To err is human. But because we are social beings, our mistakes often harm others in small and not-so-small ways. We have all given or received wounds that need the healing power of forgiveness. This is easier said than done, however. Many would like to forgive, but just can’t seem to do it. And they continue to suffer the bitterness and the lack of peace that comes from unforgiven injuries. In Wounds in the Heart, Dr. Javier Schlatter leads us out of this conundrum and into a deeper understanding of forgiveness and its importance in our lives. He explains what forgiveness is, what it is not, and how to experience its healing power in our lives. He also looks at the impact of forgiveness on health and the keys to forgiveness in marriage. His insights are practical but also provide a deeper understanding of forgiveness that goes well beyond a superficial self-help book. Dr. Schlatter is Assistant Director of the Department of Psychiatry and Medical Psychology at the University of Navarre Medical Clinic. He is the author of several books on anxiety and stress and is a specialist in emotional disorders and the biological basis of depression and phobias.

First published in 1989, Dan Allender's The Wounded Heart has helped hundreds of thousands of people come to terms with sexual abuse in their past. Now, more than twenty-five years later, Allender has written a brand-new book on the subject that takes into account recent discoveries about the lasting physical, emotional, relational, and spiritual ramifications of sexual abuse. With great compassion Allender offers hope for victims of rape, date rape, incest, molestation, sexting, sexual bullying, unwanted advances, pornography, and more, exposing the raw wounds that are left behind and clearing the path toward wholeness and healing. Never minimizing victims' pain or offering pat spiritual answers that don't truly address the problem, he instead calls evil evil and lights the way to renewed joy. Counselors, pastors, and friends of those who have suffered sexual harm will find in this book the deep spiritual guidance they need to effectively minister to the sexually broken around them. Victims themselves will find here a sympathetic friend to walk alongside them on the road to healing.

Your childhood wounds do not solely determine the outcome of your future but they do contribute significantly to the quality of your relationships.

Thanks to authors like Robert Bly, Joseph Campbell, and Michael Meade there is a newly kindled interest in how mythology and ancient traditions apply to our modern relationships. Trials of the Heart mines the rich ore of truth in these ancient and heroic tales and connects their timeless wisdom with the struggles so many of us experience with one another and within ourselves. It sheds a ray of light into the dark and twisting labyrinth that intimate relationships so often become. Psychotherapist and couple's therapist, Dr. Michael Mayer, invites each of us to embark on our own mythic journeys and experience, with deeper understanding, the trials of love. Trials of the Heart is an ideal guide for providing an entry way into practices and attitudes that will alter the way we handle the difficult moments and obstacles we face on the path of love. www.bodymindhealing.com Trials of the Heart shows us how relationship is a rite of initiation through the elements of fire earth air and water; and gives us tools for making our journey into a mythic Journey. It has been called "the hero of a thousand faces (a la Joseph Campbell) for couples." Trials of the Heart: What it's about: 1. Explores how ancient sacred wisdom traditions can be integrated with modern psychotherapeutic understanding to help to heal the wounds of love. 2. Shows how ancient myths and stories aid the soul's quest to unravel the mysteries of love. 3. Argues that the purpose of love's suffering is psychological evolution. Relationship is "a rite of initiation," and difficult moments of relationship set us off on a grail quest to become initiates into the Temple of the Elements (fire, earth, air, and water). Our souls evolve thereby. 4. Demonstrates how oftentimes behind our desires and our problems in relationship is the worship of archetypal deities. "We make our destinies by our choice of Gods," and our unconscious worship of them oftentimes makes us like religious zealots, biasing our view and creating unnecessary dissonance with worshippers of other temples. 5. Provides an entry-way into practices that will alter the way we handle the difficult moments of intimate encounter. For example, the Chinese art of Tai Chi provides a metaphor for handling our defensive reactions, the four elements of astrological symbolism provide the necessary ingredients for constructively expressing negative feelings, the American Plains Indian's medicine wheel becomes a tool for transcending blaming and scapegoating, and the myth of Ariadne's Thread gives a model for going down into our emotional underworld and dealing with the Minotaurs that arise in the dark labyrinth of relationship. After reading Trials of the Heart, and practicing "the Mythic Journey Process" explained in the last chapter, the obstacles and demons that are met on the path of love will never be viewed in the same way. They will be seen for what they are, an opportunity to develop our inner characters and stories, and to embark on a mythic journey of our own making.

