Helpful Resources
Only so much can be accomplished in 45 minutes per week. But there are many things that you can do on your own to make therapy progress more quickly and effectively. You may be able to gain deeper insight into your current concerns by exploring some of the resources listed by topic below.
I have listed these items because they have been helpful to me, associates, or clients at some point of the growth journey, but I do not agree with everything contained in these resources. As you explore them, please use your own discernment to determine which parts of them may be helpful to you. If they bring up questions for you, feel free to raise these issues during our sessions.
I have asterisked (*) the resources that are grounded in a Christian world view for those clients who have requested that therapy be conducted from that perspective.
You may use the form to the right to sign up for my newsletters, offering tips and resources to help you increase the joy in your life. Or click on past issues below:
- Issue 1: Let Freedom Ring (Overcoming Fear)
- Issue 2: Who's Your Mommy? (Relationships)
- Issue 3: Leprosy's Lessons about Depression (Depression)
- Issue 4: A Tale of Two Loans (Forgiveness)
- Issue 5: From Pedestals to Mosaics (Relationships)
- Issue 6: The Magic of Maybe (Thought Patterns)
- Issue 7: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Holiday Survival Guide (Self Care)
- Issue 8: Indiana Jones and the Stalker Playpen (Overcoming Fear)
- Issue 9: Troubleshooting Resolutions (Persistence)
- Issue 10: Top 10 Barriers to Decision Making (Decision Making)
- Issue 11: Good Desire Runs Deep (Accepting Desire)
- Issue 12: Paying for Peace (Assertiveness)
- Issue 13: In Praise of Failure (Perfectionism)
- Issue 14: Living with Fear (Anxiety)
- Issue 15: Waste Your Way to Worth (Drivenness)
- Issue 16: High Stakes Mind Reading (Relationships)
- Issue 17: The Happiness of Pursuit (Managing Expectations)
- Issue 18: Six Questions that Will Change You (Breaking Habits)
- Issue 19: Spelunking the Ordinary (Increasing Life Meaning)
- Issue 20: Mind Games for the Holidays (Balancing Emotions)
- Issue 21: The Freedom of Self Doubt (Correcting Thinking Errors)
- Issue 22: Obey Your DNA (Discovering Your Vocation)
- Issue 23: Would You Rather be Known or Liked? (Relationships)
- Issue 24: A Balanced Diet of Self Pity? (Grief & Loss)
- Issue 25: Muddling Happens (Decision Making)
- Issue 26: When Hope is Bad for You (Reality Acceptance)
- Issue 27: When Old Dogs Can't Learn New Tricks (Changing Others)
- Issue 28: Latest Device Does Just About Everything! (Body Awareness)
- Issue 29: It's Not Your Fault (Pain and the Illusion of Control)
- Issue 30: Are You Good Enough? (Self Evaluation Awareness)
- Issue 31: You Can't Change If You're Worthless (Increasing Self Worth)
- Issue 32: This Holiday, Don't Fight with Reptiles (Constructive Conflicts)
- Issue 33: Penance vs. The Drinking Song (Persisting in Change)
- Issue 34: Taking a Hop of Trust (Repairing Trust)
- Issue 35: When the Past is Always Greener (Managing Nostalgia)
- Issue 36: Star Trek's Answer to Your Burning Life Questions
- Issue 37: Weakness, Your Most Hated Best Friend (Finding Good in Suffering)
- Issue 38: Are You a Victim of Relational Culture Shock? (Deepening Relationship)
- Issue 39: Take the Pain Out of Your Memories (Healing Trauma)
- Issue 40: Listen to Your Loneliness (Building Relationships)
- Issue 41: Stop Getting Duped by "Potential" (Avoiding Destructive Relationships)
- Issue 42: Up the Horsepower of Your Willpower (Finding the Energy for Change)
- Issue 43: You Are What You Eat, Not What You Crave (Managing Attraction)
- Issue 44: What's the Purpose of Your Body? (Countering Negative Body Image)
- Issue 45: Is That Why You're So Busy? (Facing Grief and Fear)
- Issue 46: Getting What You Want in Relationships (Effective Communication)
- Issue 47: Anxious? Mourn Your Control (Managing Anxiety)
- Issue 48: Setting Yourself Free from Being Liked (Combating People Pleasing)
- Issue 49: How to Take Offenses Less Personally
- Issue 50: What Makes a Gift Great? (Improving Gift Giving)
- Issue 51: Making Awesome Friends Super Mario Style (Part 1)
- Issue 52: Sustaining Awesome Friendships Super Mario Style (Part 2)
- Issue 53: How to Be Effective in Awkward Situations
- Issue 54: Pettiness: The Secret to Lasting Relationships? (Constructive Conflict)
- Issue 55: This Holiday, Don't Junk Your Pain Mail (Emotional Responsiveness)
- Issue 56: Where You Can Be Different, There You Are Free (Difficult Relationships)
- Issue 57: Getting Your Worth Back from the "Butthead Line" (Resilience)
- Issue 58: Expectation-Proof Your Holidays
Other Resources
Understanding Growth and Relationships
The Road Less Traveled. Book by M. Scott Peck. Profoundly insightful overview of personal and relational growth processes.
How People Grow. Book by Henry Cloud & John Townsend. Understanding the psychological growth process from a Christian perspective.
The Life Model: Living from the Heart that Jesus Gave You. Book by Jim Friesen, et al. Understanding how trauma and neglect affect personality and growth, and how people are healed in relationship.
Quick Advice
Solutions for Life.Videos by Henry Cloud & John Townsend. Brief video clips providing advice on over 100 psychological, relationship, and spiritual topics.
Relationship Skills
Boundaries: When to Say Yes, When to Say No to Take Control of Your Life. Book by Henry Cloud & John Townsend. Learning how to take personal responsibility and allow others to do so as well.
