In the book A Balanced Life , Tom Smith offers guidance for the family and friends of a person with mental illness on how to support their loved one while maintaining emotional, mental, and spiritual balance in their own lives. In this excerpt, Smith discusses why we may have a hard time accepting the limited control we have over others' actions, and how acceptance can help us move toward greater personal peace and improved relationships....
Undrunk: A Skeptic's Guide to AA by A. J. Adams is a perfect read for those of us who are in early recovery or who are having doubts about joining Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). In this excerpt, we hear how Adams's entire life changed - in body, mind, and spirit - after only one year in the program.
Sandra Swenson, in her book Just Dandy: Living with Heartache and Wishes , shares her pain and struggles, strength and determination, as a series of crises - including her adult son's fight with addiction and her unexpected divorce - continue to unravel her world in unexpected ways. This excerpt is a refreshingly honest account of one woman's experience with heartache, acceptance, and re-discovery as she learns to navigate life on her own and finds new strengths and resiliency....
In this excerpt from her book Recovering Spirituality: Achieving Emotional Sobriety in Your Spiritual Practice , Dr. Ingrid Mathieu explores "Spiritual Bypass," defined as the habit of using spiritual language and insights to avoid dealing with the difficult feelings and experiences that are part of every life.
In Sober But Stuck , Dan F. presents the stories of people who are dealing with difficult barriers in their paths to recovery. In this excerpt, we are introduced to a man who has discovered how the lack of intimacy has hindered his personal relationships and how dealing with our character defects can aid in our recovery progress.
In his book The Spiritual Self: Reflections on Recovery and God , rabbi and psychiatrist Abraham Twerski speaks with a unique perspective on the ways spirituality can affect emotional health and successful sobriety. In this excerpt, Dr. Twerski offers insights about the role of ego in Twelve Step recovery, and how a healthy spirituality can help us right-size the way we think of ourselves.
Improve Sleep by Dr. Katrin Schubert offers significant strategies for a good night's sleep. This excerpt shares techniques that can improve your sleep habits. Having a stable night routine is essential in our paths to recovery. Following these tips can reduce sleepless nights and prepare you to take on the next day.
Passages Through Recovery by Terence T. Gorski provides readers with an action plan to stay on the course of recovery. In this excerpt, Gorski discusses the power of using good judgment, and provides advice on how we can learn to control our behavioral impulses.
In Unwelcome Inheritance , Lisa Woititz, with material from her mother, Dr. Janet Woititz, discusses and analyzes Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA). In this excerpt, we are reminded that, although addiction can be inherited, we can break the cycle. We learn the importance of knowing our relatives' health histories and how making these connections can be beneficial in our own recovery.
In the book Rein in Your Brain , Cynthia Moreno Tuohy gives insightful guidance for how we can be more thoughtful in our daily lives. In this excerpt, she visits the topic of relationships and gives us examples of how to effectively determine the health of our personal relationships.
As Meredith Gould reminds us in her book Staying Sober: Tips for Working a Twelve Step Program of Recovery , regular attendance at meetings is a key feature of Twelve Step recovery, and the place where much of the isolation-busting magic of real recovery starts. In this excerpt, Dr. Gould offers an overview of what a newcomer to meetings might encounter, as well as some tips for making the most of Twelve Step meetings....
In her book An Invitation to Self-Care , bestselling author Tracey Cleantis identifies some of the unhealthy habits and behaviors in our daily lives, and demonstrates how learning to nurture ourselves is a central part of living the lives we want. In this excerpt, Cleantis describes what self-care is by illustrating some of its opposites, and shows how these actions can hinder our journey to recovery and our better selves....
In this excerpt from her book Take Good Care: Finding Your Joy in Compassionate Caregiving , author Cynthia Orange invites us to regularly exercise our "empathy muscles." As we do, each of our interactions and relationships will benefit from more compassion, patience, understanding, and kindness.
In her book When Reality Bites: How Denial Helps and What to Do When It Hurts , lecturer and author Holly Parker demonstrates how denial helps people cope in times of crisis or tragedy. She also teaches us how to recognize when denial becomes counterproductive or detrimental - for ourselves as well as our neighbors and the planet. In this excerpt, Dr. Parker describes the ways we often "tune out" uncomfortable realities and offers a method for turning up the volume on compassion....
In her book The Recovering Heart: Emotional Sobriety for Women , Beverly Conyers gives readers of all genders wisdom for the journey of recovery. In this excerpt, she underscores the links between reflection and action in the process of healing. Action is the antidote to habitual helplessness and poor self-image. The path to reclaiming the power we lost to trauma and addiction is through those positive things big and small that we do to build self-worth....
