Lessons from the personal experience and reflections of a therapist. The difficulty and cost of training psychotherapists properly is well known. It is far easier to provide a series of classes while ignoring the more challenging personal components of training. Despite the fact that the therapist's self-insight, emotional maturity, and calm centeredness are critical for successful psychotherapy, rote knowledge and technical skills are the focus of most training programs. As a result, the therapist's personal growth is either marginalized or ignored. The Making of a Therapist counters this trend by offering graduate students and beginning therapists a personal account of this important inner journey. Cozolino provides a unique look inside the mind and heart of an experienced therapist. Readers will find an exciting and privileged window into the experience of the therapist who, like themselves, is just starting out. In addition, The Making of a Therapist contains the practical advice, common-sense wisdom, and self-disclosure that practicing professionals have found to be the most helpful during their own training.The first part of the book, 'Getting Through Your First Sessions,' takes readers through the often-perilous days and weeks of conducting initial sessions with real clients. Cozolino addresses such basic concerns as: Do I need to be completely healthy myself before I can help others? What do I do if someone comes to me with an issue or problem I can't handle? What should I do if I have trouble listening to my clients? What if a client scares me?The second section of the book, 'Getting to Know Your Clients,' delves into the routine of therapy and the subsequent stages in which you continue to work with clients and help them. In this context, Cozolino presents the notion of the 'good enough' therapist, one who can surrender to his or her own imperfections while still guiding the therapeutic relationship to a positive outcome. The final section, 'Getting to Know Yourself,' goes to the core of the therapist's relation to him- or herself, addressing such issues as: How to turn your weaknesses into strengths, and how to deal with the complicated issues of pathological caretaking, countertransference, and self-care.Both an excellent introduction to the field as well as a valuable refresher for the experienced clinician, The Making of a Therapist offers readers the tools and insight that make the journey of becoming a therapist a rich and rewarding experience.
Bad Therapy offers a rare glimpse into the hearts and mind's of the profession's most famous authors, thinkers, and leaders when things aren't going so well. Jeffrey Kottler and Jon Carlson, who include their own therapy mishaps, interview twenty of the world's most famous practitioners who discuss their mistakes, misjudgements, and miscalculations on working with clients. Told through narratives, the failures are related with candor to expose the human side of leading therapists. Each therapist shares with regrets, what they learned from the experience, what others can learn from their mistakes, and the benefits of speaking openly about bad therapy.
Welcome and much-needed addition to the literature for psychotherapists, therapists-in-training, and occupational therapists and other types of teachers. Mindful Therapy offers to them ways to bring the teachings of Buddhism into a psychotherapeutic practice - and a thorough explanation of the benefits of doing so. The book will be of value to therapists of every variety, in the way that Medicine and Compassion, while molded for caregivers in general, was applauded by medical journals. Author Tom Bien offers an energizing an expansive perspective. Grounded in his understanding of Buddhist teachings, his book suggests a model of integration of particular value to beginning therapists or those still in training, offering ways in which the therapist can mindfully care for themselves amid the challenges of their practice. Tools useful to clients, as well, are discussed. Bien sees therapists as practicing in the ancient traditions of various healers of spirit, whose greatest skill and gift to others is, above all, the mindful presence. Mindful Therapy is comprised of a useful, highly-readable balance of theoretical groundwork, personal experience, case studies, and practice exercises.
Shares the author's personal experiences with anxiety, describing its painful coherence and absurdities while sharing the stories of other sufferers to illustrate anxiety's intellectual history and influence.
The Good Enough Therapist is a guidebook—not an instruction manual—written for beginning, intermediate, and experienced clinicians. It encourages readers to explore, accept, and embrace their flaws and failings in a way that promotes effective treatment as well as personal growth. It focuses both on craft and process—craft related to the tools, the strategies, and the tactics of treatment, and process related to the session-by-session struggle to implement these tools in ways that speak to and illuminate the experience of living and struggling as a human being. It does not endeavor to transmit a method, but a sensibility, a way of being with patients that results in a deeper recognition of the therapist’s, and the patient’s, vulnerability, resilience, imagination, and integrity.
Tackling relationships, career, and family issues, John Kim, LMFT, thinks of himself as a life-styledesigner, not a therapist. His radical new approach, that he sometimes calls “self-help in a shot glass” is easy, real, and to the point. He helps people make changes to their lives so that personal growth happens organically, just by living. Let’s face it, therapy is a luxury. Few of us have the time or money to devote to going to an office every week. With anecdotes illustrating principles in action (in relatable and sometimes irreverent fashion) and stand-alone practices and exercises, Kim gives readers the tools and directions to focus on what's right with them instead of what's wrong. When John Kim was going through the end of a relationship, he began blogging as The Angry Therapist, documenting his personal journey post-divorce. Traditional therapists avoid transparency, but Kim preferred the language of "me too" as opposed to "you should." He blogged about his own shortcomings, revelations, views on relationships, and the world. He spoke a different therapeutic language —open, raw, and at times subversive — and people responded. The Angry Therapist blog, that inspired this book, has been featured in The Atlantic Monthly and on NPR.
A therapist creates moving portraits of five of her most memorable patients, men and women she considers psychological heroes. Catherine Gildiner is a bestselling memoirist, a novelist, and a psychologist in private practice for twenty-five years. In Good Morning, Monster, she focuses on five patients who overcame enormous trauma--people she considers heroes. With a novelist's storytelling gift, Gildiner recounts the details of their struggles, their paths to recovery, and her own tale of growth as a therapist. The five cases include a successful but lonely musician suffering sexual dysfunction; a young woman whose father abandoned her and her siblings in a rural cottage; an Indigenous man who'd endured great trauma at a residential school; a young woman whose abuse at the hands of her father led to a severe personality disorder; and a glamorous workaholic whose negligent mother had greeted her each morning with "Good morning, Monster." Each patient presents a mystery, one that will only be unpacked over years. They seek Gildiner's help to overcome an immediate challenge in their lives, but discover that the source of their suffering has been long buried. It will take courage to face those realities, and creativity and resourcefulness from their therapist. Each patient embodies self-reflection, stoicism, perseverance, and forgiveness as they work unflinchingly to face the truth. Gildiner's account of her journeys with them is moving, insightful, and sometimes humorous. It offers a behind-the-scenes look into the therapist's office and explains how the process can heal even the most unimaginable wounds.
National Bestseller – More than five million copies sold worldwide! From renowned psychiatrist Dr. David D. Burns, the revolutionary volume that popularized Dr. Aaron T. Beck’s cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and has helped millions combat feelings of depression and develop greater self-esteem. Anxiety and depression are the most common mental illnesses in the world, affecting 18% of the U.S. population every year. But for many, the path to recovery seems daunting, endless, or completely out of reach. The good news is that anxiety, guilt, pessimism, procrastination, low self-esteem, and other "black holes" of depression can be alleviated. In Feeling Good, eminent psychiatrist, David D. Burns, M.D., outlines the remarkable, scientifically proven techniques that will immediately lift your spirits and help you develop a positive outlook on life, enabling you to: Nip negative feelings in the bud Recognize what causes your mood swings Deal with guilt Handle hostility and criticism Overcome addiction to love and approval Build self-esteem Feel good every day This groundbreaking, life-changing book has helped millions overcome negative thoughts and discover joy in their daily lives. You owe it to yourself to FEEL GOOD! "I would personally evaluate David Burns' Feeling Good as one of the most significant books to come out of the last third of the Twentieth Century."—Dr. David F. Maas, Professor of English, Ambassador University
