A powerful workshop-in-a-book for healing from loss One day everything is fine. The next, you find yourself without everything you took for granted. Love has turned sour. The people you depended on have let you down. You feel you’ll never love again. But there is a way out. In The Abandonment Recovery Workbook, the only book of its kind, psychotherapist and abandonment expert Susan Anderson explores the seemingly endless pain of heartbreak and shows readers how to break free—whether the heartbreak comes from a divorce, a breakup, a death, or the loss of friendship, health, a job, or a dream. From the first shock of despair through the waves of hopelessness to the tentative efforts to make new connections, The Abandonment Recovery Workbook provides an itinerary for recovery. A manual for individuals or support groups, it includes exercises that the author has tested and developed through her decades of expertise in abandonment recovery. Anderson provides concrete recovery tools and exercises to discover and heal underlying issues, identify self-defeating behaviors of mistrust and insecurity, and build self-esteem. Guiding you through the five stages of your journey—shattering, withdrawal, internalizing, rage, and lifting—this book (a new edition of Anderson’s Journey from Heartbreak to Connection) serves as a source of strength. You will come away with a new sense of self—a self with an increased capacity to love. Praise for Susan Anderson’s The Journey from Abandonment to Healing: “If there can be a pill to cure the heartbreak of rejection, this book may be it.” — Rabbi Harold Kushner, bestselling author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People

Like Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross's groundbreaking On Death and Dying, Susan Anderson's book clearly defines the five phases of a different kind of grieving--grieving over a lost relationship. An experienced professional who has specialized in helping people with loss, heartbreak, and abandonment for more than two decades, Susan Anderson gives this subject the serious attention it deserves. The Journey From Abandonment to Healing is designed to help all victims of emotional breakups--whether they are suffering from a recent loss, or a lingering wound from the past; whether they are caught up in patterns that sabotage their own relationships, or they're in a relationship where they no longer feel loved. From the first stunning blow to starting over, it provides a complete program for abandonment recovery.

FINALLY, THE BREAKTHROUGH BOOK THAT PUTS YOU BACK IN CONTROL OF YOUR LIFE Most of us have met our Outer Child once too often. The self-sabotaging, bungling, and impulsive part of the personality. This misguided, hidden nemesis—the devil on your shoulder—blows your diet, overspends, and ruins your love life. A menacing older sibling to your emotionally needy Inner Child, your Outer Child acts out and fulfills your legitimate childlike needs and wants in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and in counterproductive ways: It goes for immediate gratification and the quick fix in spite of your best-laid plans. Food, attention, emotional release—your Outer Child usually gets what it wants, and your Adult self can feel powerless to stop it. Now, in a revolutionary rethinking of the link between emotion and behavior, veteran psychotherapist and theoretician Susan Anderson offers a three-step, paradigm-shifting program to tame your Outer Child’s destructive behavior. This dynamic, transformational set of strategies—action steps that act like physical therapy for the brain—calms your Inner Child, strengthens your Adult Self and releases you from the self-blame and shame that are the root of Outer Child issues, and paves new neural pathways that can lead to more productive behavior. Discover • the common Outer Child personality types, including the Drama Queen; the Master of Disguise; My Way or No Way; and Love the Getting, not the Having • proven techniques to resolve underlying sources of self-sabotage • insights that will allow you to stop blaming your supposed “lack of willpower” for your problems • key strategies for healing the painful issues of your past • mental exercises that effectively deal with Outer Child challenges around food, procrastination, love, debt, depression, and more As your head, heart, and behavior come together and learn to help, not hurt, one another, your strong Adult Self, contented Inner child, and tamed Outer child will become a reality. The result is happiness and fulfillment, self-mastery, and self-love. From the Hardcover edition.

Practical skills for healing the hidden wounds of childhood trauma We’re all a product of our childhood, and if you’re like most people, you have experienced some form of childhood trauma. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are at the root of nearly all mental health disorders, including depression, anxiety, panic disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Memories associated with ACEs imprint on a child’s brain, and can manifest themselves mentally and physically throughout adulthood—even decades after the traumatic incident. So, how can you begin healing the deep wounds of ACEs and build strength and resilience? In this innovative workbook, trauma specialist Glenn Schiraldi presents practical, evidence-based skills to help you heal from ACEs. In addition to dealing with the symptoms, you’ll learn to address the root cause of your suffering, change the way your brain responds to stress and the outside world, and soothe troubling memories. Using the trauma-informed and resilience-building practices in this book, you will: Understand how toxic childhood stress is affecting your health Rewire disturbing imprints in your brain using cutting-edge skills Learn how to regulate stress and emotional arousal Discover why traditional psychological approaches might not be helping Know when and how to find the right kind of therapy Childhood trauma doesn’t have to define you for the rest of your life. With this book as your guide, you will be able to make fundamental changes and replace needless suffering with self-care, security, and contentment.

In The Journey from Abandonment to Healing, psychotherapist Susan Anderson guided her readers through the five stages of abandonment. Now, she explores the seemingly endless pain of heartbreak -- and shows the reader how to break free... One day, you have it all together. The next day, you find yourself bereft of everything you took for granted. Love has turned sour. The people you depend on have let you down. You feel you'll never love again. But there is a way out. From the first feeling of hopelessness to making new connections, this guide provides the itinerary for recovery. Moving through the five stages of your journey -- shattering, withdrawal, internalizing, rage, and lifting -- this book serves both as a source of strength and as a workbook with hands-on exercises that you can use to come away with a new sense of self -- a self with an increasing capacity for love. Book jacket.

Recovery therapist Cathryn Taylor offers a step-by-step guide to reparenting the children within and healing their shame, anger, and feelings of abandonment. Using written and verbal exercises, guided imagery, journaling, drawing, mirror work, and rituals, you can change your experience of the past. For each of the seven stages of childhood, you will follow six steps: • Identify your pain. • Research its childhood roots. • Re-experience the pain. • Separate from it. • Grieve the losses of each stage. • Ritually release the pain and reclaim the joy of each inner child. In the end, you will reap the rewards of the wisdom of your true self. "This easy-to-follow six-step formula helps you contact true spirituality through ritual and imagery, while healing your inner children. The book is brilliant, and serves as a bridge between the psychological and the spiritual."--Laurel King, Author of Women of Power and coauthor of Living in the Light "Cathryn Taylor takes the next step: for her, the inner child is a palpable and real force in life. Methodically she applies a healing formula for each stage of growth and development, offering each of us valuable help in completing the child’s unfinished business."--Jeremiah Abrams, Editor of Reclaiming the Inner Child

Everyone thrives on love, comfort, and the safety of family, friends, and community. But if you are denied these basic comforts early in life, whether through a lack of physical affection or emotional bonding, you may develop intense fears of abandonment that can last well into adulthood—fears so powerful that they can actually cause you to push people away. If you suffer from fears of abandonment, you may have underlying feelings of anger, shame, fear, anxiety, depression, and grief. These emotions are intense and painful, and when they surface they can lead to a number of negative behaviors, such as jealousy, clinging, and emotional blackmail. In Love Me, Don’t Leave Me, therapist Michelle Skeen combines acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), schema therapy, and dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) to help you identify the root of your fears. In this book you’ll learn how schema coping behaviors—deeply entrenched and automatic behaviors rooted in childhood experiences and fears—can take over and cause you to inadvertently sabotage your relationships. By recognizing these coping behaviors and understanding their cause, you will not only gain powerful insights into your own mind, but also into the minds of those around you. If you are ready to break the self-fulfilling cycle of mistrust, clinginess, and heartbreak and start building lasting, trusting relationships, this book will be your guide.