Now in its third edition, Brenda Shaeffer's Is It Love or Is It Addiction? has helped countless people find their way from the trials and confusion of addictive love to the fulfillment of whole and healthy relationships. This excerpt celebrates the enduring power of love, and describes some ways that power can get twisted by trauma or misused through misunderstanding and inattention....
In Sane: Mental Illness, Addiction, and the 12 Steps , bestselling author Marya Hornbacher shares her own recovery story to guide readers through the maze of issues that make "working the Steps" uniquely challenging for people with co-occurring disorders. In this excerpt, Hornbacher explores the critical distinction between humility and humiliation as people with mental health disorders undertake Step Five.
In Craving , author and physician Omar Manejwala translates the neurobiology of this human phenomenon into real and accessible terms, explaining why we just can't seem to get enough. In this excerpt, Dr. Manejwala points out that it's often when things are going well - when we think we've got it all figured out - that we are most vulnerable to our cravings, and most at risk for relapse.
We live in a culture that is in denial about the complicated emotions surrounding loss and grief. In his book Help for the Hard Times: Getting Through Loss , Earl Hipp argues that people who understand loss and grief are better able to face life boldly. In this excerpt, Hipp offers a list of self-care skills that helps us survive and even grow through the hard times of our lives.
In this excerpt from his book Step Up: Unpacking Steps One, Two, and Three with Someone Who's Been There , bestselling author and sober alcoholic Michael Graubart explores the word "unmanageability" as it appears in Step One, and how our impulse to control everyone and everything is at the heart of our struggle with alcoholism and other addictions.
While many see the new year as a chance to try new things and make big changes, author and recovery guide Beverly Conyers shows how each day - even each moment - contains the same promise and possibility. In her book Find Your Light: Practicing Mindfulness to Recover from Anything , Conyers shows us how the practice of mindfulness, including the skill of seeing without judging, can be a game-changing part of recovery and a path to a happier life....
Beloved author Earnie Larsen was a true and certain guide to living more abundantly in recovery. In his book Destination Joy: Moving Beyond Fear, Loss, and Trauma in Recovery , Larsen explores ways you can bring greater love, acceptance, and belonging into your life. This includes learning to fully inhabit the present moment - what he calls "getting in the now."
Beverly Conyers has helped hundreds of thousands of readers recognize family roles in addiction, heal shame, and build healthy relationships. In Everything Changes: Help for Families of Newly Recovering Addicts , Conyers underscores the role of trust in family relationships and offers advice for supporting the loved one in your family with the disease of addiction, as well as ways to care for and support yourself as you navigate the early months of recovery....
Whether we're in the early stages of recovery or have a few years in the rearview, having a job or not having one can offer some formidable emotional challenges. In his book First-Year Sobriety: When All That Changes Is Everything , Guy Kettelhack helps us explore ways to deal with our hopes and fears about loneliness, success, and purpose without resorting to old, self-destructive behaviors.
In her book The Next Happy: Let Go of the Life You Planned and Find a New Way Forward , Tracey Cleantis offers practical help for the journey of grief. With wisdom from her own hard experience, Cleantis shows how to face the reality of letting go of dreams that can no longer be; accept sadness, anger, and shame; and ask the questions that will let you find a new way forward.
In Undrunk: A Skeptic's Guide to AA , recovering alcoholic A. J. Adams shares insights and wisdom from his own story of skeptic spirituality, and the gifts of acceptance and willingness that he found along the path of recovery.
In Almost Anxious: Is My (or My Loved One's) Worry or Distress a Problem? Dr. Luana Marques offers practical steps to reduce anxiety. Learning to monitor and challenge our negative thoughts can help us find more enjoyment in our days, experience better family and work environments, and eliminate the emotional, mental, and even physical problems that anxiety often causes.
In Finding Your Moral Compass: Transformative Principles to Guide You in Recovery and Life , Craig Nakken offers tools for discovering options and making choices, especially when the choices aren't clear. In this excerpt, we explore the tension between resistance and acceptance, and how both reveal who we are and what we can be.
In her new book, Just Dandy: Living with Heartache and Wishes , Sandra Swenson writes about leaning into the future with hope and confidence - not that everything will turn out fine, but that, whatever happens, she will act in ways that are true to herself. The new year is an opportunity to keep becoming, keep learning the lessons that come with grief as well as gratitude, and keep living with integrity, grace, and openheartedness....
Jennifer Storm, in her book Awakening Blackout Girl: A Survivor's Guide for Healing from Addiction and Sexual Trauma , brings us along on her journey through trauma and recovery, sharing her missteps as well as personal triumphs. Finding love and pursuing relationships in early recovery can be fraught in the best circumstances; Storm says our search for deep and dependable love must start with ourselves....