Trauma has been defined as an interruption of an affiliative or relationship bond. If left unsettled, past grief and psychological trauma can continue to impact our adult relationships and cause us pain in our entire lives. It's possible we may not even realize what is happening to us because usually relationships fail in parts rather than in total. Early childhood losses or traumas can create pain that is relived in adult intimate relationships. Intimacy can provide both an arena for re-enacting old pain and/or healing it. In this fascinating work, noted psychodramatist Tian Dayton shows readers how relationships can be used as a vehicle for healing, personal growth and spiritual transformation. Through fascinating case studies and probing exercises, Dayton helps readers get in touch with the deepest parts of themselves and heal the wounds that plague them.

A nationally known couples therapist reveals the single root cause of all relationship problems—and offers revolutionary advice on what to do about it While most of us have moments of loving freely and openly, it is often hard to sustain this where it matters most—in our intimate relationships. If love is so great and powerful, why are human relationships so challenging and difficult? If love is the source of happiness and joy, why is it so hard to open to it fully and let it govern our lives? In this book, John Welwood addresses these questions and shows us how to overcome the most fundamental obstacle that keeps us from experiencing love's full flowering in our lives. Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships begins by showing how all our relational problems arise out of a universal ‘wound of the heart’ that affects not only our personal relationships but the quality of life in our world as a whole. This core wound shows up as a pervasive mood of unlove—a deep sense that we are not intrinsically lovable just as we are. It shuts down our capacity to trust, so that even though we may hunger for love, we have difficulty opening to it and letting it circulate freely through us. This book takes the reader on a powerful journey of healing and transformation that involves learning to embrace these imperfections—within ourselves and within our relationships—as trail-markers along the path to great love. It sets forth a process for releasing deep-seated grievances we hold against others for not loving us better and against ourselves for not being better loved. And it shows how our longing to be loved can magnetize the great love that will free us from looking to others to find ourselves. Written with penetrating realism and a fresh, lyrical style that honors the subtlety and richness of our relationship to love itself, this revolutionary book offers profound and practical guidance for healing our lives as well as our embattled world.

Do you tend to be self-critical or negative about yourself? Did you experience painful childhood events that wounded your self-esteem? When children experience criticism, rejection, trauma or abuse, they may perceive that they are to blame. Such painful events can alter their identity, not who they are, but who they believe that they are. A wound of the heart is formed. A wound of the heart is a hurt or a series of hurts that affects your core being, sense of self or self-concept. "Parables for a Wounded Heart" is a breakthrough guide to help you heal your heart wounds by combining the proven principles of Cognitive Therapy with the emotional power of therapeutic stories. This program will touch your heart and bring new insights allowing a deep and lasting healing for your self-esteem. Dr. Ledford guides you through this process with great insight and compassion allowing you to see your past negative experiences and yourself in a very different way.

American politics seems like a war between irreconcilable forces and so we may suspect that political life as such is war. This book confronts these suspicions by arguing that liberal political institutions have the unique capacity to sustain social trust in diverse, open societies, undermining aggressive political partisanship.

Understanding the Wounded Heart(second edition)The world wounds us. The devil lies to us. We vow never to let it happen again. We spend our lives picking up the fruit of our wounds.It doesn't have to stay this way.This book introduces a simple model for understanding the wounded heart and offers some practical, transferable tools for experiencing God's healing and transformation. Understanding the Wounded Heart builds on the core model taught at Deeper Walk seminars of wounds-lies-vows-strongholds. It explains four tools for helping people experience healing: building joy, taking thoughts captive, forgiveness, and listening prayer.

In her book Self-Inflicted Wounds, comedian, actress, and cohost of CBS’s daytime hit show The Talk, Aisha Tyler recounts a series of epic mistakes and hilarious stories of crushing personal humiliation, and the personal insights and authentic wisdom she gathered along the way. The essays in Self-Inflicted Wounds are refreshingly and sometimes brutally honest, surprising, and laugh-out-loud funny, vividly translating the brand of humor Tyler has cultivated through her successful standup career, as well as the strong voice and unique point of view she expresses on her taste-making comedy podcast Girl on Guy. Riotous, revealing, and wonderfully relatable, Aisha Tyler’s Self-Inflicted Wounds: Heartwarming Tales of Epic Humiliation is about the power of calamity to shape life, learning, and success.