“One of the most useful books I’ve read about mental illnesses . . . It demystifies our complicated medical and legal system.” —Pete Earley, New York Times-bestselling author of Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness Finally, a book that explains everything you ever wanted to know about psychiatry! In Shrink Rap, three psychiatrists from different specialties provide frank answers to questions such as: • What is psychotherapy, how does it work, and why don’t all psychiatrists do it? • When are medications helpful? • What happens on a psychiatric unit? • Can Prozac make people suicidal? • Why do many doctors not like Xanax? • Why do we have an insanity defense? • Why do people confess to crimes they didn’t commit? Based on the authors’ hugely popular blog and podcast series, this book is for patients and everyone else who is curious about how psychiatrists work. Using compelling patient vignettes, Shrink Rap explains how psychiatrists think about and address the problems they encounter, from the mundane (how much to charge) to the controversial (involuntary hospitalization). The authors face the field’s shortcomings head-on, revealing what other doctors may not admit about practicing psychiatry. Candid and humorous, Shrink Rap gives a closeup view of psychiatry, peering into technology, treatments, and the business of the field. If you’ve ever wondered how psychiatry really works, let the Shrink Rappers explain. “A fascinating peek into the minds of those who study minds.” —The Washington Post “Most of us easily understand how to treat a broken arm, but a fractured psyche? That’s an entirely different matter. Or is it? This clear-headed presentation of psychiatric services and methods covers a lot of ground and achieves a conversational tone that’s both educational and entertaining.” —Baltimore Magazine

Boston P.I. Sunny Randall goes on the road to protect a bestselling author—and uncovers a world of dark secrets—in the new novel by the Grand Master. Melanie Joan Hall is a bestselling author in a bind. Her publisher needs her to tour on behalf of her latest blockbuster, and Melanie Joan needs a bodyguard-cum-escort to protect her from an overbearing ex-husband whose presence unnerves her to the point of hysteria. Sunny’s cool demeanor, cop background, and P.I. smarts are an instant balm for the older woman. Sunny begins to sense that Melanie Joan’s ex—a psychotherapist—is not your basic stalker, and when an incident at a book signing leaves the ex bloodied and the author unconscious, it’s clear the stakes are high. Having decided that the only way to crack the case is from the inside, Sunny enters therapy, only to discover some disturbing truths about herself . . . while putting her life on the line. Gripping, nuanced, and filled with Parker’s signature dialogue and psychological insight, Shrink Rap is a winner.

Keys to the Kingdom; The Year 2012 Countdown to the Apocalypse is a prophetic book that unlocks the mysteries in the Book of Revelation. By revealing the astrological content that is embedded throughout the Book of Revelation, the scriptural texts become more relevant to the events happening in the world today. The ancient science of astrology and the celestial movement of the heavens were used by ancient cultures as a way to connect to both the heavens and God. The Egyptians, Mesopotamians, in addition to the Mayans and Incas all used the stars to foretell man's destiny and fate. It is in the misunderstanding of this ancient science that modern man and astrologers alike have changed, altered, and ultimately loss the art of reading the night sky to determine man's fate in these Last Days. According to ancient astrology, the Piscean Age will come to an end in the year 2012, while the earth will reach the first stars in the constellation Aquarius the following year. This year will also mark the beginning of the end of days, as God's wrath will be initiated and serve as a prelude of the devastation that will come upon the planet. However, in the year 1999 and then in 2000, a celestial phenomena appeared in the heavens to signal the coming end and downfall of the fourth and final kingdom that is the Middle-East region today. As a result, Keys to the Kingdom, makes a unique and compelling case that man's fate and destiny is written in both the prophecy of the Biblical scriptures and in the movement of the planet and stars that foretell the fulfillment of the ancient prophecies and the coming of the End of Days.

The scientific and therapeutic implications of a new way of understanding a common disease. Depression has often been studied, but this multifaceted disease remains far from understood. Here, leading researchers present a major new view of the disorder that synthesizes multiple lines of scientific evidence from neurobiology, mindfulness, and genetics. A comprehensive mind-body approach to understanding, evaluating, and treating this disease.

In Deconstructing Anxiety, Pressman provides a new and comprehensive understanding of fear's subtlest mechanisms. In this model, anxiety is understood as the wellspring at the source of all problems. Tapping into this source therefore holds the clues not only for escaping fear, but also for releasing the very causes of suffering, paving the way to a profound sense of peace and satisfaction in life. With strategically developed exercises, this book offers a unique, integrative approach to healing and growth, based on an understanding of how the psyche organizes itself around anxiety. It provides insights into the architecture of anxiety, introducing the dynamics of the “core fear” (one's fundamental interpretation of danger in the world) and “chief defense” (the primary strategy for protecting oneself from threat). The anxious personality is then built upon this foundation, creating a “three dimensional, multi-sensory hologram” within which one can feel trapped and helpless. Replete with processes that bring the theoretical background into technicolor, Deconstructing Anxiety provides a clear roadmap to resolving this human dilemma, paving the way to an ultimate and transcendent freedom. Therapists and laypeople alike will find this book essential in helping design a life of meaning, purpose and enduring fulfillment.

