Therapy Book Nook Blog

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Review: A Love That Laughs by Ted Cunningham

First, a disclaimer: This is a Christian book by a Christian pastor. While I normally try to review books that have a larger, more general swath, but I do not actually know a secular author who has this same mission, introducing fun into the couple relationship. So although this book is pretty Christian, if you can overlook the Bible verses and such, I think you will get a lot of good information here. I think I liked his earlier book, “Fun Loving You” just a little bit better, and I had a lot of non-Christian clients read that one and love it.

This book is a blend of serious and silly, which is really nice. Cunningham starts with a discussion about humor and how important it is to relationships- couples that laugh together stay together! And he makes good points about how it’s hard to really be mad or bitter at people that we laugh with often. He suggests having a laughter goal or a laughter to conflict ratio goal. He also sets up the book with a “points” system, where you and your partner can get points for doing the suggested exercises and getting a laugh – kind of gimmicky but if you’re a competitive couple, it might be fun!

He discusses the benefits of laughter: Mental, Emotional, Physical, Relational and Spiritual. But he does caution against inappropriate humor and goes to some lengths to define humor that is used as avoidance or harmful to relationships. He talks about humor being a skill that can be learned, not just something that you either have or not. Humor requires paying attention – there are funny things going on all around you. Each chapter ends with activities you would do to try to get a laugh from your partner, and also some conversation starter type questions that might encourage laughter.

Next he goes into some more serious couples topics but brings it back to how humor can help these more serious issues. He discusses communication and the art of listening; conflict and how appropriate humor can assist; differences that every couple struggles with and how to use humor to defuse these; making it a priority to have other couples around you as friends and mentors that can encourage a healthy and humorful marriage; and healthy habits that happy couples have.

There are a few cautions for non-Christians here. He discusses the NFL “take a knee” movement in a way that might trigger some, but it’s in the context of the larger discussion about how it’s important to listen to each other. He talks about gender differences and although it’s useful to talk about these stereotypes, he does reference the “marriage is between a man and a woman” stance, which isn’t surprising considering that he is a conservative pastor. Lastly, there’s a chapter on divorce which references it not being God’s plan – which you may not agree with, but if you’re reading a book on happy marriage, you presumably can agree that any ideas about making marriage work are helpful. If you can, try to take these sections in the spirit in which they are given, taking the parts you agree with and leaving the rest.

All in all, I’m a big fan of strategies that make marriage more fun and funny, and de-emphasize the “marriage is work” perspective. I’d love to see a secular book on this topic, but since I don’t know of one, see if you can make this book work for you!

Disclaimer: The link above is an Amazon Affiliate link – I receive a small compensation from purchases made through this link. Also, the summary above is NOT intended to replace purchasing of this book; it is simply to save you time if you currently do not have time to read the entire book.

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Review: Positive Psychology in Practice by Gina Delucca Psy.D and Jamie Goldstein, Psy.D

I have always loved Martin Seligman, who is considered the “Father of Positive Psychology”. His books are pretty meaty and intense, though, so I’d thought I’d try this new book on the topic. (Seligman’s website https://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/ has a LOT of questionnaires and interesting info, which is more accessible though!).

I read this book from cover to cover fairly quickly for this review, so first I want to say that this is not really how the book is intended to be used. You won’t get much out of it if you just read the book quickly. This book is set up into four parts, and each part has very short chapters on a specific topic. After each chapter blurb, there is an activity or exercise, and these are probably the most useful thing about the book. For therapists, it reminds me of the books of interventions and treatment planners that I had when I was in school. For example, if a client wanted to work on forgiveness, you could turn to that chapter and have a handy intervention to use in your session ten minutes from now. This is the real value of this book, I think.

The book is broken into four parts as I said – A New Approach to Happiness, Cultivating Positive Feelings, Who You Are and Where you are Going, and Talk, Listen, Love. A New Approach to Happiness explains positive psychology and then has short chapters on mind-sets, defining happiness, self-acceptance, skill mastery, resilience (Seligman has a great book on this topic), optimism vs. pessimism and aging well. As I said, each of these short chapters has an exercise to help you absorb and practice the information.

Cultivating Positive Feelings has chapters on relaxing, the state of flow, mindfulness, savoring life, gratitude, forgiveness and your inner critic. This section has a couple of my favorite of the activities – designing a beautiful day for yourself, and mentally subtracting something great that happened in your life to get clear on what your life would be like if that wonderful thing had never happened.

Who You are and Where You’re Going talks about clarifying your values (and gives a great list), setting goals, making decisions, motivation, success vs. failure and how to make work meaningful. Lastly, Talk, Listen, Love talks about philanthrophy and altruism; empathy and compassion; listening and responding; honesty and trust; friendships, couples relationships and parenting.

