Psychology

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER

"My Grandmother's Hands will change the direction of the movement for racial justice."— Robin DiAngelo, New York Times bestselling author of White Fragility

In this groundbreaking book, therapist Resmaa Menakem examines the damage caused by racism in America from the perspective of trauma and body-centered psychology.

The body is where our instincts reside and where we fight, flee, or freeze, and it endures the trauma inflicted by the ills that plague society. Menakem argues this destruction will continue until Americans learn to heal the generational anguish of white supremacy, which is deeply embedded in all our bodies. Our collective agony doesn't just affect African Americans. White Americans suffer their own secondary trauma as well. So do blue Americans—our police.

My Grandmother's Hands is a call to action for all of us to recognize that racism is not only about the head, but about the body, and introduces an alternative view of what we can do to grow beyond our entrenched racialized divide.

• Paves the way for a new, body-centered understanding of white supremacy—how it is literally in our blood and our nervous system.

• Offers a step-by-step healing process based on the latest neuroscience and somatic healing methods, in addition to incisive social commentary.

From the authors of the Irrelationship series comes an insightful guidebook for enhancing the most vital relationship in every person's life—the one they have with themselves.

Making Your Crazy Work for You adopts the irrelationship model to present a step-by-step program for self-understanding and catalyzing change. Our "crazy" refers to our unique reaction to our own pain, fear, and anxiety brought on by isolation from others and ourself. This unrecognized isolation can occur even when we are surrounded by other people in our daily lives. However, by learning to listen to our craziness, we can use it as a tool for ending isolation and opening up to love.

Drawn from the authors' personal experience and clinical practice, each chapter features new case studies, exercises, and tools to help readers to 

• reverse unhealthy behavior patterns
• learn to access their genuine emotions, needs, and ideas
• create better relationships
  

A new edition of Dr. Claudia Black's comprehensive manual designed for addiction treatment professionals for use treating patients affected by depression

This fully updated and revised edition is meant for clinicians versed in identifying and treating depression within the context of treating addiction. What sets this book apart from other depression workbooks is that it holds a healthy respect for cognitive behavioral modalities while recognizing the role of effective and spiritual interventions related to depressive disorders.

Dr. Black provides didactic information and reproducible handouts. In many of the strategies sections, she presents ideas and formats for structured interventions. The use of handouts in the form of written exercises, checklists, sentence stems, structured dialogues, and/or art activities is an integral part of this therapeutic technique.

A far-ranging examination of how the effects of addiction and trauma in the family can reverberate for generations

Trauma and addictive disorders are often a result of psychological injuries experienced as a child. These injuries typically produce long-term and harmful generational consequences on loved ones and other family members. Claudia Black presents a searing portrait of a broken family system, exploring how addiction and trauma develop and how their damaging repetition uproots and frequently destroys one's family tree. Filled with vignettes highlighting the various causes of trauma, Dr. Black helps readers understand its physiology and psychology and gives them healing, proactive steps to build healthier relationships.

Claudia Black, PhD, is internationally recognized for her pioneering and cutting-edge work with family systems and addictive disorders. Her work with children affected by drug and alcohol addiction in the late 1970s fueled the advancement of the codependency and developmental trauma fields. Dr. Black's passion to help young adults overcome obstacles and strengthen families built the foundation of the Claudia Black Young Adult Center at The Meadows. Not only is Dr. Black the clinical architect of this innovative treatment program, she is also actively involved with the treatment team, patients, and their families.

A friendly, candid, and comforting guide for isolating times when we have no one to count on.

Despite the inclusive promise of social media, loneliness is a growing epidemic in the United States. Social isolation can shatter our confidence. In isolating times, we’re not only lonely, we’re also ashamed because our society stigmatizes people who appear to be without support.

As a single, fifty-eight-year-old woman, Val Walker found herself stranded and alone after major surgery when her friends didn’t show up. As a professional rehabilitation counselor, she was too embarrassed to reveal how utterly isolated she was by asking for someone to help, and it felt agonizingly awkward calling colleagues out of the blue. As she recovered, Val found her voice and developed a plan of action for people who lack social support, not only to heal from the pain of isolation, but to create a solid strategy for rebuilding a sense of community.

400 Friends and No One to Call spells out the how-tos for befriending our wider community, building a social safety net, and fostering our sense of belonging. On a deeper level, we are invited to befriend our loneliness, rather than feel ashamed of it, and open our hearts and minds to others trapped in isolation.

