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Conquering Shame and Codependency by Darlene Lancer

Posted on by CMPR

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Shame is an emotion that can be buried in a person’s psyche so deep that one does not realize how much he is affected by it. From the publisher that popularized the topics of shame and codependency with such publications as Brené Brown’s The Gifts of Imperfection and Melody Beattie’s Codependent No More, Hazelden Publishing releases CONQUERING SHAME AND CODEPENDENCY: 8 Steps to Freeing the True You (Hazelden Publishing; July 2014; $14.95), by nationally recognized author, codependency expert, and family therapist Darlene Lancer. This essential guide explores the powerful emotion of shame and what can happen if it is not addressed. The author then provides practical therapeutic advice on how to break deep-rooted patterns.

Lancer’s book begins by explaining the difference between guilt and shame: “Guilt results from violating rules or moral precepts, while shame emanates from breaching accepted group norms. We’re guilty if we do something bad. With shame, we believe that we ourselves are bad or inadequate in some way.” Understanding these definitions shows how incredibly deep and profound feelings of shame can be, and as a result, how difficult it can be to change how you feel about yourself.

She then delves into the link between shame and codependency, explaining how they prevent us from living life as our “true selves.” As the result of a combination of personality, parenting, and life experience, we may develop an “inner critic” who is constantly questioning our motives and putting us down for our actions. We become victims of our own negativity, which then leads to codependency, the disease of a lost self where one organizes his or her thinking and behavior around another person, process, or substance. Before we know it we may be engaged in abusive or inappropriate relationships. For example, we may be working in a career we felt we “had” to take on in order to please a parent. We may be living as if we were someone else, unable to make our own decisions out of fear of hurtful repercussions left over from living with an abusive partner.  These and other similar situations can cause us to spiral downward into an unhealthy state, experiencing severe anxiety or depression, substance abuse, or other serious issues.

In CONQUERING SHAME AND CODEPENDENCY Lancer outlines eight steps that will help you develop more healthy attitudes about yourself:

  1. Find Your True Self
  2. Uncover Your Shame
  3. Find Your Shame’s Roots
  4. Disarm Your Shame
  5. Confront Your Shame
  6. Share Your Shame
  7. Build Your Self-Esteem
  8. Love Yourself

By working through these steps you will be able to better identify and understand the root source of negative feelings and what course of action to take in order to let them go and free yourself to live your life. Drawing on 30 years of experience as a therapist, Lancer has made an immense contribution by writing CONQUERING SHAME AND CODEPENDENCY. For anyone who has been in therapy or has never knocked on a doctor’s door, this book will break down a wall and open an entirely new path to a true and authentic life.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Darlene Lancer, JD, LMFT, is a licensed family therapist with over 30 years of experience working with individuals and couples. She regularly lectures on self-esteem, codependency, and addiction. Author of Codependency for Dummies and 10 Steps to Self-Esteem, she has also published numerous articles.

ABOUT THE HAZELDEN BETTY FORD FOUNDATION:
The Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation helps people reclaim their lives from the disease of addiction. It is the nation’s largest nonprofit treatment provider, with a legacy that began in 1949 and includes the 1982 founding of the Betty Ford Center. With 15 sites in California, Minnesota, Oregon, Illinois, New York, Florida, Massachusetts, Colorado and Texas, the Foundation offers recovery solutions nationwide and across the entire continuum of care for youth and adults. It includes the largest recovery publishing house in the country, a fully-accredited graduate school of addiction studies, an addiction research center, an education arm for medical professionals, and a unique children’s program, and is the nation’s leader in advocacy and policy for treatment and recovery. Learn more at hazeldenbettyford.org.

My Family, My Self by the Comunidades Latinos Unidos En Servicio

Posted on by CMPR

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The importance of family and the sense of well-being that comes from family connectedness is a core value that is shared by Latino cultures around the world.  There are also norms, such as the man in the family being the primary bread winner, that differ significantly from those we share in the United States.  As a result of these fundamental differences, it can be difficult for Latin immigrants to assimilate in America without experiencing emotional stress that sometimes leads to negative behavior like drinking or drug abuse.