If you are looking for an in-depth dive into positive psychology, go elsewhere. I found the book to be unsatisfyingly light on each topic – other books go into much better detail on any of the specific topics. But, if you already know quite a bit about positive psychology and use it in your practice, this book could be handy to have on your shelf for intervention ideas on the fly.

Disclaimer: The link above is an Amazon Affiliate link – I receive a small compensation from purchases made through this link. Also, the summary above is NOT intended to replace purchasing of this book; it is simply to save you time if you currently do not have the time to read the entire book.

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Review: Never Binge Again by Glenn Livingston

I have customarily used books about mindful eating to work with clients who have compulsive eating issues – books like “Savor” by Thich Nhat Hanh or “Eating Mindfully” by Susan Albers. After reading this book, I will probably still primarily use those sources.  But there were some things that I did like about this book, so I’ll try to give a good overview.

The author, Glenn Livingston, apparently used to be a compulsive eater and overweight, so this method has worked for him, and many of the clients he coaches. The book reminded me a little bit of Bob Harper’s book “Skinny Rules”, which espouses just having a simple set of rules to follow so that dieting or eating isn’t as complicated as we make it, although it has some key differences too.

First, it’s important to understand the metaphor this book is built around.  Basically, you imagine that you have an inner “Pig” who is the cause of all of your eating problems, and you imagine that this “Pig” is someone who does not want the best for you, will always try to trick you into overeating and make arguments against your best interests.  Livingston suggests that it’s important you pretend the “Pig” is real.  This is known in the psychology field as “externalizing”, and reminds me of a book I love called “Taming Your Gremlin”. Same basic idea – except the topic is self-talk – that there is a gremlin running around in all of our heads and we just have to basically tell it to sit down.  Livingston makes it clear that calling it a “Pig” might not be useful for everyone, and if it isn’t, you can really call it anything as long as you realize that this is the source of your problems.

I did really like some things about this book.  Livingston suggests making a Food Plan, with sections titled “Always”, “Never”, “Conditional” and “Unrestricted”.  So in other words, veggies might be unrestricted, meaning I can eat them anytime, anywhere.  But chocolate might be conditional – I can have it, but I can’t keep it in the house.  Then there are the always an nevers, like “I will never eat fast food” or “I will always start my day with green tea”.  He makes no real suggestions, since you have to completely own your Food Plan in order for this to work – so you can just start with one rule, or several. You can have something in every category, or maybe just one.  While my work with eating disorders has made me a bit wary of rules, I can see how that really only applies to unrealistic rules, or rules that you don’t really want to follow.  I mean, we all know kale is good for you, but if I make a rule to eat kale every day, that is not gonna work for me! So I think as long as each person really makes some realistic and simple rules, this could really work.  In fact, I’ve made a couple of simple rules for myself to try this out. He makes it crystal clear that you should only make rules that you can 100% commit to forever.

There were some things I didn’t particularly like, though. He says a few times in the book things like “the only thing you have to do to not binge is to not binge!” I get what he is saying – he’s trying to help us understand that no one is making us do this; it is well within our control to not eat. But I can just say on behalf of myself and my many compulsive eating clients that if it were indeed just this easy, we’d all be thin – and we certainly wouldn’t need this book! There is a lot of this kind of talk in the book.  If you aren’t confident, just declare yourself confident! If you want to eat, just don’t! Simple, right?

For all of his talk about NEVER binging again, and one bite off your Food Plan being a binge, he then talks about what happens if you DO binge – and basically you adjust your sails and move on. How is that really different from what we are all doing all the time? It’s paradoxical – you have to commit to 100% never binge and never go off your Food Plan – but oh by the way when you do, you can be nice to yourself, evaluate your plan, make changes if you need to and then move on.  This might be helpful for some people who are in the “I ate one chip, might as well eat the whole bag” crowd, but for most of us who are really trying, we’re already doing this.

Lastly, he talks about the whole idea of the addiction model and the idea of “powerlessness” as a tool to surrender and heal. He thinks it’s B.S., basically – mainly with food, but you get the feeling that he kinda feels that way about alcohol and drugs too.  My best friend who was an alcoholic for 29 years and is now clean and sober for 12 might powerfully argue that she wasn’t powerless over alcohol.  But in Livingston’s mind, you just make up your mind not to do something and then you don’t do it anymore.

This book kind of feels like a long infomercial, lots of caps lock and exclamation points.  Plus the idea of “mind over matter” and an inner “Pig” might really turn some people off.  But I overrode my distaste of these things and persevered, and I actually have a couple of new Food Rules that I think will be really helpful.  So if you can ignore what you don’t like and take the helpful nuggets, you might find a few in the book.