People today are struggling with an unprecedented rise in mental health concerns such as depression, eating disorders, substance abuse, behavioral addictions, suicide, and more. The greatest barriers to getting help are their shame, their self-loathing, and the belief that their situation is hopeless. Undaunted Hope destigmatizes these disorders and invites readers to take the first step to help: asking for it. 

Through the narratives of twenty-one alumni from Meadows Behavioral Healthcare, world-renowned treatment facilities, readers may see themselves in parts of the stories—and ultimately find the courage to ask for help. Each storyteller reveals the origins of their struggles, the chaotic course of events leading up to treatment, what help entailed, and how their lives became richer, fuller, and more hopeful once they were willing to take the first step toward healing. 

This urgent and timely book presents the stories of the therapeutic work that occurs in Meadows' facilities, recognizing that trauma is most often the underlying issue to people’s struggles. The groundbreaking work at The Meadows has been validated by the landmark Adverse Childhood Experience Study (ACEs) carried out by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the past twenty-five years. These studies repetitively demonstrate the relationship of various traumas to mental health, substance abuse, and behavioral healthcare problems. 

Find lasting relief from worry and stress with powerful techniques grounded in clinical experience and neuroscience. 

If you feel frazzled, you dwell in good company. Racing between the demands of work, health, family, and friends, many people report feelings of worry, irritability, and increasing stress. While we often cannot control stressful life events, we can learn to control our brain's response to those circumstances and reduce our suffering.

Drawing from the latest research and more than 25 years of clinical experience, Dr. Gina Simmons Schneider explains the link between anxiety, anger, and stress and shares groundbreaking remedies from neuropsychology. These tools will strengthen your resilience and expand your capacity for happiness.

In Frazzlebrain, you'll discover how to:

Each chapter offers exercises, case examples, and self-improvement skills to help you achieve a calmer, happier, healthier lifestyle.

An insightful guide to understanding the mysteries of the mind and how we can change for the better.

How can it be that perfectly intelligent people do such obviously counterproductive things so much of the time? Why do we do the things we know we shouldn't do, and why do we fail to do the things we know we should do? The simple answer to these questions is that the unconscious mind greatly influences all that we do.

Written by an experienced clinical psychologist with a knack for describing complex ideas in a lively and easy to comprehend way, Wisdom from the Couch will change the way you think about your internal and external life.

A physician shares the darkest depths of his depression, suicidal ideation, addiction, and the important lessons he learned through years of personal recovery.

Pediatric oncologist and palliative care physician Dr. Adam B. Hill suffered despair and disillusionment with the culture of medicine, culminating in a spiral of depression, alcoholism, and an active suicidal plan. Then while in recovery from active addiction, he lost a colleague to suicide, further revealing the extent of the secrecy and broken systems contributing to an epidemic of professional distress within the medical field. 

By sharing his harrowing story, Dr. Hill helps identify the barriers and obstacles standing in the way of mental health recovery, while pleading for a revolutionary new approach to how we treat individuals in substance use recovery. In fighting stereotypes/stigma and teaching vulnerability, compassion, and empathy, Hill’s work is being lauded as a road map for better practices at a time when medical professionals around the world are struggling in silence.

The Trouble with Trauma is the story of how the idea of psychological trauma appeals to the human mind.

Trauma impacts many people psychologically, but the evidence on the long-term physical effect is incomplete. Theories that psychological trauma can permanently damage your brain, cause physical disease, and change your essential character have become staples of human thought worldwide.

Dr. Scheeringa explains how those theories are widely believed whilst not being true, and at the heart of the story is an explanation of how humans choose to ignore scientific evidence and practice self-deception based on heuristics for survival. Heuristics is a rapid and efficient method to make judgments about threatening situations, which may be especially relevant during an epidemic and the spread of misinformation.

But The Trouble with Trauma is more than a critique of social policy. This is a book for anyone who wants a better understanding on how groupthink and herd mentality works and improves our ability to understand scientific fact. Dr. Scheeringa sheds light on why we choose to ignore scientific evidence while engaging the reader in a lively conversation on how we come to believe.

Written in clear and compelling language, this book gives therapists and counselors the information and tools needed to help their clients successfully recover from addiction. It highlights current trends in addiction treatment, as well as address a wide range of related topics, including neurochemistry, drugs of abuse, and process addiction, such as gambling, food, and sex. 

Barry Solof, MD, FASAM, is a graduate of Yale Medical School and has been practicing addiction medicine for thirty-five years. He is the medical director of Michaels' House, a nationally recognized rehabilitation facility for addiction and co-occurring disorders, located in Palm Springs, California.

