Becoming Your Own Emotional Support System

Develop resources to overcome the obstacles preventing recovery Not everyone facing difficult life situations has the resources to recover. Many times, we must deal with these problems alone or without a wide base of support. Becoming Your Own Emotional Support System provides practical ideas and encouragement to help people alienated from the consolation of others to become a community of one. This unique book guides individuals through the step-by-step process of developing the self-support system vital to the early stages of successful recovery. Both comprehensive and easy to read, Becoming Your Own Emotional Support System is designed as a how-to manual for those who are coping with life’s challenging circumstances but lack the necessary emotional support. It is an important tool that empowers while it educates. Through three easy-to-understand sections, this book presents a useable method for coping with tumultuous situations and making meaningful progress toward healing. The first section presents nine in-depth realistic case studies that dismantle familiar difficulties and explore successful responses to each. Section two tackles the various barriers that can arise in the process and considers how they affect a positive life perspective. The final section incorporates this useable knowledge into the specific steps that will help you to create a community of one. These realistic and easy-to-follow instructions form the sturdy foundation for a build toward real recovery. Becoming Your Own Emotional Support System looks at topics such as: divorce and what happens when new identities are forced upon us chronic illness and ways of discovering our lost selves in the changes it brings spiritual crisis and accessing the hidden treasure of our spiritual resources sexual abuse and understanding some of the challenges stigmas pose ADHD and the importance of identifying the unnecessary and letting it go mental illness and expectations of real world goals obesity and recapturing a worthiness of self alcoholism and taking “necessary risks” to affect change domestic violence and daring to make a “leap of faith” barriers to recovery and what to expect when they arise facing fear and moving on correcting thought distortions and many more! With this process, Becoming Your Own Emotional Support System positions the reader in a community of one so that joining a community of many is again possible. It helps those working through life’s difficulties engage in their own healing and apply the necessary skills so they can once more enjoy satisfying and mutually supportive relationships. Both accessible and enlightening, Becoming Your Own Emotional Support System is an essential resource for anyone facing difficult situations alone as well as to mental health professionals, counselors, and anyone looking to find or offer understanding, comfort, and hope in times of suffering.

Originally published by Viking Penguin, 2014.

BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Dr. Susan Forward's Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them. When you were a child... Did your parents tell you were bad or worthless? Did your parents use physical pain to discipline you? Did you have to take care of your parents because of their problems? Were you frightened of your parents? Did your parents do anything to you that had to be kept secret? Now that you are an adult... Do your parents still treat you as if you were a child? Do you have intense emotional or physical reactions after spending time with your parents? Do your parents control you with threats or guilt? Do they manipulate you with money? Do you feel that no matter what you do, it's never good enough for your parents? In this remarkable self-help guide, Dr. Susan Forward drawn on case histories and the real-life voices of adult children of toxic parents to help you free yourself from the frustrating patterns of your relationship with your parents -- and discover an exciting new world of self-confidence, inner strength, and emotional independence.

The mental well-being of children and adults is shockingly poor. Marc Brackett, author of Permission to Feel, knows why. And he knows what we can do. "We have a crisis on our hands, and its victims are our children." Marc Brackett is a professor in Yale University’s Child Study Center and founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. In his 25 years as an emotion scientist, he has developed a remarkably effective plan to improve the lives of children and adults – a blueprint for understanding our emotions and using them wisely so that they help, rather than hinder, our success and well-being. The core of his approach is a legacy from his childhood, from an astute uncle who gave him permission to feel. He was the first adult who managed to see Marc, listen to him, and recognize the suffering, bullying, and abuse he’d endured. And that was the beginning of Marc’s awareness that what he was going through was temporary. He wasn’t alone, he wasn’t stuck on a timeline, and he wasn’t “wrong” to feel scared, isolated, and angry. Now, best of all, he could do something about it. In the decades since, Marc has led large research teams and raised tens of millions of dollars to investigate the roots of emotional well-being. His prescription for healthy children (and their parents, teachers, and schools) is a system called RULER, a high-impact and fast-effect approach to understanding and mastering emotions that has already transformed the thousands of schools that have adopted it. RULER has been proven to reduce stress and burnout, improve school climate, and enhance academic achievement. This book is the culmination of Marc’s development of RULER and his way to share the strategies and skills with readers around the world. It is tested, and it works. This book combines rigor, science, passion and inspiration in equal parts. Too many children and adults are suffering; they are ashamed of their feelings and emotionally unskilled, but they don’t have to be. Marc Brackett’s life mission is to reverse this course, and this book can show you how.

This book will change the way we understand the future of our planet. It is both alarming and hopeful. James Gustave Speth, renowned as a visionary environmentalist leader, warns that in spite of all the international negotiations and agreements of the past two decades, efforts to protect Earth's environment are not succeeding. Still, he says, the challenges are not insurmountable. He offers comprehensive, viable new strategies for dealing with environmental threats around the world. The author explains why current approaches to critical global environmental problems - climate change, biodiversity loss, deterioration of marine environments, deforestation, water shortages, and others - don't work. He offers intriguing insights into why we have been able to address domestic environmental threats with some success while largely failing at the international level. Setting forth eight specific steps to a sustainable future, Speth convincingly argues that dramatically different government and citizen action are now urgent. If ever a book could be described as essential, this is it.

A comprehensive handbook covering social interaction skills & skill acquisition, in the context of personal, professional, and public stages. For scholars & students in interpersonal, group, family & health communication.

“Opens doors to richer, more connected relationships by naming the elephant in the room ‘Childhood Emotional Neglect’” (Harville Hendrix, PhD & Helen Lakelly Hunt, PhD, authors of the New York Times bestseller Getting the Love You Want). Since the publication of Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect, many thousands of people have learned that invisible Childhood Emotional Neglect, or CEN, has been weighing on them their entire lives, and are now in the process of recovery. Running on Empty No More: Transform Your Relationships will offer even more solutions for the effects of CEN on people’s lives: how to talk about CEN, and heal it, in relationships with partners, parents, and children. “Filled with examples of well-meaning people struggling in their relationships, Jonice Webb not only illustrates what’s missing between adults and their parents, husbands, and their wives, and parents and their children; she also explains exactly what to do about it.” —Terry Real, internationally recognized family therapist, speaker and author, Good Morning America, The Today Show, 20/20, Oprah, and The New York Times “You will find practical solutions for everyday life to heal yourself and your relationships. This is a terrific new resource that I will be recommending to many clients now and in the future!” —Dr. Karyl McBride, author of Will I Ever Be Good Enough?

This book's unbeatable combination of sound financial planning advice and psychological therapy will help widows (and widowers) in all situations take charge of their lives and forge ahead. On Your Own is filled with practical strategies, including selecting a retirement home, choosing the best insurance, and using a living trust to secure an estate.