The Adult Chair is more than a book, or a tool, or a process. It is an entirely new way to see your world, your relationships, your career, and your life.

A warm and practical guide to coping with anxiety—and finding ways to laugh anyway. Got anxiety? Join the club. More specifically, join the Anxiety Sisterhood. Abs and Mags, aka the Anxiety Sisters, have spent the past thirty years figuring out how to outsmart their anxiety-ridden brains, and the last five years sharing what they’ve learned with a growing online community of like-minded sufferers who are looking for ways to cope better every day. Whether you’re looking to better understand and manage panic, worry, grief, stress, or phobias, or just want to pause the endless spin cycle in your head, you’ll find real-world, research-based techniques, exercises, and insights—without the clinical, confusing, one-size-fits-all approach that isn’t so helpful when your mind is racing, your triggers are in overdrive, and you just want to get back to feeling normal . . . ish. Most of all, this is a handbook for fighting Shrinking World Syndrome—that isolating, lonely feeling that comes from letting your anxiety run the show. The stories and suggestions in this book will remind you that you’re not alone. You don’t have to eliminate anxiety from your life in order to feel okay . . . and, yes, even happy.

“Wow. This book totally rocks. It arrived on a day when I was in deep confusion and sadness about my age. Everything about it, from my invisibility to my neck. Within four or five wise, passionate pages, I had found insight, illumination, and inspiration. I never use the word empower, but this book has empowered me.” —Anne Lamott, New York Times bestselling author Author, activist, and TED speaker Ashton Applewhite has written a rousing manifesto calling for an end to discrimination and prejudice on the basis of age. In our youth obsessed culture, we’re bombarded by media images and messages about the despairs and declines of our later years. Beauty and pharmaceutical companies work overtime to convince people to purchase products that will retain their youthful appearance and vitality. Wrinkles are embarrassing. Gray hair should be colored and bald heads covered with implants. Older minds and bodies are too frail to keep up with the pace of the modern working world and olders should just step aside for the new generation. Ashton Applewhite once held these beliefs too until she realized where this prejudice comes from and the damage it does. Lively, funny, and deeply researched, This Chair Rocks traces her journey from apprehensive boomer to pro-aging radical, and in the process debunks myth after myth about late life. Explaining the roots of ageism in history and how it divides and debases, Applewhite examines how ageist stereotypes cripple the way our brains and bodies function, looks at ageism in the workplace and the bedroom, exposes the cost of the all-American myth of independence, critiques the portrayal of elders as burdens to society, describes what an all-age-friendly world would look like, and offers a rousing call to action. It’s time to create a world of age equality by making discrimination on the basis of age as unacceptable as any other kind of bias. Whether you’re older or hoping to get there, this book will shake you by the shoulders, cheer you up, make you mad, and change the way you see the rest of your life. Age pride!

On the verge of lost hope, Gil discovers his true love in a Psych Ward, and together they set out to build a normal life. But as family dysfunction tightens its grip and trusted friends reveal their true colors, Gil must overcome a crippling illness before Sandi returns to her old ways and he loses everyone and everything. Will a lifetime of scars disfigure his soul? Will Gil survive as a new voice?

Make this YOUR year, with 52 weeks of journaling prompts that will help you discover your most authentic self and transform your life! Based on the powerful Adult Chair Model by Michelle Chalfant, this journal will help you understand how your experiences have shaped you, how to get unstuck and how to get the happy, peaceful life you deserve!

Take a seat and let this be your guide to living an emotionally healthy life, with real-world examples and easy-to-understand tools to help you create lasting change—from the therapist behind the popular podcast The Adult Chair. Through decades of working with countless clients, Michelle Chalfant found that most forms of therapy, while well-meaning, help with the symptoms but rarely address the root cause. That's why she developed a new model of personal transformation called The Adult Chair. The Adult Chair model breaks life into three relatable stages of development, helping you gain awareness of how you became who you are today and what to do to transform. Take, for example, a client named Sara, who had trouble staying in relationships. As Chalfant guided her through the model, Sara discovered: • The Child Chair (age 0-6). Sitting here, Sara recalled her father's strong temper and realized this was when she learned to suppress her negative emotions. • The Adolescent Chair (age 7-24). At this stage, Sara turned to survival mechanisms to numb her feelings: first with food, then later with substances. • The Adult Chair (after age 25). Sara realized that even though she was a physical adult, she was still emotionally acting from her Adolescent Chair, by numbing herself. From this new empowered perspective, she was able to heal old wounds, feel and process her emotions, and enter relationships more open-heartedly. The Adult Chair walks you through each of the chairs in your life, giving you a framework to understand why you do what you do and the root of the common challenges humans face. Chalfant then provides the “five pillars of healthy adults” that serve as fundamental building blocks of living as your healthiest adult self. Along the way, she offers processes, tools, exercises, and journaling prompts that you can plug into your life to get unstuck and transform your life each day. Revolutionizing the way you understand yourself and others, The Adult Chair will help you break unhealthy patterns and live with greater balance and peace.