Recommendations based on "Difficult Conversations"

A groundbreaking guide to sexuality that dispels the stale cultural attitudes about sex that leave too many feeling inadequate, and offers an expansive, attachment-based framework to free us and develop bolder, more satisfying relationships with our sexual selves.When it comes to sex, most people feel insecure. But it’s not because we’re deficient; it’s because we’ve been under-resourced and miseducated.Certified sex therapist Casey Tanner argues that our sex lives are a microcosm of every untruth we’ve internalized about gender, sex, relationships, our bodies, and ourselves. Most of us were taught that healthy sexuality is only for a certain kind of person, in a certain kind of relationship, with a certain kind of body. As a result, the way we’ve learned how to define “good sex” is reflective of how good, worthy, and loveable we see ourselves.Feel It All is a comprehensive guide to help everyone uncover their personal misconceptions about sexuality and relationships. Tanner helps you recognize and assess your core beliefs surrounding relationships, sexuality, gender, and more; identify past trauma; find pathways to healing that work for you; and redefine sex based on knowledge and possibilities, rather than potential consequences.Comprehensive yet accessible, informative, warm, and nonjudgmental, Feel It All provides a pathway for personal healing, creating stronger relationships, and achieving deeper intimacy.

World-renowned relationships experts, Dr John Gottman and Dr Julie Schwartz Gottman, bring decades of their ground-breaking research on the science of love to the urgent and timely topic of conflict. Conflict is the number one reason that couples seek help and resources. Fight Right will teach you how to avoid the five critical mistakes that couples often make during conflict, and instead, teach you how to 'fight right' and use conflict as an opportunity for greater intimacy, deeper connection, and lasting love. Using decades of research, compelling case studies and a new international study, the Gottmans prove that even couples who are truly struggling in conflict and have really lost their way are able to recover and find their way back to each other. For those couples in crisis, or those who want to change their relationship dynamic, Fight Right is the go-to guide to understanding how to fight better, offering urgent and perennial lessons for healthy conflict. 'Couples today really need clear, compassionate, and science-based guidance in this arena, and as the world's leading love experts, the Gottmans are the trusted voice to guide them' Jay Shetty, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Think Like a Monk

how To Talk So Kids Will Listen And Listen So Kids Will Talk Provides All The Know-how Required For Happier, More Constructive Parent-child Relations. Enthusiastically Praised By Parents And Professionals Around The World, The Down-to-earth, Respectful Approach Of Faber And Mazlish Makes Interaction With Children Of All Ages Less Stressful And More Rewarding. The Christopher Award-winning Authors Share Their Latest Insights And Suggestions Based On Feedback They've Received Over The Years. Their Real-world Methods Offer Children's Negative Feelings; Express Anger Without Being Hurtful; Set Firm Limits And Maintain Goodwill; Use Alternatives To Punishment; Resolve Family Conflicts Peacefully.

The classic text on the history of attachment theory and its impact on the field of child development, now in a fully expanded and updated edition.A century ago, leading childcare experts were miles apart in their recommendations to parents. Behaviorists warned against spoiling children with too much affection ("Never hug and kiss them, never let them sit in your lap") whereas geneticists argued that affection matters little because our genes alone determine who we are. Into this fray in the late 1930s stepped John Bowlby, the British psychoanalyst whose work with psychologist Mary Ainsworth would overturn the world of child development and shape its trajectory for the next 70 years.Becoming Attached tells the story of one of the great undertakings of modern psychology: the hundred-year quest to understand what children need and what constitutes good parenting. In this expanded and fully updated new edition, psychotherapist and journalist Robert Karen chronicles the origin of a groundbreaking idea - attachment theory - and its resounding impact on the fields of developmental psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis. Karen charts the historic course of attachment theory as it gained notoriety and support-and not a little controversy. Do "securely attached" children fare better as adults than "insecurely attached" ones? What do children truly need to thrive? Can babies handle prolonged separations? Presenting the origin story of an important idea in child development, this new edition also reveals how attachment research has exploded worldwide in the past several years as evidence for the benefits of secure attachment continue to grow. Karen explores the cutting-edge science examining the relationship between infants and their caregivers - such as the hidden world of synchronized play, fMRI studies that reveal neural patterns of parental and receptive love, and the link between attachment and genetics, wherein early experience changes the expression of genes. Karen also tells a dramatic story of scientists at work and at war, what happens when a theory such as attachment becomes complicated by political and economic pressures, and how its entanglement with gender roles and equity in the workforce continue to overshadow research to this day. Karen shares anecdotes drawn from his own practice to illuminate the challenges many adults face in overcoming insecurities that may originate in infancy and childhood, and how resulting harmful relationship patterns may be quashed.Cementing its place as a classic text of child development and its rich history, Becoming Attached has much to say about both child and adult life, as readers will find it impossible to read without reflecting on their own lives as children, parents, and intimate partners in love or marriage.