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.

"In The Lies We Tell Ourselves, psychotherapist Jon Frederickson reveals the ways we fool ourselves and how to get unstuck. Through dozens of stories and examples, he demonstrates that the apparent cause of our problems is almost never the real cause. In addition, he reveals what we really fear and how to face it. In the spirit of Stephen Grosz and Irving Yalom, Frederickson shows how to recognize the lies we tell ourselves and face the truths we have avoided--and stop saying yes when we really mean no."--Amazon.com.

In Religious but Not Religious, Jungian analyst Jason E. Smith explores the idea, expressed by C.G. Jung, that the religious sense is a natural and vital function of the human psyche. We suffer from its lack. The symbolic forms of religion mediate unconscious and ineffable experiences to the field of consciousness that infuse our lives with meaning and purpose. That is why we cannot be indifferent toward the decline of traditional religious observance so widely discussed today. The great religions house the accumulated spiritual wisdom of humankind, and their loss would be catastrophic to the human soul. As human beings, we hunger for spiritual experience. To be “spiritual but not religious” is one possible response, but it often doesn’t go far enough. All too easily it can become a kind of do-it-yourself spirituality, which lacks the capacity to effect the kind of growth and transformation that is the true goal of all the religious traditions. Smith argues that we need to be “religious but not religious.” We need an approach to religion that recognizes the essential importance of the individual spiritual adventure while also affirming the value of collective religious tradition. He articulates an understanding of religion as a participation in the symbolic life as opposed to a mere content of belief. By recovering our personal sensitivity for symbolic experience together with a symbolic understanding of religion, we facilitate a profound encounter with life and with the human condition through which one may be tested, tried, and transformed.

A practical, integrated approach for therapists working with child and adult patients impacted by developmental trauma and attachment difficulties—featuring a foreword by Waking the Tiger author, Peter Levine. Kathy L. Kain and Stephen J. Terrell draw on fifty years of their combined clinical and teaching experience to provide this clear road map for understanding the complexities of early trauma and its related symptoms. Experts in the physiology of trauma, the authors present an introduction to their innovative somatic approach that has evolved to help thousands improve their lives. Synthesizing across disciplines—Attachment, Polyvagal, Neuroscience, Child Development Theory, Trauma, and Somatics—this book provides a new lens through which to understand safety and regulation. It includes the survey used in the groundbreaking ACE Study, which discovered a clear connection between early childhood trauma and chronic health problems. For therapists working with both adults, children, and anyone dealing with symptoms that typically arise from early childhood trauma—anxiety, behavioral issues, depression, metabolic disorders, migraine, sleep problems, and more—this book offers hope for a happier, trauma-free life.

This timely reflection on male identity in America that explores the intersection of fatherhood, race, and hip-hop culture “is a page-turner…drenched in history and encompasses the energy, fire, and passion that is hip-hop” (D. Watkins, New York Times bestselling author). Just as his music career was taking off, Juan Vidal received life-changing news: he’d soon be a father. Throughout his life, neglectful men were the norm—his own dad struggled with drug addiction and infidelity—a cycle that, inevitably, wrought Vidal with insecurity. At age twenty-six, with barely a grip on life, what lessons could he possibly offer a kid? Determined to alter the course for his child, Vidal did what he’d always done when confronted with life’s challenges—he turned to the counterculture. In Rap Dad, the musician-turned-journalist takes a thoughtful and inventive approach to exploring identity and examining how today’s society views fatherhood. To root out the source of his fears around parenting, Vidal revisits the flash points of his juvenescence, a feat that transports him, a first-generation American born to Colombian parents, back to the drug-fueled streets of 1980s–90s Miami. It’s during those pivotal years that he’s drawn to skateboarding, graffiti, and the music of rebellion: hip-hop. As he looks to the past for answers, he infuses his personal story with rap lyrics and interviews with some of pop culture’s most compelling voices—plenty of whom have proven to be some of society’s best, albeit nontraditional, dads. Along the way, Vidal confronts the unfair stereotypes that taint urban men—especially Black and Latino men. “A heartfelt examination of the damage that wayward fathers can leave in their wake” (The Washington Post), Rap Dad is “rich with symbolism…a poetic chronicle of beats, rhymes, and life” (NPR).