completely up to us how we choose to respond. Finding Hope in the Darkness of Grief is a gleaning of insights from artist Diamante Lavender. For her, life has been a long, difficult road, but it has taught many poignant lessons. Her poetry collection is an exploration of the human soul, a traversing of situations that life throws at us. Diamante has always been intrigued by the ability to overcome and move on to bigger and better things. She writes to encourage hope and possibility in those who read her stories. If she can help others heal, as she has, then Diamante's work as an author and artist will have been well spent. She believes that everyone should try to leave a positive mark on the world, to make it a better place for all. Writing is the way that she is attempting to leave her markone story at a time.

The HEALING CHOICE

Author: Dana Dovitch
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439147310
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Book Description
Two psychotherapists present a supportive guide to coping with the emotional and psychological aftermath of abortion, offering a step-by-step program that combines information, reassurance, and guidance to help women begin the process of recovery. “This is a book for any women who feels psychological pain from her abortion…this is not a book about judgment, politics, or religion.” –from the authors’ introduction Few women can walk away from the experience of abortion without some lingering emotional discomfort. Unresolved feelings of guilt, shame, and sadness may not surface until months, often years, after an abortion. We may lead outwardly normal lives, but these emotions can continue to cast a shadow, having a negative impact on personal relationships, coloring our moral or religious beliefs, even causing anxiety when we deal with a planned pregnancy. These feelings, if ignored, can possibly manifest themselves in more troubling ways, resulting in unstable relationships, self-destructive and addictive behaviors, depression, and low self-esteem. Now, two experienced psychotherapists share their approach to dealing with sensitive and long-overlooked issue of post-abortion pain or trauma. The Healing Choice breaks the silence surrounding a topic often clouded by debate and focuses exclusively on helping women chart a path toward emotional recovery. Through a step-by-step process, complete with self-tests, exercises, and interviews with women who share their own post-abortion experiences, Dr. Candace De Puy and Dr. Dana Dovitch will help you come to terms with your post-abortion emotions and offer support as you begin the process of healing.

Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief

Author: Claire Bidwell Smith
Publisher: Da Capo Lifelong Books
ISBN: 0738234761
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 249

Book Description
With this groundbreaking book, discover the critical connections between anxiety and grief—and learn practical strategies for healing, based on the Kübler-Ross stages model. If you're suffering from anxiety but not sure why, or if you're struggling with loss and looking for solace, Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief offers help and answers. As grief expert Claire Bidwell Smith discovered in her own life—and in her practice with her therapy clients—significant loss and unresolved grief are primary underpinnings of anxiety. Using research and real life stories, Smith breaks down the physiology of anxiety, providing a concrete explanation that will help you heal. Starting with the basics questions—“What is anxiety?” and “What is grief?” and moving to concrete approaches such as making amends, taking charge, and retraining your brain, Anxiety takes a big step beyond Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's widely accepted five stages to unpack everything from our age-old fears about mortality to the bare vulnerability a loss can make us feel. With concrete tools and coping strategies for panic attacks, getting a handle on anxious thoughts, and more, Smith bridges these two emotions in a way that is deeply empathetic and profoundly practical.

Healing for Damaged Emotions

Author: David A. Seamands
Publisher: David C Cook
ISBN: 0781413532
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 178

Book Description
Events in our lives, both good and bad, form rings in us like the rings in a tree. Each ring records memories that affect our feelings, our relationships, and our thoughts about God. In this classic work, David Seamands encourages us to live compassionately with ourselves as we allow the Holy Spirit to heal our past. As he helps us name hurdles in our lives—such as guilt, poor self-worth, and perfectionism—he shows us how we can find freedom from our pain and enjoy the abundant life God wants for us.

Healing Wounded Emotions

Author: Martin H. Padovani
Publisher: Twenty-Third Publications
ISBN: 9780896223332
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 140

Book Description
In this empathetic and inspiring resource, Padovani describes how one's emotional and spiritual lives interact, as he challenges readers to live fuller, more satisfying lives.

The Heroin Addict's Mother

Author: Miriam Greenspan
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
ISBN: 9781636495354
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 112

Book Description
Out of the maelstrom of a daughter's heroin addiction come these gripping poems of love and powerlessness, tenacity and surrender, brokenness and resilience. In The Heroin Addict's Mother, eminent psychologist and author of the bestselling Healing Through the Dark Emotions: The Wisdom of Grief, Fear, and Despair offers an intimate memoir that serves as a poetry of witness to the opiate epidemic that is ravaging millions of families throughout the United States. A...gritty and stirring collection of heartfelt poems...emanating from the power...of a mother's undying love for her addicted child. These poems will resonate with so many out in the world suffering from addiction. John F. Kelly, Professor of Psychiatry in Addiction Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Founder/Director, Recovery Research Institute, Mass General Hospital Greenspan gifts us with...forceful and courageous poems that speak not only to mothers of addicted children, but to all of us who have feared and fought for our children to be safe and well. Harriet Lerner, Author of The Dance of Anger Only a true poet can tell such truths with such power... Deena Metzger, Author of Ruin and Beauty ...breathtaking, truly brilliant. Destined to be tremendously helpful to so many people going through similar terrifying, gut-wrenching experience and to help others understand in great depth what that world is like. Paula J. Caplan, Author of Don't Blame Mother: Mending the Mother-Daughter Relationship Miriam's words capture the essence of what we who are touched by addiction live and breathe. They remind us we are not alone and that we too can recover. Joanne Peterson, Founder/Executive Director