The Dance of Anger. Book by Harriet Lerner. Understanding anger and changing related intimate relationship patterns.
Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself. Book by Melody Beattie. Strategies for taking personal responsibility and letting others take responsibility for themselves.
Everybody’s Normal Till You Get to Know Them. Book by John Ortberg. Understanding the difficulties and rewards of committed community relationships.
Addiction in the Family
Counseling Adult Children of Alcoholics. Book by Sandra Wilson. Identifying and recovering from the effects of addiction in the family.
Reality Acceptance
EFT Tapping Description. Description of the Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) method of helping people break entrenched habits through self acceptance. More info at: http://www.emofree.com/
Parenting
The Me, Me, Me Epidemic: A Step-by-Step Guide to Raising Capable, Grateful Kids in an Over-Entitled World. Book by Amy McCready. User-friendly, practical tools for positive parenting that avoids yelling.
Beyond Consequences, Logic, and Control: A Love Based Approach to Helping Children with Severe Behaviors. Book by Heather Forbes & B. Brian Post. (2006). Understanding and healing the trauma behind scary child and adolescent behaviors when logic and consequences don't work. Find videos, free resources, seminars, and parent coaching at www.beyondconsequences.com.
Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child. Book by John Gottman. Communicating with children and teens in ways that build connection and provide a foundation for successful behavior management.
Parenting from the Inside Out. Book by Daniel Siegel and Mary Hartzell. Understanding how parents' patterns from early life interact with children's experiences to support or deter children's abilities to succeed in life, and how these interactions can be changed.
Spiritual Parenting: An Awakening for Today's Families. Book by Michelle Anthony. Using the end-goal of the kind of person you want your children to become spiritually to decide how to train them today.
Parenting with Love and Logic. Book by Foster Cline and Jim Fay. Effective strategies for parenting young children.
Parenting Teens with Love and Logic. Book by Foster Cline and Jim Fay. Effective strategies for parenting older children and teenagers.
Marriage, Partnership, and Sexuality
Wired for Love: How Understanding Your Partner's Brain and Attachment Style Can Help You Defuse Conflict and Build a Secure Relationship. Book by Stan Tatkin. Using attachment theory, neuroscience, and biological responses--not just communication skills--to build stronger relationships.
Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples. Book by Harville Hendrix. Changing ineffective patterns with your partner to get your needs met and heal from past hurts.
Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love. Book by Sue Johnson. Understanding the hidden needs behind the behaviors and communication strategies that hurt your marriage and relationships.
The Five Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts. Book by Gary Chapman. Learning to communicate and receive love effectively with your partner.
The Gift of Sex: A Guide to Sexual Fulfillment. Book by Clifford and Joyce Penner. Basic guide to understanding and increasing sexual pleasure.
Marriage Takes More Than Love. Book by Jack & Carole Mayhall. Improving communication in marriage and love relationships.
101 Questions to Ask Before You Get Engaged. Book by H. Norman Wright. Questions and conversations that help couples identify areas of strength and growth in their relationship before they commit to each other.
Women and Identity
In a Different Voice. Book by Carol Gilligan. Understanding how women grow to value both self and others during life stages.
Gender and Grace. Book by Mary Stewart VanLeeuwen. Understanding gender identity from both a scientific and Christian perspective.
Perfectionism & Drivenness
Performance Addiction: The Dangerous New Syndrome and How to Stop it From Ruining Your Life. Book by Arthur Ciaramicoli. Identifying and changing the ways in which the need to succeed impedes work, relationships, self worth, and other areas of life.
Healing Grace: Finding Freedom from the Performance Trap. Book by David Seamands. Healing trauma, guilt, negative emotions, self-esteem through a deeper understanding of grace.
The Search for Significance. Book by Robert McGee. Overcoming the ways in which we define ourselves through performance, approval, blame, shame, and guilt.
Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith. Book by Anne Lamott. (1999). Random House. Hilarious autobiography of a woman pursuing faith amidst addiction, depression, and anxiety.
Discerning Life Direction and Meaning
Man’s Search for Meaning. Book by Victor Frankl. Learning the importance of meaning and how to choose it when circumstances feel meaningless.
Courage and Calling: Embracing Your God-Given Potential. Book by Gordon Smith. Discerning your personality and vocation through life transitions to and increase life satisfaction.
The Will of God as a Way of Life. Book by Jerry Sittser. Understanding various approaches to discerning the will of God and life meaning.
Emotion Skills: Depression, Anxiety, Grief, Anger, and Guilt
Emotional and Relational Self Help Skills. Handouts and lessons in increasing peace through mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotional regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness.
The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook. Book by Edmund Bourne. Comprehensive tools to deal with anxiety, phobias, and negative self-talk.
The Return of the Prodigal Son. Book by Henri Nouwen. Overcoming loneliness, shame, and guilt through a deeper understanding of God’s love.
Pain, Grief, and Suffering
Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy. Book by Sheryl Sandberg. Tools for managing loss and finding new meaning on the other side.
Where is God When it Hurts? Book by Phillip Yancey. Finding meaning in pain from various angles and experiences.
The Gift of Pain. Book by Paul Brand and Phillip Yancey. Understanding the uses and potential meanings of pain through an examination of leprosy, a disease that destroys because of the inability to feel pain.
Loneliness
Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life. Book by Henri Nouwen. Understanding the path of growth out of loneliness and into personal and spiritual relationships.
Personality And Identity
The Enneagram Institute. A growth-focused analysis of personality, dividing people into 9 types according to core needs, strengths, and growth areas.
The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery. Book by Ian Cron and Suzanne Stabile. User-friendly guide to the Enneagram system of understanding personality and growth.
Similar Minds Personality Tests. Brief personality summaries and tests.