Now the premiere Latino behavioral health and human services organization CLUES will release the first book to ever address these very important concerns, MY FAMILY, MY SELF: The Latino Guide to Emotional Well-Being (Hazelden Publishing; June 2014; $14.95). In the book, the experts at CLUES share success stories from several Latinos they have helped during their thirty years of community service, like Esperanza, who discovered that people labelled her simply as Mexican or Latina before getting to know who she was as a person when she first moved to the States. Now she sees her “bi-cultural” identity as a gift and a worthy challenge.  In fact, she attributes her strong sense of self today to her experience living as a Mexican woman in the U.S.

MY FAMILY, MY SELF also offers guidelines and advice for what CLUES has determined are seven different areas that encompass the common problems shared by Latino families.  They are:

  1. The challenging topic of personal identity
  2. Family and its support system
  3. Emotional harmony after experiencing intense, unfortunate events
  4. Alcoholism and addiction, including children and substance abuse
  5. Understanding financial stability such as budgeting and using credit
  6. Adapting as a first-generation immigrant and what it means to be “bi-cultural”
  7. Drawing strength from spirituality

MY FAMILY, MY SELF with a strong balance of story-telling mixed with guidelines learned from decades of experience, will help Latino immigrants feel more emotionally secure and grounded in their values as they build new lives immersed in American culture.

ABOUT CLUES:
Comunidades Latinas Unidas En Servicio (CLUES) has been serving in Minnesota for over thirty years and is the leader in providing behavioral health and human services to the Latino community. Its chemical health, mental health, employment, language, financial, and other human services under its family-coordinated care model have set national standards for working with multicultural populations.

ABOUT HAZELDEN BETTY FORD FOUNDATION:
The Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation helps people reclaim their lives from the disease of addiction. It is the nation’s largest nonprofit treatment provider, with a legacy that began in 1949 and includes the 1982 founding of the Betty Ford Center. With 15 sites in California, Minnesota, Oregon, Illinois, New York, Florida, Massachusetts, Colorado and Texas, the Foundation offers prevention and recovery solutions nationwide and across the entire continuum of care for youth and adults. It includes the largest recovery publishing house in the country, a fully-accredited graduate school of addiction studies, an addiction research center, an education arm for medical professionals and a unique children’s program, and is the nation’s leader in advocacy and policy for treatment and recovery.

Girlfriend of Bill by Karen Nagy

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“I was mystified about what went on in these meetings. I also was, I hate to say, a little paranoid and even jealous about all the time my boyfriend spent at them. What went on? Why were these damn Steps so important?”
—from Girlfriend of Bill

A new romance can be exciting, but if you are dating someone in a recovery program such as Alcoholics Anonymous, you may find there’s more to the relationship than just shared interests and mutual attraction. Your new beau may suffer from anxiety, mood swings, or other issues that stem from the way his addictive brain causes him to think and behave. You may also experience feelings of jealousy as your significant other spends significant time with his sponsor or recovery group—instead of with you.

Here to support you is a new, first-of-its-kind guide entitled GIRLFRIEND OF BILL: 12 Things You Need to Know about Dating Someone in Recovery by Karen Nagy. In her book, Nagy shares her personal experiences dating a man in recovery, wisdom from the “Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous and other Twelve Step programs, and stories and advice from her friends to offer twelve practical tips that will help you understand your recovering partner on a deeper level.

Filled with humor and compassion, GIRLFRIEND OF BILL offers valuable information about how a recovering person’s past, along with certain “addict-like” personality traits, can affect both individuals in the relationship:

“Manipulation means being talked into something you don’t want to do. For example, my PIR (Person in Recovery) convinced me to loan him a significant amount of money. Twice. My friend Grace was convinced by her PIR husband Joe that they had to move back and forth between several different states during the ten years of their marriage. She later found out it was because Joe was trying to get out of paying years of child support he owed.”

Nagy explains how to identify whether you are developing any codependency issues, what to do about them, and how to create healthy boundaries to ensure your own well-being. On the lighter side, she provides some creative ideas for fun sober dates.

Throughout GIRLFRIEND OF BILL, Nagy combines lighthearted insights and cautionary red flags, along with advice about how to handle them, that will make a tremendous difference in the health, enjoyment, and longevity of your relationship.

 ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Karen Nagy is a college professor, actor, and songwriter. She wrote GIRLFRIEND OF BILL, her first book, based on her own dating experience and love of the Twelve Steps.

