The Recovering Heart

Your old, destructive lifestyle is fading into the past and now you are a woman in recovery. What an amazing gift you’ve given yourself. So why aren’t you happier? As sobriety takes hold and your head starts to clear, a wide range of emotions can begin to emerge—feelings that until now you’ve “medicated” with chemicals. Yet to stay sober, and to grow and flourish as a person, you must engage in healing and take responsibility for these long-neglected emotions. Beverly Conyers, a prominent voice in recovery, uses personal stories and informed insight to guide you in achieving emotional sobriety by addressing behaviors and feelings unique to the female experience. Learn how to develop the inner resiliency to face and process difficult, buried emotions—such as shame, grief, fear, and anger—while freeing the positive feelings of self- worth, independence, and integrity. Discover how to heal your “damaged self” by improving your communication skills, expanding your capacity for intimacy and trust, and reawakening a spiritual life. As you heal your wounded heart, you can free yourself to a life of self-acceptance and lay the foundation for a rewarding and relapse-free second stage of recovery.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Empathy Exams comes this transformative work showing that sometimes the recovery is more gripping than the addiction. With its deeply personal and seamless blend of memoir, cultural history, literary criticism, and reportage, The Recovering turns our understanding of the traditional addiction narrative on its head, demonstrating that the story of recovery can be every bit as electrifying as the train wreck itself. Leslie Jamison deftly excavates the stories we tell about addiction -- both her own and others' -- and examines what we want these stories to do and what happens when they fail us. All the while, she offers a fascinating look at the larger history of the recovery movement, and at the complicated bearing that race and class have on our understanding of who is criminal and who is ill. At the heart of the book is Jamison's ongoing conversation with literary and artistic geniuses whose lives and works were shaped by alcoholism and substance dependence, including John Berryman, Jean Rhys, Billie Holiday, Raymond Carver, Denis Johnson, and David Foster Wallace, as well as brilliant lesser-known figures such as George Cain, lost to obscurity but newly illuminated here. Through its unvarnished relation of Jamison's own ordeals, The Recovering also becomes a book about a different kind of dependency: the way our desires can make us all, as she puts it, "broken spigots of need." It's about the particular loneliness of the human experience-the craving for love that both devours us and shapes who we are. For her striking language and piercing observations, Jamison has been compared to such iconic writers as Joan Didion and Susan Sontag, yet her utterly singular voice also offers something new. With enormous empathy and wisdom, Jamison has given us nothing less than the story of addiction and recovery in America writ large, a definitive and revelatory account that will resonate for years to come.

Daily reflections for those searching for lasting recovery from sex addiction. The supportive and motivational thoughts in this bestselling collection of daily readings promise to spark the healing, hope, and personal growth anyone addicted to sex needs to embrace recovery. Part of the Hazelden Meditation series, each thought of the day inspires the strength, courage, and mindfulness readers need to overcome patterns of sexual compulsion. Featuring 366 affirmations that complement any Twelve Step program for love addiction or an unhealthy dependence on sexual behavior, this book will become the touchstone to your transformation.

Although eating disorders are usually talked about as diseases of the young, 1 in 5 women of all ages in the U. S. suffers from one. Now psychotherapist Joanna Poppink offers healing and recovery for women 30, 40, 50 or beyond. Her step-by-step program helps you identify early warning signs of an eating disorder, common pitfalls of recovery, your triggers, and the effect the disorder is having on your health and relationships. Then, she steers you toward healing.

Drawing on cutting-edge research and advice from internationally prominent cardiologists, The 10 Best Questions™ for Recovering from a Heart Attack is a holistic guide you'll take with you into your doctor's office and keep close to you through every step of your treatment and recovery. A good mind knows the right answers, but a great mind knows the right questions. And never are the Best Questions more important than after the life-altering event of surviving a heart attack or being diagnosed with heart disease. Drawing on cutting-edge research and advice from internationally prominent cardiologists, the president of the American Heart Association, award-winning personal trainers and nutritionists, and experts in healthy lifestyles, smoking cessation, alcohol abuse, stress management, spirituality, relationships, sex, and financial planning, The 10 Best Questions™ for Recovering from a Heart Attack is a holistic guide you'll take with you into your doctor's office and keep close to you through every step of your treatment and recovery. With a wealth of resources and up-to-the-minute information, The 10 Best Questions™ for Recovering from a Heart Attack shows you and your family how to move beyond your fears and use the power of the Best Questions and Magic Questions (the smartest questions most people never think to ask) to become your own best advocate for your physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, and financial health.

