Healthy Dependency

Asking for help does not mean we are helpless. This is one of the main principles of what the authors call ''connection-based thinking'' - the most important Healthy Dependency skill, which will help us better to meet life's challenges. In this groundbreaking book, the authors clearly lay out the priniciples and hte four-step action program they developed to help us grow stronger by reaching out to others. They write that it's time to move beyond society's not-so-subtle message that depending on people is wrong - that ''mature'' adults somehow manage everything on their own in a complex, challenging world. Their more than twenty years of research and study prove that too much dependency in our relationships - whether with family, friends, lovers, or co-workers - can be a bad thing, but too little dependency is just as bad. To achieve a balance and better define this flexible middle ground between rigid independence and unhealthy overdependence, Dr. Bornstein coined the phrase ''Healthy Dependency'' and, with his colleague and wife, has written the definitive book on the subject. Laced with case studies, anecdotes, and questionnaires, Healthy Dependency gives us the skill-building tools to help us change the way we think about ourselves and others. Among the benefits are increased satisfaction in love relationships, greater likelihood of academic and career success, better family communication, improved parenting skills, and enhanced physical and psychological health.

2012 gold medal winner in the self-help category of the prestigious Ippy Awards This book offers effective strategies to help erase poverty. It advocates self-reliance, policy reform, and cultural awareness. Accountability is required from all: the middle class, the trust fund babies, and the underprivileged who see themselves as perpetual victims and have fallen into the entitlement trap. True blue prints are offered to rescue people from an economical slump and help them improve their lives, and re-obtain a sense of self-worth.

The first authoritative and comprehensive guide to "aging in place"--a burgeoning movement for those who don't want to rely on assisted living or nursing home care--which allows seniors to spend their later years living comfortably, independently, and in their own home or community. For millions of Americans, living in a nursing home or assisted living facility is not how they’d prefer to spend their retirement years. This is why more and more people are choosing to “age in place.” In this empowering and indispensable book, clinical psychologists and aging specialists Mary Languirand and Robert Bornstein teach readers how, with planning and foresight, they can age with dignity and comfort in the place of their own choosing. How to Age in Place offers useful, actionable advice on financial planning; making your home physically safe; getting around; obtaining necessary services; keeping a healthy mind, body, and spirit; and post-retirement employment. A necessary resource for seniors, their adult children, and eldercare professionals, How to Age in Place is both a practical roadmap and inspirational guide for the millions of seniors who want to make their own decisions and age well.

Perspectives on Addiction presents a comprehensive, rigorous, and reflective overview of the complex and controversial field of chemical dependency. It is designed for students and clinicians who come in contact with and treat individuals and families struggling with the causes and consequences of substance use disorders. The user-friendly approach to serious content encourages active participation in the learning experience and is designed to have a personal, professional, educational and treatment impact. Readers will develop a novel appreciation for a human desire that pleasures, confounds, and destroys.

This unique book, meticulously organized and laced throughout with case studies, anecdotes, relationship-style questionnaires, and research findings, draws from the authors' more than 20 years of research and clinical experience. A valuable guide to achieving healthy relationships between men and women of all ages, it will help readers identify where they are on the relationship continuum, and understand the skills they will need to address in order to strengthen their personal, professional, and family relationships.

Perspectives on Substance Use, Disorders and Addiction, Second Edition, is a philosophical and clinical text that suggests new ways to think about the relationships, enjoyment, and troubles with substances of pleasure. The book is designed for students and clinicians who come in contact with and treat individuals and families struggling with the causes and consequences of substance use disorders and addiction. The second edition of Perspectives presents a refreshing blend of ancient and contemporary ideas on the natural pleasures and potential powers of alcohol and drugs in our everyday individual and collective lives.

"Personality is not about what disorders you have but about who you are. It refers to a person's characteristic patterns of thought, feeling, behavior, motivation, defense, interpersonal functioning, and ways of experiencing self and others. All people have personalities and personality styles. While there are as many personalities as people, clinical knowledge accrued over generations has given rise to a taxonomy of familiar personality styles or types. Most people, whether healthy or troubled, fit somewhere in the taxonomy. Empirical research over the past two decades has confirmed the major personality types and their core features.1-5 Most clinical theorists do not view the personality types as inherently disordered. They are generally discussed in the clinical literature as personality types, styles, or syndromes-not "disorders." Each exists on a continuum of functioning from healthy to severely disturbed. The term "disorder" is best regarded as a linguistic convenience for clinicians, denoting a degree of extremity or rigidity that causes significant dysfunction, limitation, or suffering. One can have, for example, a narcissistic personality style without having narcissistic personality disorder. The same personality dynamics give rise to both strengths and weaknesses. A person with a healthy narcissistic personality style has the confidence to dream big dreams and pursue them; they can be visionaries, innovators, and founders. A person with a healthy obsessive-compulsive style excels in areas requiring precise, analytic thinking; they may be successful engineers, scientists, or academics. A person with a healthy paranoid style looks beneath the surface and sees what others miss; they may be investigative journalists or brilliant medical diagnosticians. Our best and worst qualities are often cut from the same psychological cloth"--

Teachers and Mental Health is my attempt to teach the teachers of children (teachers and parents) some of what I have learned over 40 years of doing therapy, about the rather simple, but apparently poorly understood factors in childhood thinking that go on to create a lot of mental distress by adulthood. Some of the points in this book are: Teachers teach correct speech, but most do not teach accurate speech We end up believing what we say, which is why it is so impor tant to say it accurately We end up acting on what we believe, which is another r eason why it is so impor tant to say it accurately Children have a delusional belief system that sometimes continues throughout adult life A minimum of half of the world is in a delusional state all the time, and 98% of people respond to at least one situation in a delusional fashion one or more times during an average day. Our general understanding of the word responsible, contributes greatly to misunderstandings and poor outcomes in life Failure to understand high and low levels of abstraction in our speech (and thinking) generates mistakes in communication.