Curious, Healing

Books about healing, business, and fun

psychology

“Wired For Love” by Stan Tatkin

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Subtitle: How Understanding Your Partner’s Brain & Attachment Style Can Help You Defuse Conflict & Build a Secure Relationship

Recommended to me by: Nora Samaran

I bounced off this book the first time I tried to read it. The second time, I got past the over-simplified initial examples and cutely simplified brain science to get to some useful relationship suggestions. They boil down to: Make your relationship a priority. Pay attention to what your partner likes, and do that. Pay attention to what upsets your partner, and offer comfort. Negotiate in good faith rather than trying to control them. Be aware of attachment styles and threat responses.

I took serious exception to calling the ventral and dorsal vagal nerves the “smart vagus” and “dumb vagus.” That’s just plain inaccurate, and has all sorts of ableist implications that don’t belong in a relationship book (or anywhere).

As frequently happens, the disorganized attachment style is left out. He uses the metaphors of anchor (secure), wave (anxious), and island (avoidant).

There are some same-sex couples in the examples, and the genders are not painfully stereotyped in the heterosexual couples. The names even have a bit of cultural variability. Yay.

Recommended for the relationship advice, but not the brain science.

Available at bookshop.org.

“An Emotionally Focused Workbook for Couples” by Veronica Kallos-Lilly and Jennifer Fitzgerald

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Subtitle: The Two of Us

Recommended by: David Mitchell

I love the diverse couples on the cover of this book. They create a sense of inclusion and emotional safety right away.

Sue Johnson introduces Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) in “Hold Me Tight.” EFT assumes that adult attachment is natural and normal, and that it makes sense that we feel terrible and protest loudly when our attachment bonds feel threatened.

This workbook kindly and carefully works through the steps of creating emotional safety in a relationship. Clear explanations alternate with questions that invite self-reflection and partner communication. Topics include: cycles of relationship distress, attachment bonds, past influences, emotions, how we feel now, more about difficult emotions, security, rebuilding our bond, repairing relationship injury, stories of change, maintaining intimacy and revitalizing your sex life.

For example, the chapter on emotions asks, “In my family or previous relationships… What messages did I get about experiencing and expressing emotions?” In my family, emotions were never a topic of discussion. I hadn’t consciously noticed that before.

Highly recommended! Useful as an adjunct to couples therapy, or on its own. Each question takes time to answer and process, so this is a workbook to go through slowly and gently.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Death Without Denial Grief Without Apology” by Barbara K. Roberts

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Subtitle: A Guide for Facing Death and Loss

This is a loving clear-eyed unflinchingly personal look at terminal illness, death, and grief by Oregon’s former governor Barbara Roberts. Her husband Frank Roberts died of cancer during her governorship. From the introduction:

I hope for a culture of loving openness in every medical office, hospital room, health care clinic, and emergency room where news of life’s limitations and death’s impending arrival are discussed openly and compassionately. People who are dying and their families and loved ones must be prepared to create such a culture for themselves.

Frank was a state senator during his last year, and there are some mentions of both of their political work in their choice to keep his terminal illness private for some time. I can only imagine the strength it took to continue to govern through illness and grief.

She tells the story of his diagnosis, their decision process together, their choice of hospice rather than further treatment, his quiet death, and her grief afterward. Emotions are included, but the story is calmly told. She shares the practical steps of planning for death. She talks openly about her own and others’ private rituals of grief, such as bringing flowers to a recently dead wife on an anniversary, or talking to the urn containing Frank’s ashes.

Highly recommended!

Wikipedia page about Oregon Democratic governor Barbara Roberts. Her term was from 1991-1995. She was the first woman Oregon governor. The second was just elected in 2016, our current governor Kate Brown.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Emotional Blackmail” by Susan Forward, Ph.D.

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Subtitle: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You

Recommended to me by: looking up FOG: Fear, Obligation, and Guilt

Susan Forward clearly analyzes emotional blackmail and blackmailers in relationships, as well as the characteristics of people who become targets of blackmail. At the end, she has suggestions for reclaiming integrity and communicating assertively with blackmailers to give them the opportunity to reform.

Emotional blackmail steps: Demand, Resistance, Pressure, Threats, Compliance, Repetition.

By contrast, setting limits involves defining a position, stating what one needs, saying what one will and won’t accept, and giving the other person a chance to say yes or no.

Blackmailers are divided into categories: Punishers (“Do it or else I’ll hurt you”), Self-Punishers (“… or else I’ll hurt myself”), Sufferers (“You know how much I’ve been through”), and Tantalizers (“I could help you”).

