Helping beginning and experienced therapists cope with the myriad challenges of working in agencies, clinics, hospitals, and private practice, this book distills the leading theories and best practices in the field. The authors provide a clear approach to engaging diverse clients and building rapport; interweaving evidence-based techniques to meet therapeutic goals; and intervening effectively with individuals, families, groups, and larger systems. Practitioners will find tools for addressing the needs of their clients while caring for themselves and avoiding burnout; students will find a clear-headed framework for making use of the variety of approaches available in mental health practice.

Advice and inspiration for the real-life challenges of being a mental health professional. Graduate school and professional training for therapists often focus on academic preparation, but there’s a lot more that a therapist needs to know to be successful after graduation. With warmth, wisdom, and expertise, Jeffrey A. Kottler covers crucial but underaddressed challenges that therapists face in their professional lives at all levels of experience. PART I , “More Than You Bargained For,” covers the changing landscape of the mental health profession and the limits and merits of professional training. PART II , “Secrets and Neglected Challenges,” explores important issues that are often overlooked during training years, including the ways our clients become our greatest teachers, the power of storytelling, and the role of deception in psychotherapy. And in PART III , “Ongoing Personal and Professional Development,” Kottler focuses on areas in which even the most experienced therapists can continue to hone their talents and maximize their potential, laying out effective tips to navigate organization politics, write and publish books and articles, cultivate creativity in clinical work, maintain a private practice, present and lecture to large and small audiences, sustain passion for the work of helping others, plan for the future, and much more. As honest and inspiring as it is revealing, this book offers therapists and counselors at all levels of experience key ideas for thriving after formal education.

As a quality resource that examines the psychological, neurobiological, cultural, and spiritual considerations that undergird optimal couple care, Foundations for Couples’ Therapy teaches readers to conduct sensitive and comprehensive therapy with a diverse range of couples. Experts from social work, clinical psychotherapy, neuroscience, social psychology, and health respond to one of seven central case examples to help readers understand the dynamics within each partner, as well as within the couple as a system and within a broader cultural context. Presented within a Problem-Based Learning approach (PBL), these cases ground the text in clinical reality. Contributors cover critical and emerging topics like cybersex, emotional well-being, forgiveness, military couples, developmental trauma, and more, making it a must-have for practitioners as well as graduate students.

This volume recounts how personal events in the life of a therapist affect therapy and transference and countertransference. Leading psychotherapists share their personal experiences of the effects of life events such as illness, pregnancy, divorce, and malpractice suits on therapy. Through its poignant descriptions of life's intrusions on the therapeutic process, this volume offers guidance for therapists on practicing in the real world.

A bestseller for over 20 years, I Don’t Want to Talk About It is a groundbreaking and hopeful guide to understanding and destigmatizing male depression, essential not only for men who may be suffering but for the people who love them. Twenty years of experience treating men and their families has convinced psychotherapist Terrence Real that depression is a silent epidemic in men—that men hide their condition from family, friends, and themselves to avoid the stigma of depression’s “un-manliness.” Problems that we think of as typically male—difficulty with intimacy, workaholism, alcoholism, abusive behavior, and rage—are really attempts to escape depression. And these escape attempts only hurt the people men love and pass their condition on to their children. This groundbreaking book is the “pathway out of darkness” that these men and their families seek. Real reveals how men can unearth their pain, heal themselves, restore relationships, and break the legacy of abuse. He mixes penetrating analysis with compelling tales of his patients and even his own experiences with depression as the son of a violent, depressed father and the father of two young sons.

Real-World Couple Counseling and Therapy: An Introductory Guide provides practitioners with an inclusive exploration of the unique features, challenges, and opportunities of contemporary couple counseling. Integrating CBT, existential, and systems approaches, and based on best available research, the text offers guidelines for beginning couple therapists along with breadth and depth of coverage. Comprehensive and pragmatic, it examines the essence of the field: assessment, ethics, tr

A REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK * NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The refreshingly original and “startlingly hopeful” (Lisa Taddeo) debut memoir of an over-achieving young lawyer who reluctantly agrees to group therapy and gets psychologically and emotionally naked in a room of six complete strangers—and finds human connection, and herself. Christie Tate had just been named the top student in her law school class and finally had her eating disorder under control. Why then was she driving through Chicago fantasizing about her own death? Why was she envisioning putting an end to the isolation and sadness that still plagued her despite her achievements? Enter Dr. Rosen, a therapist who calmly assures her that if she joins one of his psychotherapy groups, he can transform her life. All she has to do is show up and be honest. About everything—her eating habits, childhood, sexual history, etc. Christie is skeptical, insisting that that she is defective, beyond cure. But Dr. Rosen issues a nine-word prescription that will change everything: “You don’t need a cure. You need a witness.” So begins her entry into the strange, terrifying, and ultimately life-changing world of group therapy. Christie is initially put off by Dr. Rosen’s outlandish directives, but as her defenses break down and she comes to trust Dr. Rosen and to depend on the sessions and the prescribed nightly phone calls with various group members, she begins to understand what it means to connect. “Often hilarious, and ultimately very touching” (People), Group is “a wild ride” (The Boston Globe), and with Christie as our guide, we are given a front row seat to the daring, exhilarating, painful, and hilarious journey that is group therapy—an under-explored process that breaks you down, and then reassembles you so that all the pieces finally fit.