It is a time of much established good in the field of psychotherapy. This book, this Short Manual, is a call for a dynamic synthesis, a coming together of attending to the heart, to the body, and to brain states as an ongoing process that furthers the unified self. It is about establishing a heart-mind-body consciousness that includes exploring defenses. Here we have going towards self, towards other, and towards the world with an integrated map of the psyche.
The Harmonize Now: Tools for Integration presented here are for harmonizing well-being. The heart mudras, somatic gestures, and brain visualizations provide an easy vehicle to self-regulate both everyday states and trauma states. These tools support a model of supple wholeness and conscious connection.
Blessed with a loving family and a successful career, Carol Kivler was suddenly and unexpectedly brought to her knees by "The Beast" - clinical depression. The story of her journey to recovery from medication-resistant depression to sustained mental wellness is not only informative but inspires hope in others who suffer from this debilitating mental illness.
Kivler's book is written for multiple audiences, especially individuals who are suffering from clinical depression and their loved ones. It is also for health care providers, who often make the difference between "giving up" and "recovery" for those suffering from mental illness. Her "Courageous Recovery Wellness Model" provides a roadmap for recovery while addressing the misconceptions and pervasive stigmas associated with depression and mental illness.
Because medication did not work for her, and despite serious reservations, Kivler eventually agreed to ECT (electroconvulsive therapy, or shock treatment). ECT not only gave her back the desire to live, but the ability to thrive in her personal and professional lives. Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) became her "ladder out of the depression pit." The book contains extensive information about a viable and very effective treatment option for medication resistant depression.
When grief and trauma come barreling into life, how does one restore, renew, and rebuild a new sense of self? What does one do after hopes, dreams, assumptions, and core beliefs have been shattered? Social worker and educator Susan Hannifin-MacNab tackled these difficult questions after her husband was killed suddenly, leaving her to pick up the pieces of her young family's life. She eventually realized that grief and trauma healing do not occur by waiting for time to pass. Action and intention are the pillars needed to lay a foundation for rebirth and build a powerful roadmap for healing mind, body, and spirit.
Susan's extensive professional knowledge and deeply moving personal experience combine in A to Z Healing Toolbox, an entire alphabet's worth of proven, practical techniques to accompany you along your own healing journey. This guidebook contains a plethora of life-changing suggestions, powerful daily action steps, independent writing prompts, and inspirational stories from others who have experienced grief or trauma through personal crisis, illness, or death. In times of great darkness, Susan lights a pathway to wisdom, courage, and hope.
Glenn Close says: "Another Kind of Madness is one of the best books I’ve read about the cost of stigma and silence in a family touched by mental illness. I was profoundly moved by Stephen Hinshaw’s story, written beautifully, from the inside-out. It’s a masterpiece."
A deeply personal memoir calling for an end to the dark shaming of mental illness
Families are riddled with untold secrets. But Stephen Hinshaw never imagined that a profound secret was kept under lock and key for 18 years within his family—that his father’s mysterious absences, for months at a time, resulted from serious mental illness and involuntary hospitalizations. From the moment his father revealed the truth, during Hinshaw’s first spring break from college, he knew his life would change forever.
Hinshaw calls this revelation his “psychological birth.” After years of experiencing the ups and downs of his father’s illness without knowing it existed, Hinshaw began to piece together the silent, often terrifying history of his father’s life—in great contrast to his father’s presence and love during periods of wellness. This exploration led to larger discoveries about the family saga, to Hinshaw’s correctly diagnosing his father with bipolar disorder, and to his full-fledged career as a clinical and developmental psychologist and professor.
In Another Kind of Madness, Hinshaw explores the burden of living in a family “loaded” with mental illness and debunks the stigma behind it. He explains that in today’s society, mental health problems still receive utter castigation—too often resulting in the loss of fundamental rights, including the inability to vote or run for office or automatic relinquishment of child custody. Through a poignant and moving family narrative, interlaced with shocking facts about how America and the world still view mental health conditions well into in the 21st century, Another Kind of Madness is a passionate call to arms regarding the importance of destigmatizing mental illness.
Fascinating patient stories and dynamic exercises help you connect to healing emotions, ease anxiety and depression, and discover your authentic self.
Sara suffered a debilitating fear of asserting herself. Spencer experienced crippling social anxiety. Bonnie was shut down, disconnected from her feelings. These patients all came to psychotherapist Hilary Jacobs Hendel seeking treatment for depression, but in fact none of them were chemically depressed. Rather, Jacobs Hendel found that they’d all experienced traumas in their youth that caused them to put up emotional defenses that masqueraded as symptoms of depression. Jacobs Hendel led these patients and others toward lives newly capable of joy and fulfillment through an empathic and effective therapeutic approach that draws on the latest science about the healing power of our emotions.
Whereas conventional therapy encourages patients to talk through past events that may trigger anxiety and depression, accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy (AEDP), the method practiced by Jacobs Hendel and pioneered by Diana Fosha, PhD, teaches us to identify the defenses and inhibitory emotions (shame, guilt, and anxiety) that block core emotions (anger, sadness, fear, disgust, joy, excitement, and sexual excitement). Fully experiencing core emotions allows us to enter an openhearted state where we are calm, curious, connected, compassionate, confident, courageous, and clear.
In It’s Not Always Depression, Jacobs Hendel shares a unique and pragmatic tool called the Change Triangle—a guide to carry you from a place of disconnection back to your true self. In these pages, she teaches lay readers and helping professionals alike
why all emotions—even the most painful—have value.
how to identify emotions and the defenses we put up against them.
how to get to the root of anxiety—the most common mental illness of our time.
how to have compassion for the child you were and the adult you are.
Jacobs Hendel provides navigational tools, body and thought exercises, candid personal anecdotes, and profound insights gleaned from her patients’ remarkable breakthroughs. She shows us how to work the Change Triangle in our everyday lives and chart a deeply personal, powerful, and hopeful course to psychological well-being and emotional engagement.
