Download Emotional First Aid Healing Rejection Guilt Failure and Other Everyday Hurts Guy Winch PhD 9780142181072 Books

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Product details Paperback 304 pages Publisher Plume; Reprint edition (July 29, 2014) Language English ISBN-10 0142181072

Emotional First Aid Healing Rejection Guilt Failure and Other Everyday Hurts Guy Winch PhD 9780142181072 Books Reviews

• As a therapist, I'm constantly looking out for helpful resources for clients. This book has quickly been added to my list. It so clearly explores the seven most common--and inevitable, if you're human!--psychological injuries and then provides specific "first aid" treatments for each
  
  1. Rejection--The emotional cuts and scrapes of daily life
  Description
  Rejections can inflict four distinct emotional wounds, each of which might require some from of emotional first aid lingering visceral pain, anger and aggressive urges, harm to self-esteem, and damage to feeling that we belong. (p. 17)
  Treatments
  * Argue with self-criticism
  * Revive your self-worth
  * Replenish feelings of social connection
  * Desensitize yourself
  
  2. Loneliness--Relationship muscle weakens
  Description
  Loneliness makes us constantly on guard, prepared for the disappointment and rejection we are sure will come. As a result, we miss opportunities to make social connections and behave in ways that push others away. (p. 53)
  Treatments
  * Remove your negatively tinted glasses
  * Identify your self-defeating behaviors
  * Take on the other person's perspective
  * Deepen your emotional bonds
  * Create opportunities for social connection
  * Adopt a best friend
  
  3. Loss and Trauma--Walking on broken bones
  Description
  Loss and trauma create four psychological wounds. They cause overwhelming emotional pain, they undermine our basic sense of identity and the roles we play in life, they destabilize our belief systems and our understanding of the world, and they challenge our ability to remain present and engaged in our most important relationships. (p. 85)
  Treatments
  * Soothe your emotional pain your way
  * Recover lost aspects of your self
  * Find meaning in tragedy
  
  4. Guilt--The poison in our system
  Description
  Guilt usually serves an important function by alerting us to when we might have harmed another person or when any actions we're considering might do so. However, if our offense is serious or if we've already made significant efforts to apologize to a person we harmed or atone for our actions in other ways and our guilt remains excessive, or if we suffer from substantial survivor guilt, or separation and disloyalty guilt, emotional first aid is indeed necessary. (p. 119)
  Treatments
  * Learn the recipe for an effective apology
  * Forgive yourself
  * Reengage in life
  
  5. Rumination--Picking at emotional scabs
  Description
  In order to break the self-reinforcing nature of ruminative thoughts and allow our wounds to heal, we must interrupt the cycle of rumination once it gets triggered, and we should weaken the urge to ruminate at the source by diminishing the intensity of the feelings that fuel it. We must also make efforts to monitor our relationships and to ease the emotional burden we might be placing on loved ones. (p. 154)
  Treatments
  * Change your perspective
  * Reframe the anger
  * Go easy on your friends
  
  6. Failure--Emotional chest colds become psychological pneumonias
  Description
  When we fail repeatedly or when we respond to failures in ways that set back our confidence, our self-esteem, and our chances of future success, we run the risk of allowing our emotional chest cold to turn into psychological pneumonia. Because much of the anxiety associated with failures can build upon itself, it is best to be prudent and apply psychological first aid treatment as soon as possible after meaningful or bothersome failures occur. (p. 189)
  Treatments
  * Get support and get real
  * Focus on factors in your control
  * Take responsibility and own the fear
  * Distract yourself from performance pressure distractions
  
  7. Low Self-Esteem--Weak emotional immune systems
  Description
  Having low self-esteem weakens our emotional immune systems and inflicts three kinds of psychological wounds it makes us more vulnerable to psychological injuries, it makes us dismissive of positive feedback and resistant to emotional nutrients, and it makes us feel unassertive and disempowered. (p. 232)
  Treatments
  * Adopt self-compassion and silence the critical voices in your head
  * Identify your strengths and affirm them
  * Increase your tolerance for compliments
  * Increase your personal empowerment
  * Improve your self-control
  
  Think of this book as first aid for the psyche. And, use as needed until symptoms subside.
• I love how this book 1) acknowledges that we need to address our emotional wounds with they happen and 2) uses practical examples and gives tangible step-by-step instructions to help deal with emotional injuries. It's not another book that leaves you with a stack of ways you *should* think and *should* react. Instead, you give it a read to learn the science -- then keep it handy (like a medicine cabinet) for when an injury happens. I've read somewhere around 10 books in this genre and this one by far stands out as the most practical and achievable guide to emotional health.
• This is a great book that has helped me through a rough time and will continue to help me as I have learned important lessons on "emotional first aid." There are clarifications and/or updates to misconceptions held by society in general or within the mental health professional community. Anyone suffering from mental illness will definitely benefit from reading this book.
• This book does not simply explain emotions, he actually gives great advice on how to put those yucky emotions away for good. One of the BEST self-help books I've evr bought!!
• If you think a first aid kit is a good idea, this book is a great idea. Prescriptive for people with emotions. If you do not feel your emotions, why bother. But if you do, life is not always smooth. Knowing how to take care of yourself is not common sense. This is very helpful.
• I work in the mental health field and see the common psychological injuries described in this book. I think this book could help people to be more aware of psychological injuries and apply first aid so they don't worsen. Easy to read and practical and comes with case examples to help explain the concepts.
• Many of the examples used could have easily been me under different circumstances. I identify with many of the problems and mistakes and have appreciated the benefits of the first aid.
• Finally, a book that shares the importance of emotional first aid. I studied the concept of emotional first aid in my graduate program in 1984 from my mentor Dr.Nick Long and the work of Dr. Fitz Redl. Love the book.