Why are women's friendships so deep yet so fragile? Friendship coach and educator Danielle Bayard Jackson unpacks the latest research about women's cooperation and communication, while sharing practical strategies to preserve and strengthen these relationships. Fighting for Our Friendships is one part textbook, one part handbook. Readers will not only learn what the latest research has to say about the mechanics of women's friendships, but they'll walk away with real-life solutions for the most common conflicts that arise in their platonic relationships.   Using a combination of psychology, science, narrative, and a few of the author's signature scripts and out-of-the-box exercises, readers will learn: The three "affinities" that bring women together (and tear them apart) Scripts to navigate nine of the most challenging "friend types" (and how to know which one you are) The covert strategies women use to hurt each other (and how to avoid them) How to have a hard conversation with a friend (without losing the friendship) Surprising ways that women's people-pleasing delays platonic intimacy (and how to stop it) How to know if a friendship is worth saving (and what to do to recover) How to make (and deepen!)  connections with other women   In a time when we are often encouraged to opt out of friendships at any sign of friction, Danielle Bayard Jackson is showing us how to opt in.  

Emotional blackmail is a powerful form of manipulation in which people close to us threaten to punish us for not doing what they want. Emotional blackmailers know how much we value our relationship with them. They know our vulnerabilities and our deepest secrets. They are our mothers, partners, our bosses and colleagues, our friends and our lovers. And no matter how much they care about us, they use this intimate knowledge to give themselves the pay-off they want - our compliance. Susan Forward presents an anatomy of a relationship damaged by manipulation, and gives the reader an arsenal of tools to fight back, with strategies for blackmail targets, including checklists, practical scenarios and communication techniques that seek to strengthen relationships and break the blackmail cycle for good.

Although communications emerging in therapy are ascribed to the mind's unconscious, dark side, they are habitually translated in clinical dialogue into the supposedly therapeutic language of reason and consciousness. But, Dr. Watzlawick argues, it is precisely this bizarre language of the unconscious which holds the key to those realms where alone therapeutic change can take place. Dr. Watzlawick suggests that rather than following the usual procedure of interpreting the patient's communications and thereby translating them into the language of a given psychotherapeutic theory, the therapist must learn the patient's language and make his or her interventions in terms that are congenial to the patient's manner of conceptualizing reality. Only in that way, he shows, can the therapist effectively bring about genuine changes and problem resolutions. Drawing on the work of Milton H. Erickson, he supports his findings with many (and often amusing) examples. This book, then, is a virtual introductory course to the grammar and language of the unconscious.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A practical, heartfelt guide to the art of truly knowing another person and fostering deeper connections at home, at work, and throughout our lives—from the author of The Road to Character and The Second Mountain“More than a guide to better conversations, it’s a blueprint for a more connected and humane way of living. It’s a must-read for anyone looking to deepen their relationships and broaden their perspectives.”—Bill Gates, GatesNotes (Summer Reading Pick)As David Brooks observes, “There is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or society: the ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen—to accurately know another person, to let them feel valued, heard, and understood.”And yet all around are people who feel invisible, unseen, misunderstood. In How to Know a Person, Brooks sets out to help us do better, posing essential questions: If you want to know a person, what kind of attention should you cast on them? What kind of conversations should you have? What parts of a person’s story should you pay attention to?Driven by his trademark sense of curiosity and determination to grow as a person, Brooks draws from the fields of psychology and neuroscience and the worlds of theater, philosophy, history, and education to present a welcoming, hopeful, integrated approach to human connection. How to Know a Person helps readers become more understanding and considerate toward others, and to find the joy that comes from being seen. Along the way it offers a possible remedy for a society that is riven by fragmentation, hostility, and misperception.The act of seeing another person, Brooks argues, is profoundly creative: How can we look somebody in the eye and see something large in them and, in turn, see something larger in ourselves? How to Know a Person is for anyone searching for connection, and yearning to be understood.

The experience of separation and the ensuing susceptibility to anxiety, anger, and fear constitute the flip side of the attachment phenomenon. In an authoritative new foreword to Bowlby's classic study, Stephen Mitchell (who gives resonant voice to the relational perspective in psychoanalysis) bridges the distance between attachment theory and the psychoanalytic tradition.

Practical, biblical guidance for every step of your relationship journey—from single to dating to engaged to married from the bestselling author of Stop Waiting for Permission. “A helpful resource for anyone looking . . . to align their relationship with God’s heart.”—Tim Timberlake When it comes to romantic relationships, have you ever felt like you are navigating without a GPS, broken down with no help in sight, or running on empty—miles from the nearest gas station? Has the modern dating scene left you heartsick or hopeless? If so, you’re not alone, and it’s not too late to get on the highway toward your desired destination. In Relationship Road Map, pastor and bestselling author Stephen Chandler mines Scripture for practical applications to bring hope, healing, and redirection to your journey. Whether you’re single and searching, delving into dating, engaged, or jaded from too many bad dates, the hard-won wisdom and biblical insights within these pages will set you on a course toward a healthier, more fulfilling relational future. As he unfolds the road map, Chandler lays out the keys to navigating your way to the altar and beyond, including the importance of • beginning your dating journey with marriage in mind • getting a spiritual tune-up by inviting God to prepare you for the journey • avoiding dating hazards, dead ends, and obstacles along the route • following the road rules—dating with integrity and intentionality • seeking wisdom from seasoned travelers—inviting accountability into your dating journey • kicking relational hitchhikers to the curb—knowing when the person you are dating isn’t the right one With guidance tailored to the unique perspectives of both women and men, Relationship Road Map speaks to the intricate wiring in all of us, the need to consult the ultimate Instruction Manual at key junctions, and the fuel it will take to arrive safely at the destination where your heart longs to go. An exciting journey awaits—are you ready to hit the road?