ABOUT HAZELDEN:
Hazelden Publishing is part of the Hazelden Foundation, a national nonprofit organization founded in 1949 that helps people reclaim their lives from the disease of addiction. With over 60 years of knowledge and experience, Hazelden offers a comprehensive approach to addiction that addresses the full range of patient, family, and professional needs, including treatment and continuing care for youths and adults, research, higher education, public education and advocacy, and publishing. Hazelden has facilities in Minnesota, Oregon, Illinois, Florida, and New York

Shadows in the Sun by Gayathri Ramprasad

Posted on by CMPR

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“Dear Mother Earth,” I plead, “please take me back into your womb.” I clear the ground around me and start digging furiously with my hands. I don’t remember how long I sat there digging my grave. As the evening light fades, so does my memory. I vaguely recall Ram and my friend Latha carrying me forcibly into the house.

Americans have become immune to the terms, drugs, and behaviors associated with depression even as its reputation has grown as a debilitating and sometimes fatal mental illness. But in India and elsewhere the stigma associated with this condition is cultural and runs deep. In a sweeping narrative that spans the globe from Bangalore to Portland, Oregon, Gayathri Ramprasad shares her harrowing journey through depression to recovery in a new memoir entitled SHADOWS IN THE SUN: Healing from Depression and Finding the Light Within (Hazelden Publishing; March 4, 2014; $14.95). Her story shows how denial and ignorance about mental health issues, especially among those who love us, can be deadly.

Gayathri Ramprasad was a blossoming, young Indian girl being raised by a loving family steeped in tradition. But as she grew into an adolescent, she found it more and more difficult to cope with the routine ups and downs of life. The “tipping point” came after Ramprasad failed a class at college and became inconsolable. Unlike a reasonably healthy person, who might be upset at first but come to a place of acceptance and a rational state of mind, Gayathri could not stop herself from obsessing over her failure and what this would mean to her future and her family.

This event is one of many that Gayathri shares in SHADOWS IN THE SUN. Her arranged marriage, moving to America, and the birth of her first child all led to suicidal ideation and attempts, along with varying degrees of fear and chaos for her growing family. At her lowest point, she was found digging a grave for herself in her backyard with her bare hands, mumbling unintelligibly, with her young daughter sitting in the house alone.

Institutionalized for a second time, Ramprasad met the people she needed in her life—people who  delivered the messages she desperately had to internalize and believe. Finally, her life began anew as she drew on both her rich Hindu heritage and the best of Western medicine to find “the light within,” an emotional and spiritual awakening from the torture she had felt inside for nearly thirty years. Overtime, she learned how to respect her illness without letting it dominate her existence. She also realized she wasn’t alone. Having grown up in a family and culture that initially thought her illness was a curse, was surprised to learn that her father, brother, and sister all struggled with mental illness.

Today Gayathri Ramprasad is president of ASHA International, a nonprofit organization she founded, whose mission is her calling—to promote personal, organizational, and community wellness around the world. She knows that even in India today, there is little tolerance for people with mental illness and that the stigmas are almost too much for tormented individuals to bear. With the support of family, community, faith, and knowledge, she believes that people can overcome their mental health issues and lead healthy, thriving lives. SHADOWS IN THE SUN illustrates how troubled a person can become and how wonderful it is when she can walk out of the darkness and into the light of recovery.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gayathri Ramprasad is the founder and president of ASHA International (myasha.org), a nonprofit organization promoting personal, organizational, and community wellness. Gayathri received her first undergraduate degree in science from Bangalore University in India. At George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon, she earned a second undergraduate degree in management and information systems and a master’s in business administration. She is a member of the Global Speakers Federation and winner of the prestigious Eli Lilly Welcome Back Award for Lifetime Achievement and the Voice Award for Consumer Leadership sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

ABOUT HAZELDEN
Hazelden Publishing is part of the Hazelden Foundation, a national nonprofit organization founded in 1949 that helps people reclaim their lives from the disease of addiction. With over 60 years of knowledge and experience, Hazelden offers a comprehensive approach to addiction that addresses the full range of patient, family, and professional needs, including treatment and continuing care for youth and adults, research, higher education, public education and advocacy, and publishing. It has facilities in Minnesota, Oregon, Illinois, Florida, and New York.