Disclaimer
The above link is an Amazon Affiliate link. I receive a small compensation from purchases made through this link.
Also, the summary above is NOT intended to replace purchasing the book. It is simply intended to save you the time reading, if you can’t carve out time to read the book right now.

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Review: When Crisis Strikes by Jennifer Ford & Kjell Hovik

This book is written by Jennifer Love, an M.D. psychiatrist, and Kjell Hovik, a Psy.D/Ph.d in neuropsychology.  The forward is written by Dr. Amen, who founded the Amen Clinics. All that to say, these are trustworthy authors who know this topic well.

The book explains in a very easily understood way how your body and brain react to a crisis or chronic stress. This is important because it’s the foundation of all that follows.

Then the authors lay out their 5 point plan – defining the problem, figuring out what you can/can’t control, making a list of easy/hard tasks that need to be done – and then assessing your values and figuring out ways to take care of yourself.  Even though these sound like no-brainer type steps, it’s great because they really delve into them fully – the questions to ask, the things to consider.

Then the authors have a lengthy segment where they give example after example of how these steps would look in different folks with different crises. Although this section could get a little long, I felt like the repetition of the steps in various circumstances really helped me to see how these steps are workable no matter what the scenario is.

Lastly, they give some general advice about some common responses to crises and stress – like cravings, sleep issues, exercise, etc. And finally, each author transparently shows their own five step process when covid-19 hit the world. Quite authentic and vulnerable, this section proves that these authors practice what they preach.

Can you think of anyone who won’t go through stress or some kind of crisis? I can’t.  This book will release on December 29, 2020, and I think you need a copy! You can preorder through the Amazon link below. I think this book is so calming, because it really gives a step by step process in situations where chaos would otherwise reign.

The summaries above are NOT meant to replace buying the book. We therapists have a lot of books to read! These summaries are meant to provide you with an immediate way to access the information generally, but I recommend purchasing a copy of books that you think will be useful and having them on hand in your office!

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Review: Your Grief, Your Way by Shelby Forsythia

There are a lot of books on grief. And trust me, the last thing you want to do when you are grieving is find the right book! My go-to book for grief has historically been Megan Devine’s “It’s OK that you’re not OK”, and I still do recommend it often.  However, Devine has a pretty dark and irreverent take on grief – which to some people can be a relief an some people find it quite off-putting.  So I’ve been looking for an alternative, and I think I’ve found it.

This book is written “calendar” style, from January 1 to December 31 with a short passage each day.  I have not written a summary of this book, because it is too hard to encapsulate the message of this book without plagiarizing the book itself, which I don’t do.  There is not a “theme” for each month (it would be easier to summarize if there was), but I appreciate that about the book – if your loved one dies in May, you don’t have to wait until the following January to start.  You could start this book at any time and find it very useful.  

Another thing people often don’t realize is that grieving people often find it hard to read.  I’ve given Megan Devine’s book to grieving folks who said there was no way they could read a book cover to cover. Indeed, after my own brother died,  I couldn’t read for over a year. It’s one of the reasons I really like this book – I don’t think it took me more than 5 minutes to read any particular day – which is just about the concentration level a lot of grieving people have.

I think there are three basic things you will get from this book. The first is a lot of just basic educational information and validation about what the grieving process looks like, what is normal (spoiler: just about anything!) and what you can expect.  If you know about grief, some of these passages might seem basic, but I think you can’t be reminded enough what is normal, and that you are normal when you are in the middle of grieving. Even as a therapist, I knew this stuff but I didn’t know it until I found myself in it.

Secondly, there are tons of little ideas.  Simple exercises that anyone could do to explore grief, soften it or understand what it means to you. Again, these suggestions are simple; it’s not that anyone else would never think of them. It’s that when you are grieving, you lose some of your creative thinking – and even stuff you know is hard to remember. So interspersed in the book at good intervals are little activities that you can do to see if they help.

Lastly, Forsythe shares specific resources.  I love this so much, because so many authors only want to only “advertise” their own brand or build their own following.  Not so with Forsythe.  Whatever she thinks would be helpful, she is willing to share.  She suggests things you can google for more information (I think because she knows these things change over time, like local grief groups), and she also shares specific organizations or information that might be helpful.

Bonus: on many of the pages, there are quotes about grief from various famous people, some of whom I never knew dealt with grief.  I found these quotes to be very encouraging and helpful, and also gave me some ideas about who I might “follow” or “read” outside of just this book.