Step inside the mind of 'Ben', an open heart surgery patient, as he takes the journey from initial diagnosis through lying on the slab, his heart literally in somebody else’s hands, and the subsequent roller-coaster of emotions as he seeks 'recovery'. Share his hopes, expectations, frustrations, joy, laughter, camaraderie and loneliness as he takes the journey. Written for the hundreds of thousands of people who will find themselves in a similar position each year. You are not alone. After the initial shock of being told that he needed open heart surgery, his thoughts quickly turned to practical matters. He was self-employed and so lived by the “No show, no dough” edict. Not working could quickly have repercussions that he needed to plan for. He wanted to be able to give people who would be affected some sort of an idea of what to expect while he recovered. And recover he would. He had no doubt about that. When you have an idea of what to expect, you can handle adversity a whole lot more effectively. All he needed was to have general guidelines to three simple questions: - What should he expect? - What could he do to speed up a recovery? - And how long was he really likely to be out of action for? He expected standard answers to be readily available. The success rate was encouragingly high – way over ninety per cent - and it was performed hundreds of thousands of times a year around the globe. It would be bizarre if there wasn’t a well-established set of standards by now. But there wasn’t. Or at least there wasn’t one he could find, no matter how hard he looked. And the more he looked and asked for it, the more vague was the answer. “It’s complicated. It depends.” Feedback from readers and reviewers include heart-warming comments about how the story has helped to explain events affecting loved ones that they were ‘protected’ from when they were small children. "This book is brilliant. It takes you through so many emotions and you get a real insight into not only how the patient feels but also what the family goes through during times like this. Suitable for people before an op, post op as well as friends and family going through this ordeal, but also a great read in general! The emotions hit hard in some places, but at the same time provides a lot of entertainment! A must read for everyone!!" “This will be immensely reassuring to anyone going through this experience.” “Enthralling. I didn’t want to put it down. Everyone knows somebody who has had similar fears.” “Hugely encouraging and enlightening.” “Great to highlight this, so other families will know what to expect.” “Breaks down so many unknowns” “I was hooked after the first few pages” “I do believe this would help enormously” “As a story I was eager to find out what lay ahead in the journey; as an education I was keen to get a better understanding to the whole experience, and having read it I feel like I would have so much more empathy / be more effective” “Read it right through in one sitting” “I'm not too proud to admit that I shed a tear reading it”

Volume Two of one of our most popular books. Sober AA members describe the positive transformations sobriety can bring as they practice the principles of the program in all aspects of their lives.

Imagine if we treated broken hearts with the same respect and concern we have for broken arms? Psychologist Guy Winch urges us to rethink the way we deal with emotional pain, offering warm, wise, and witty advice for the broken-hearted. Real heartbreak is unmistakable. We think of nothing else. We feel nothing else. We care about nothing else. Yet while we wouldn’t expect someone to return to daily activities immediately after suffering a broken limb, heartbroken people are expected to function normally in their lives, despite the emotional pain they feel. Now psychologist Guy Winch imagines how different things would be if we paid more attention to this unique emotion—if only we can understand how heartbreak works, we can begin to fix it. Through compelling research and new scientific studies, Winch reveals how and why heartbreak impacts our brain and our behavior in dramatic and unexpected ways, regardless of our age. Emotional pain lowers our ability to reason, to think creatively, to problem solve, and to function at our best. In How to Fix a Broken Heart he focuses on two types of emotional pain—romantic heartbreak and the heartbreak that results from the loss of a cherished pet. These experiences are both accompanied by severe grief responses, yet they are not deemed as important as, for example, a formal divorce or the loss of a close relative. As a result, we are often deprived of the recognition, support, and compassion afforded to those whose heartbreak is considered more significant. Our heart might be broken, but we do not have to break with it. Winch reveals that recovering from heartbreak always starts with a decision, a determination to move on when our mind is fighting to keep us stuck. We can take control of our lives and our minds and put ourselves on the path to healing. Winch offers a toolkit on how to handle and cope with a broken heart and how to, eventually, move on.