Introducing our Book Club!

Are you a clinician who loves to read? Do you ever read great books and wonder how to use them with clients? Every month it seems another book is published in our industry or our close cousin, the self-help industry. It is hard enough to find time to read these books, and if you can, it can be confusing to incorporate the material into your clinical practice. We've got you.

Join our monthly club of fellow clinicians on zoom as we take a deep dive into each book. 

Please invite your friends and colleagues. The more the merrier 🎉

Did we mention it's FREE!!

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Upcoming Free Book Club Events

April 7, 2024

April 21, 2024

May 19, 2024

June 30, 2024

Click on a book event above to register.

Learn more about the club and each book pick below.

WHAT TO EXPECT

First you register for each monthly event. (Come to all of them!). Then you read the book!                                 

Then you join us on zoom, prepared to discuss the following three questions:

General Impressions?

What were your impressions of the book? Did you generally like it or not? What were specific parts, theories, or examples that were impactful? What do you think could have made a better book?

Inform your Practice?

Would you use this book to inform your practice, and if so how? Do you believe it will be an aide to how you run your practice, what theoretical orientation you use, or in any other way?

Clinical Tool?

Would you share this book or passages within it with clients directly? If yes, in what circumstances and conditions? How would you use it as a tool? If not, why not?

March 2024 Pick:

Stolen Focus by Johann Hari

In the United States, teenagers can focus on one task for only sixty-five seconds at a time, and office workers average only three minutes. Like so many of us, Johann Hari was finding that constantly switching from device to device and tab to tab was a diminishing and depressing way to live. He tried all sorts of self-help solutions—even abandoning his phone for three months—but nothing seemed to work. So Hari went on an epic journey across the world to interview the leading experts on human attention—and he discovered that everything we think we know about this crisis is wrong. 
Crucially, Hari learned how we can reclaim our focus—as individuals, and as a society—if we are determined to fight for it. Stolen Focus will transform the debate about attention and finally show us how to get it back.
The book the world needs in order to win the war on distraction.'
– ADAM GRANT, author of Think Again
Read this book to save your mind.'
– SUSAN CAIN, author of Quiet
A visionary, systemic, revolutionary and practical guide for creating the new world. Through tireless research and genius insight Johann Hari certainly snapped me to attention. A life changing book.’
– EVE ENSLER

Check out this website for more information about this book.

April 2024 Pick:

What Happened to You by Bruce Perry

This book is going to change the way you see your life.

Have you ever wondered "Why did I do that?" or "Why can't I just control my behavior?" Others may judge our reactions and think, "What's wrong with that person?" When questioning our emotions, it's easy to place the blame on ourselves; holding ourselves and those around us to an impossible standard. It's time we started asking a different question.

Through deeply personal conversations, Oprah Winfrey and renowned brain and trauma expert Dr. Bruce Perry offer a groundbreaking and profound shift from asking “What’s wrong with you?” to “What happened to you?”

In conversation throughout the book, [Winfrey] and Dr. Perry focus on understanding people, behavior, and ourselves. It’s a subtle but profound shift in our approach to trauma, and it’s one that allows us to understand our pasts in order to clear a path to our future—opening the door to resilience and healing in a proven, powerful way.
‘Through therapeutic frameworks and the curative power of community, belonging, human connection, and mindfulness, the authors show how renewal of mind and spirit is attainable. Though many of these issues have been addressed before, Perry and Winfrey’s partnership is notable, and their book is worthy of attention. A candid guidebook to exorcising mental trauma.
– KIRKUS REVIEWS
Check out this website for more information about this book.

May 2024 Pick:

The Other Side of Sadness by George Bonanno

The conventional view of grieving--encapsulated by the famous five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance--is defined by a mourning process that we can only hope to accept and endure.

In 
The Other Side of Sadness, psychologist and emotions expert George Bonanno argues otherwise. Our inborn emotions--anger and denial, but also relief and joy--help us deal effectively with loss. To expect or require only grief-stricken behavior from the bereaved does them harm. In fact, grieving goes beyond mere sadness, and it can actually deepen interpersonal connections and even lead to a new sense of meaning in life.
 
Fascinating and readable . . . a sensitive and sensible view of loss...’
– THE NEW YORK TIMES
There are a lot of books on bereavement and now you can throw them all away. Bonanno carefully assembles scientific evidence to show that most of what we thought we knew is just plain wrong. The Other Side of Sadness is a game changer. There’s nothing else like it. If you want to know the truth about the human experience of loss, there’s only one book on the shelf.
– DANIEL GILBERT, Harvard University, author of Stumbling on Happiness
 

Check out this website for more information about this book.

June 2024 Pick:

You Are the One You've Been Waiting For by Richard Schwartz

A groundbreaking approach for practicing courageous love and resilient intimacy―from the creator of Internal Family Systems therapy

Do loving relationships end because couples lack communication skills, struggle to empathize, and fail to accommodate each other’s needs? That’s a common belief within and outside of the therapeutic world… but what if it’s all wrong? In 
You Are the One You’ve Been Waiting For, Dr. Richard Schwartz, the celebrated founder of Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, offers a new way―a path toward courageous love that replaces the striving, dependent, and disconnected approach to solving relationship challenges.

The breakthrough realization of IFS is that our psyche contains multiple parts, each with a life of its own. Most problems in relationships arise because we unknowingly burden our partner with the task of caring for our disowned and unloved parts.

 

“This highly original book offers critical new insights into obstacles to the dance of intimacy. Most of us have inner exiled parts that carry burdens of shame and abandonment from our past. These interfere with our capacity for intimacy. Dick Schwartz shows us how to use the exiles our partners trigger in us to find and heal the source―our original attachment injuries. This releases our capacity to be fully alive in relationships.” 
– BESSEL VAN DER KOLK, MD, Medical Director, The Trauma Center
 
Check out this website for more information about this book.

February 2024 Pick:

The Grieving Brain by Mary-Frances O'Connor

In The Grieving Brain, neuroscientist and psychologist Mary-Frances O’Connor, PhD, gives us a fascinating new window into one of the hallmark experiences of being human. 
The Grieving Brain addresses:
  • Why it’s so hard to understand that a loved one has died and is gone forever
  • Why grief causes so many emotions—sadness, anger, blame, guilt, and yearning
  • Why grieving takes so long
  • The distinction between grief and prolonged grief
  • Why we ruminate so much after we lose a loved one
  • How we go about restoring a meaningful life while grieving
The Grieving Brain answered fascinating questions that I would not have thought to ask. State-of-science studies, fun facts and fascinating insights kept me turning pages and losing track of time
IRA BYOCK, MD, author of Dying Well and The Best Care Possible
‘Absorbing and wise, The Grieving Brain offers insights and coping mechanisms for those of us who have peered up from the depths of grief and wondered, why does this hurt so much? How can I make a meaningful life for myself now?
MARYANNE O’HARA, author of Little Matches
Check out this website for more information about this book.

Previous Selections

Check out what you missed. Be sad. Then make sure you don't miss another one! 

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