A self-help manual for partners affected by sex addiction.

Those who act out sexually, whether through pornography, cybersex, prostitutes, voyeurism, and/or multiple affairs, leave their partners reeling in rage, incredible shame, and isolation. In this taboo-shattering and practical guidebook, partners affected by sex addiction can learn to develop healthy boundaries and make positive changes in their lives. The skills-building exercises presented are designed to help partners better understand the disease of addiction and how it is affecting their relationship. Intimate Treason provides a path to healing that gives voice to partners' truths as they travel on their own journey of recovery.

A cohesive addiction treatment model based upon the concept that addiction recovery is a learned skill.

This step-by-step guide designed is drawn from the basic concepts found in Dr. Earley's Recovery Skills Manual: A Neuroscientific Approach to Treating Addiction. It is designed to help practitioners implement RecoveryMind Training (RMT) in outpatient practice (ASAM Level 1), IOP (Level 2.1), Partial Hospitalization (Level 2.5), or Residential program (Levels 3.1 to 3.7).

To be successful, the learning involved in recovery has to overcome the complex and hard-wired entrainment produced by the use of highly reinforcing drugs, including alcohol. The RMT model describes the dynamics of active addiction with regard to its effects on the brain—motivations, drives, memories, and cognitive distortions—with the term Addict Brain. Recovery is facilitated through the learning of a structured set of skills that promote changes in thoughts, beliefs, and actions, and bring about Recovery Mind.

A lawyer turned drug counselor examines the disruption many families endure when addiction impacts their lives.

Based in part on her own family’s journey, Ellen Van Vechten explains the science of addiction, the theory of treatment, and the Twelve-Step model of recovery, providing sensible information and tips for reasoned action in support of a loved one while fostering personal growth and recovery.

Powerlessness over another's addiction has a caustic effect on the family. Too often parents and partners equate "letting go" with "giving up." While acceptance of a lack of control is essential to coping with the disease within the family system, there is nothing passive about supporting a partner or child on their journey to recovery. This concept is the foundation of Van Vechten's original approach to empower individuals with knowledge, which when coupled with acceptance allows any family dealing with active addiction to make thoughtful and reasoned decisions to facilitate the recovery of both their loves ones and themselves.

A step-by-step program that shows how to recognize everyday narcissism in ourselves and others and respond in healthy ways.

Narcissism, in all forms, is a belief that the world revolves around us, and that what happens in the world happens because of us. Most of us live with a form of narcissism so deeply embedded that we don't even know we have it. This "everyday narcissism" (EN) comes from a combination of childhood wounds and powerful myths we were taught as children. Everyday Narcissism helps readers understand how EN manifests in their own lives, and teaches them how to heal it. This awareness provides a foundation for creating greater happiness, more fulfilling relationships, less reactivity, and more meaning.

• An essential purchase for anyone having difficulty in a relationship, with a partner, coworker, family member, or other loved one.
• This is the first book for the general reader to specifically address everyday narcissism (EN).
• Features a Foreword by Anne Katherine, best-selling author of Boundaries and Where to Draw the Line.

“In Sociometrics, Tian Dayton masterfully integrates principles of group dynamics and psychodrama therapies with insights into bodily states and feelings gained from contemporary neuroscience. Sociometrics infuses therapeutic principles in an intuitive and functional program that shifts the agent of healing from the therapist to the group. We learn that through sociometrics, the threads of healing are woven as the client experiences a reconnection with the inner self and a connection with others.”—Stephen W. Porges, PhD, Distinguished University Scientist, Indiana University; Professor of Psychiatry, University of North Carolina; creator of the Polyvagal Theory

Embodied, relational processes designed to add experiential therapy into addiction treatment centers, IOPs, and one-to-one or group therapy settings.

Relational trauma can cause a loss of connection with the self and impact our ability to engage comfortably in intimate connection with others. Feeling misread, neglected, or abused by the people we want most to be loved by is a traumatizing experience that is cumulative. When these relational wounds remain unseen and unresolved, they can become the pain pump fueling self-medicating and dysfunctional behaviors that silently pass down through generations. 

Sociometrics are embodied, research-based processes that educate clients about trauma, grief, and resilience as they offer in-the-moment, experiential relational trauma repair. Created by Dr. Tian Dayton to fit easily into outpatient programs, clinics, and one-to-one settings, sociometrics help to take the guesswork out of incorporating experiential therapy into treatment. They give therapists a clear process that builds momentum for deep change and personal growth. Harnessing the therapeutic power of the group, they teach skills of emotional literacy and self- and co-regulation.

