excerpt from The Wisdom to Know the Difference: An Acceptance & Commitment Therapy Workbook

a personal story

You’re not alone. I know the depths to which addiction can take a person, and I know something about recovery. I know it personally, and I know it as a scientist, therapist, and researcher. Woven into this book will be sensibilities science has to offer to the recovering person, but also some small bits and pieces of my own path in recovery and, finally, stories I’ve heard along the way.

The recovery process has been slow at times, even slower than baby steps. The best I’ve done some days was to sit on my hands. I’ve learned to appreciate even those days spent sitting on my hands. If I’m sitting on my hands, it’s very hard to make much mess to clean up later.

I started down this road something like twenty-five years ago. There was a time, in the winter of 1985, when I would be up in the night, lying on the bathroom floor, heartsick, alone, the house quiet all around me. Lying on that floor, between bouts of retching, I found myself in a dreadful spot—impossibly trapped between an absolute inability to drink anymore and an absolute inability to stop. Lying on that floor, I could feel the cool of the linoleum on my cheek and it was good. There in the bathroom, in the middle of the night, tortured, I found a moment’s rest, my cheek pressed to the cool floor. My whole world was reduced to six square inches of cool linoleum. I could not leave that room without the terrors welling up around me. Even trying to rise from the floor filled me with awareness of all that I had done and regretted—and not done, and regretted more.

It was a starting point. From there, people began to teach me about acceptance and about holding my story in the world a little more gently, about letting go of limitations and opening up to possibility. By inches, I made my way up off the floor and out of that bathroom. I became engaged in the world in new ways. When I look where acceptance, openness, and engagement have taken me over the years, I have to pinch myself. I’ve fallen in love with people all over the world. I’ve become intimate with people and places and ideas that I could not have imagined. I’ve found souls all along the way who saw possibilities in me that I could not see in myself. And I’ve in turn had the privilege of seeing in others strength and beauty and possibility that they could not see.

excerpt from The Whole-Food Guide for Breast Cancer Survivors

Introduction

Few things are more devastating to a person’s peace of mind than a cancer diagnosis. It brings up fears not only for our own health but also for the well-being of our families, friends, and loved ones. For this reason and because it takes the lives of thousands of Americans every day, cancer has been the subject of intense scrutiny for half a century and has been studied for more than one hundred years.

Scientists have come to the conclusion that cancer is a chronic disease of the genome that can appear in anyone at any time, triggered by genetic predisposition and a confluence of interactions with the environment. Yet not everyone with the breast cancer gene develops the disease. Whether a woman avoids developing breast cancer, genetics notwithstanding, has everything to do with a myriad of other factors, including exposure to environmental factors, diet, lifestyle, stress, and more.

Once a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer, an inevitable fear permeates her body and mind, and her friends and family are affected as well. Alarming questions emerge: Why did this happen to me? Why now? How serious is this illness? What treatment will be suggested? What can I do to improve my chances of having a happy and healthy life after treatment? If this cancer goes away, how can I minimize the risk of recurrence? Too often, some of these important questions go unanswered.

by guest blogger Susan Albers, PsyD, author of But I Deserve This Chocolate!

It's that time of year again for some of the best cookies on earth. How can you resist buying a box (or five) from your favorite schoolgirl? Let's face it. Those little cookies are hard to eat mindfully. Even the most conscientious eaters will admit to going a little overboard with a box of Do-Si-Dos or a sleeve of Thin Mints every now and then. Have no fear. Try these 10 psychological tricks to help you savor your stash of Girl Scout cookies mindfully.

by guest blogger Shawn T. Smith, PsyD, author of The User's Guide to the Human Mind

 

Do you feel like your husband or boyfriend has become lazy and uncaring? That he has stopped listening and no longer does his fair share? Are you two becoming increasingly irritated with each other over simple tasks?

It's a common pattern that can feed on itself and grow like an ugly weed. "I love you, snickerdoodle" turns into "you never help me anymore," followed by "maybe I would if you'd get off my back."