FOG (Fear, Obligation, and Guilt) keep blackmail targets from thinking clearly. The blackmailer skillfully pushes buttons to make the target react rather than stop and think.

Traits that make targets vulnerable to FOG and emotional blackmail: an excessive need for approval, an intense fear of anger, a need for peace at any price, a tendency to take too much responsibility for other people’s lives, a high level of self-doubt. These are survival skills that may be out of date, and cause problems when they run the show.

Suggestions: Make a contract with yourself to restore integrity and take action. Repeat your power statement, “I CAN STAND IT.” Reverse statements such as “I tell myself what I want is wrong” into “I ask for what I want, even when it upsets the blackmailer.”

Send up an SOS: Stop (“I need time to think about it”), Observe (one’s own reactions, thoughts, emotions, flashpoints), Strategize (analyze demands). Demands might be minor, partly okay, open to compromise, or non-negotiable. List what you need, and expand your options. Decide what the bottom line is to leave.

Interestingly, the book uses the phrase “powerful non-defensive communication” and its publication date (1997) predates Sharon Ellison’s book on that topic (2002). Don’t take up the bait of attacks, but clearly and consistently stay on-message. “This is who I am. This is what I want.”

To disconnect from fear, she suggests thought-stopping. To disconnect from obligation, add “WHERE IS IT WRITTEN” to one’s obligatory rules. To disconnect from guilt, write a fairy tale in third person about what’s going on.

Her suggestions are based on the idea that our emotions follow our thoughts. She explicitly excludes seriously abusive relationships, and people who have experienced serious trauma and abuse. She also elides any discussion of racism, sexism, classism, or other power dynamics at work that might put someone down and out for resisting a blackmailer.

While she discusses attempts at resistance that get squashed, she still seems to be saying that the blackmail targets just didn’t resist the right way. According to her, blackmail targets train their blackmailers by acquiescing. As someone who actively resists guilt and doesn’t acquiesce much, I’m here to say that path has negative consequences too.

She states that blackmailers themselves are frightened and unaware of their tactics’ effects on the target. In the cases where this is true, her suggestions will be useful. In the cases where blackmailers are simply indifferent, or coldly aware of the efficacy of their tactics, these suggestions inappropriately suggest that the target is at fault.

This is a great first book about manipulation and assertiveness. It is clearly written with lots of anecdotes threaded through the book. If it isn’t your first introduction to these ideas, it feels somewhat shallow, like it sidesteps the hard parts.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Healing Trauma” by Peter A. Levine, PhD.

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Subtitle: A Pioneering Program for Restoring the Wisdom of Your Body

Recommended to me by: a client

This is a practical, applied introduction to Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing work. After an introductory summary, he presents 12 exercises, starting with body awareness and grounding, continuing with awareness of felt senses in the body, and then moving into completion of fight, flight, and freeze responses. He includes orienting to a sense of normalcy and balance that may be new and unfamiliar. The approach is gentle, accepting, and warm.

A CD is included where he reads the exercises. It’s not really a guided meditation, because, for example, he says, “Tap your left hand … (notice, etc.), okay now move through the rest of the body.”

The exercises aren’t quite in the order I would present them, since starting with body awareness might be challenging for many people. I would start with grounding and resources first.

Recommended for people who want to tools to work with their own trauma, and/or who want to understand the nuts and bolts of Somatic Experiencing.

Available at bookshop.org.

“The Spell of the Sensuous” by David Abram

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Subtitle: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World

Recommended to me by: David Mitchell

David Abram is both a sleight-of-hand magician, concerned with perception and connection, and a philosopher, concerned with insubstantial ideas. Traveling as a sleight-of-hand magician, he got to know indigenous magicians in Indonesia, Nepal, and the Americas. With them, he learned to pay attention to the immediate world of the senses.

This book is a mix of sumptuous sensuous tangible descriptions, and poorly supported abstract ideas. I loved the former, and grumpily argued with the latter as I read. He claims that the alphabet divided us from our immediate participation in the natural world. In the coda, he says that even he doesn’t really believe that; it was just a starting point for discussion.

Yes, we humans are part of the world, not divided from it. Attending to our senses, to the wide, breathing present, nourishes us. Everything is equally alive, equally valid and valuable. Indigenous ways integrate with the world in a sustainable way. Each community’s stories convey urgently useful information about how to thrive in their specific place and time.

This book bridges the abstract world of philosophy with the sensuous world that indigenous peoples have inhabited all along. It casually elides all mention of privilege based on gender, race, wealth, and power. Published in 1996, it changed the conversation about ecology and sustainability.

Recommended as food for thought about how you want to connect with the world around you.

Book excerpt.

Available at bookshop.org.