The combination of sociometrics and simple role plays allow the body, as well as the mind, to find a voice. They draw on the theory base of psychodrama and sociometry, the first forms of mind/body, experiential therapy created by the father of group therapy, Jacob Levy Moreno.

A new edition written especially for behavioral health practitioners from one of the world's foremost experts on addiction and family system dysfunction, Dr. Claudia Black.

Addiction passes through families from one generation to the next. Family Strategies provides a wealth of information and guidance proven to be effective with families challenged by addiction--whether to alcohol or other drugs, gambling, food, sex, etc. Through authoritative direction and reproducible handouts, professionals are given the structure and resources to help families they work with successfully transition to recovery.

Mass trauma has made entire towns and cities into monuments of heartbreak and loss. Here is a book to guide the communal recovery.

After the horrific tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, local caregivers, civic leaders, and first responders had the daunting task of navigating emotional and physical trauma as they stitched their community back together. The recovery process takes years, and as the coordinator of the Newtown Recovery and Resiliency Team, Melissa Glaser managed the town’s response. She developed a unique set of therapeutic and transferable best practices that other communities can learn from. The impact of an intense media presence and the long-term financial needs of recovery work are also included in Healing a Community. Through heartbreaking insights, Glaser conveys the importance of meeting traumatized individuals where they are at in the process. 

Lessons learned in Newtown can be used to create a universal community mental health disaster plan so leaders, therapists, and families know what to do the next time tragedy occurs.

An award-winning research psychiatrist exposes myths about childhood trauma and PTSD and provides evidence-based solutions.

A compassionate and accessible guide for parents whose children have experienced traumatic or life-threatening events written by one of the foremost authorities on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in children and adolescents. Dr. Scheeringa understands the desperation many parents feel and explains the impact of trauma, simplifies the science into layman’s terms, debunks the myths, and provides direction on navigating the confusing maze of the mental health world to find appropriate care.

"Lucid, clear, visionary"—Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps The Score

An expert's inspiring, deeply personal account of how childhood trauma can be overcome.

From the moment they’re born, babies seek a loving parental attachment. When that connection is absent, it derails childhood development in ways that can last a lifetime. The annual health costs of illness related to child trauma for North America and Europe alone are 1.3 trillion dollars. Child trauma is much more widespread than previously thought and passes from one generation to the next. But that’s not the end of the story—there is overwhelming evidence that this intergenerational transmission can be disrupted. 

So why isn’t the eradication of childhood trauma a tier-one public priority, like defense or growth?

In Trauma Proof, Benjamin Perks argues that it must be, and that we can tackle it as a public health problem like COVID-19, by 1) Making sure everyone is aware of the risk; 2) Preventing transmission; and 3) Opening pathways to healing.

Perks shows we have the tools to make these three things happen, and the evidence to show they work. The fields of psychology, neuroscience, and medicine have made huge leaps in the past 25 years. We now know what causes Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), how to reduce them, and how to address them. For the first time in history, we know child mistreatment is not inevitable. 

Combining expert interviews and intensive reportage from Jamaica to Scotland, from Brooklyn to Birmingham, Perks shows the steps we can take to stem the epidemic of childhood trauma. He also shares his personal story of growing up in violent group homes, fathering a child at fifteen and finding his way, in his thirties to healing. 

Trauma Proof is a rallying call to address child trauma as the public health crisis it is—because we can do better for kids, and we should.

An innovative guide for professionals that establishes an extraordinary approach to understanding the dynamics of addiction and the recovery process. RecoveryMind Training (RMT) includes state-of-the-art information on neuroscience and behavioral techniques and challenges readers to see addiction from a different perspective. 

Paul H. Earley, MD, FASAM has been an addiction medicine physician for thirty years. He treats all types of addictive disorders and specializes in the assessment and treatment of healthcare professionals. As a therapist, he works with patients already in recovery, providing long-term therapy for those who suffer from this disease. His professional expertise extends to advocacy for professionals before agencies and licensing boards. Dr. Earley has been on the board of the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) for over fourteen years in several capacities and is currently a director-at-large. He has been the Medical Director of two nationally acclaimed addiction programs specializing in the care of addicted healthcare professionals. Currently, he is the Medical Director of the Georgia Professionals Health Program, Inc. and a principal with Earley Consultancy, LLC, a training and consulting firm. He also trains therapists about the neurobiological basis of addiction and psychotherapy. In his travels, he has provided training in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Switzerland.