Shame and Pride

Author: Donald L. Nathanson
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393311099
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 500

Book Description
This is a revolutionary book about the nature of emotion, about the way emotions are triggered in our private moments, in our relations with others, and by our biology. Drawing on every theme of the modern life sciences, Dr. Nathanson shows how the nine basic affects--interest-excitement, enjoyment-joy, surprise-startle, fear-terror, distress-anguish, anger-rage, dissmell, disgust, and shame-humiliation--not only determine how we feel but shape our very sense of self. For too long there has been a battle between those who explain emotional discomfort on the basis of lived experience and those who blame chemistry. As Dr. Nathanson shows, chemicals and illnesses can affect our mood just as surely as an uncomfortable memory or a stern rebuke. He presents a completely new understanding of all emotion, providing the first link between the exciting affect theory of Silvan Tomkins and the entire world of biology, medicine, psychology, psychotherapy, religion, and the social sciences. Shame is the least understood of the painful emotions, although it affects every phase of life. We have all been made to feel foolish just at the moment we most wanted to appear wonderful; we have all been rebuffed by those we wished to court. Not one of us looks exactly as we might wish. Shame haunts our every dream of love, and influences how we experience ourselves as sexual beings. We react to shame by withdrawing, by making painful alliances with those who humiliate us, by calling attention to what brings us pride, or by attacking whoever has made us feel inferior. The comedian, as Nathanson shows in his discussion of Buddy Hackett, makes us laugh at what we try to keep hidden, transforming shame intoacceptance and even pride. This book explains everything that can possibly make us proud or ashamed. All are in this book; nobody who reads it will be quite the same again.

A New Approach to Women & Therapy

Author: Miriam Greenspan
Publisher: Tab Books
ISBN: 9780070243927
Category : Feminist therapy
Languages : en
Pages : 388

Book Description
Writing for a broad range of readers interested in psychotherapy & women's issues, Greenspan tells of her own experiences in therapy & those of many of her patients. These stories clearly illustrate how treatment approaches based on traditional male attitudes pathologize & devalue women. This highly readable, detailed, & critical study does more than expose the failures of male-biased psychotherapy-it offers a positive alternative treatment model which recognizes women's emotional pain & is based on an empowering therapeutic relationship. Greenspan gives several case examples of feminist treatment techniques, explaining the rationale behind each & assisting readers in the search for a therapist who subscribes to them. In her exciting new introduction, & dangers of the codependency recovery movement for women's psychological healing, & a new vision of feminist therapy as a means of bringing about planetary healing.

Love and the Mystery of Betrayal

Author: Sandra Lee Dennis
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780986068423
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Book Description
What is it like to recover from betrayal of trust today in a culture that is blind to the trauma and impatient with grief? When her long-time partner suddenly left her shortly before their wedding, the author found nothing had prepared her for the depth and duration of the pain. Despite having lived through her husband's death years earlier, she was stunned by the intensity of the suffering and could not understand why this shock hit so hard. Her loss of faith in this one person precipitated an existential and spiritual crisis that called her very understanding of human nature into question, and she wanted to know why. As she wrested with what turned out to be a massive trauma, she began to keep careful notes of her inner life-hoping to capture the paradoxes of love, grief and longing mixed with bewilderment and post-traumatic stress. With fearlessness and bracing frankness, she succeeds. "Love and the Mystery of Betrayal" seamlessly blends research and reflection, love and heartbreak, rage and transformation, and the personal with the collective. The deep, engaging writing provides the type of solace only a kindred spirit who has been there can. This achingly moving chronicle and meditation on the mysteries of love and betrayal shows how faith and love can triumph even after the most life-shattering revelations and loss. "This story of heartbreak has a rare quality: it is absolutely honest." -Ginette Paris, PhD, "Heartbreak" ..".a powerful book that will serve many." -Tara Brach, PhD, "Radical Acceptance," "True Refuge" "Sandra Dennis does not sugar-coat the experience of abandonment and betrayal with easy tips on getting over it or with spiritual bypass sleight of hand.... A much needed contribution to our collective healing..." -Francis Weller, Founder of Wisdom Bridge, "Entering the Healing Ground" "What Sandra Dennis tells us about the transformative power of suffering is so important and so true. I hope many read this book; many surely are in need of it." -Fr. Richard Rohr, "Silent Compassion," "Breathing Underwater" ..".a rare and beautiful book...invaluable for anyone interested in harnessing the deepest human heartbreak as a crucible for spiritual awakening....a triumph of spirit." -Miranda Macpherson, "Boundless Love" ..".a powerful and thoughtful book right from the heart that will be a source of comfort and assistance to a lot of hurting people." -Lundy Bancroft, "Why Does He Do That?" ..".probes the subject of betrayal in an almost kinesthetic way, like a dance that is also superbly intelligent." -Charlie Fisher, PhD," Meditation in the Wild" and "Dismantling Discontent" "What a remarkable book Sandra Dennis has written! I celebrate her courage and discoveries, and welcome her home!" -Gangaji, "Hidden Treasure," "A Diamond in Your Pocket"