All in all, I think it’s a must to have this book on hand to give or share with grieving clients, or if you are grieving yourself (and let’s face it, we all will, won’t we?).  Link to purchase is below.

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Review: How To Live Well with Chronic Pain and Illness by Toni Bernhard

This book is a MUST READ for anyone with chronic pain/illness and those that love them and treat them in any capacity.  Although it is written from a Buddhist perspective, this book is accessible to anyone of any faith or no faith practice. Toni Bernhard herself has a chronic illness, so she knows of what she speaks; which is nice because those of us with chronic illness have been talked at enough by people who don’t know how it feels!

So completely practical, this book talks about skills to help with daily life; mindfulness and how it can help; working with thoughts and feelings, and isolation and loneliness.  In addition, she covers a number of unique and special challenges that people who fall in these categories face and gives advice and practical practices for living well.

Finally, there are chapters for family/friends/caregivers and also some advice to those who are lucky enough to still be healthy.

I do have a summary for purchase for $3 if you don’t have time to immediately read this book; but I do recommend you purchase a copy from the link below if you have any clients or loved ones that fall in this category.  Even if they won’t read it, you should.

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Review: Stop Avoiding Stuff by Matthew Boone, et.al.

This is a recent book based on ACT theory (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy).  While I still like the gold standard ACT book “The Happiness Trap” by Russ Harris, this book has some really nice features that might be worth the purchase.  I will say that I do not particularly like the title of this book – I can see people thinking “well I’m not really an avoider” and therefore not thinking this book is for them.  But it’s not really about avoiding per se; it’s about not living a vibrant life because of fear (which is avoiding I guess, but I still don’t love the choice of words). What I’m saying is that I can’t think of anyone this book wouldn’t apply to and I think they have unnecessarily narrowed their audience. 

One thing I love about this book is that it breaks all the concepts down into “microskills”, which means that if you are too busy to sit and read this book cover to cover, no problem! You can simply open up, read “microskill 1” (or whatever skill you think you need) and then get to work putting it into practice.  

The skills are bunched together in categories, like working with thoughts, working with emotions, figuring out your values, working on willingness and so on.  The last three skills are kind of a summary, so if all you have is a little time, start there.

This would be a great copy to own if you are a therapist and a good suggestion for just about any client.  As a client or regular person it’s a good book if you ever feel you are not living your best life. Link for purchase is below.  Also, if you do not have time to read this book but want the information, try my new summary download for $3 in the shop!

 

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Review: Hardwiring Happiness by Rick Hanson

I can just imagine giving this book to my clients; it seems too simple to be true. People want to think it’s more complicated than this. But it really is this simple. The way you allow yourself to think really does change your life. Think differently and your life will change. We have an incredible lack of discipline over our thoughts. This book will teach you some really simple ways to think differently and change your brain structure. Over time, this will create more happiness, more peace, more contentment. It really does work. But it really IS work; it is so easy to be lazy with our thoughts.

Rick Hanson is the guy who came up with the phrase I love, “the brain is Teflon for the good and Velcro for the bad”.  This book, similar to his other books, helps us come up with strategies to increase the good so our brain doesn’t just “Teflon” it away.  Specifically in this book, he works through an acronym, HEAL. H stands for “have a positive experience”; E is “enrich it”; A is “absorb it” and L is “link it to a negative experience”.  Again, you can just dismiss this as positive nonsense.  BUT, I believe if you actually practice it, you’ll see the results.  Neuroscience is behind this, not just wishful thinking.

 

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Review: State of Affairs by Esther Perel

I love Esther Perel, her first book was “Mating in Captivity”.   Although she can be cheeky about infidelity, in truth she is very respectful of our relationships, but she does like to challenge some of our thinking about how we think about monogamy. These are real life stories, but also analysis about affairs and why we understand them so poorly even though they are so common. This is not an affair recovery book; more, it’s a book that will help you have a little compassion for the human experience and why it’s so hard to have faithful longterm partnerships.

 

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Review: Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness by David Treleaven

I do a lot of mindfulness work with clients and groups, and it’s common to hear the adage that mindfulness is good for everyone – but that’s not always the case.  Trauma causes an internal dysregulation, and dropping in to pay attention to your inner experience is a land mine sometimes. Often if a person is having trouble in meditation, meditation teachers will say something like “just stick with it” – which is ok advice if you are not in a traumatic state, but if you are it’s doing some damage.  Treleaven is THE person to learn from if you want to become more trauma informed and trauma sensitive.  This book is great for anyone leading or teaching any kind of mindfulness, but I also think it would be helpful if you are a person who has suffered trauma and tries to engage in mindfulness.  It is a textbook-style book, but written in an engaging enough manner that anyone could glean helpful ideas from reading it.

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