A successful and detailed guide to using mindfulness to heal and redirect negative emotions.
In this self-improvement title, Heitler (The Power of Two Workbook: Communication Skills for A Strong & Loving Marriage, 2003, etc.) explores several major psychological problems, including anger, fear, anxiety, and addictive behaviors.
Rather than promoting a mindset or ideology that promises to absolve the reader of these problems like other self-help books seem to do, Heitler, a psychologist, continuously presents a theme of options. For every situation, there are choices, and for every emotional state, the author explains, there are directions in which a person can take that feeling. Heitler focuses on the “hand map” of five alternatives: fight, fold, freeze, flee, or Find a Solution. What makes this book different is the way it doesn’t just provide solutions: it maps out ways to arrive at a healthy selection and methods to build better emotional habits. For example, an exercise called “that was then, this is now” asks the reader to picture a negative response and the place in which it is “felt” in the body. Then the reader is asked to visualize an earlier time, perhaps in childhood, when that same emotion was felt. Heitler suggests that the reader analyze what has changed— such as feeling safer now or more powerless then. She recommends analyzing how the older self would console the younger self, if able to revisit the experience as a third party. This technique is common in hypnosis but asks the reader to rewrite old pathways of negative beliefs that continue to interfere with a healthy adult life. Heitler deftly weaves in anecdotes from sports psychology, marriage counseling, and addiction recovery counseling to illustrate the ways individuals can work through their negative emotions and arrive at positive outcomes—without the use of medication. The book’s greatest strength is in its specificity: the author spends time unpacking the particulars of depression, anxiety, and anger, asking the reader to reframe them and toss out old ways of viewing these emotions. For example, while she portrays anger as a “red light” that necessitates a full stop before proceeding, anxiety is a “yellow light” that should slow a person down long enough to assess the condition but not stop the individual from taking action.
A successful and detailed guide to using mindfulness to heal and redirect negative emotions.Pub Date: July 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-63047-812-4
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
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