Let's talk about three of the most important things you can do to gain more cooperation out of your man. But first, an example of how not to motivate most members of the male species.

 

by guest blogger Stephanie Sarkis, PhD, author of 10 Simple Solutions to Adult ADD, 2nd ed.

What if you had the option to renew your marriage license every five years?

I think we can all agree that we would like to see happier people and a lower divorce rate.

What if every five years, you and your spouse could decide if you wanted to "re-up" or not?

Let's start considering the possibility of offering the option of a renewable marriage license.

by guest blogger Karyn Hall, PhD, co-author of The Power of Validation

In January people evaluate their progress toward goals they made for the past year. Emotionally sensitive people evaluate themselves and wish they were different than they are regardless of what the calendar says. Change can be positive, but sometimes it’s learning acceptance that’s really needed–acceptance of who you are instead of judging yourself as unworthy and living in fear of being rejected.

Some societies don’t understand the concept of judging oneself as unworthy. Our culture tends to be competitive, based on the idea that we have to be “good enough” to succeed, to belong to certain groups, to not be rejected. Many, many years ago being part of a group was necessary for survival. Belonging is still a basic need for everyone.

While oxytocin, the "hormone of love," makes mothers more nurturing & people more giving, could it also fuel intolerance & discrimination? Susan Kuchinskas, author of The Chemistry of Connection, participates in a lively roundtable discussion about it. Listen to it here:

by guest blogger Elliot Cohen, PhD, author of The Dutiful Worrier

It is often said that love is a feeling. Since feelings are subjective, this makes it very difficult to describe love let alone determine how much someone loves another person. However, I want to take a different approach. Love, I will show, is not merely a feeling. Rather it is an activity. Moreover, this activity involves skill-building. Thus you can work at cultivating your love for another. You can get better (or worse) at loving someone. It is also possible to rank how well you are doing at loving someone. In fact, I will provide a "love inventory" that will help you to determine just how good you (or your significant others) really are at loving.

"To love," said Stendhal, "is to derive pleasure from seeing, touching, and feeling through all one's senses and as closely as possible, a lovable person who loves us." This is the popular view of what love is--a deep, all-pervasive positive feeling toward another person. Indeed, it is such a view of love that leads many of us to ask questions like these: "Is this feeling that I have really love?" "Yes I feel comfortable with him (her), but is this love?" "I thought falling in love would feel like fireworks going off, and this doesn't." "We have great sex but I am just not sure if it's love."

by guest blogger Michelle May, MD, author of Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat with Diabetes

The response to Paula Deen's revelation that she has Type 2 diabetes highlights the false "either-or" dilemma that plagues our culture's approach to eating (and most other things): good or bad, right or wrong, all or nothing.

Paula Deen's popular brand was based on her audacious use of ingredients that are "evil" in this dichotomous view of healthy eating. Viewers watched in fascination and vicarious enjoyment as this sweet but naughty woman unabashedly broke "the rules." Now some of her critics are angry that she hasn't fallen to her knees, begged our forgiveness, and sworn off butter and sugar forever to pay penance and set an example for all the other sinners she led astray.

This all or nothing thinking has characterized yo-yo dieting for decades. At first, dieters are highly motivated to adhere to a strict diet of "good" food. Eventually, feelings of deprivation set in, leading to preoccupation and cravings for "bad" food, increasing sensitivity to temptations, giving in, guilt and consequently, overeating. I call this predictable pattern the eat repent repeat cycle.

by Raychelle Cassada Lohmann, MS, LPC, author of The Anger Workbook for Teens

Do you counsel parents who are at their wit's end with a child who throws tantrums, destroys things, or is defiant? If so, here's some information for parents that can help.

Children are constantly soaking in what's going on around them. Studies are showing that even when parents don't think that their kids listen, they do. Parents are one of the strongest influences in a child's life. They set the bar. So be sure that parents are modeling appropriate anger management skills. Besides being the model of behavior, parents should teach children specific skills to manage anger.