Blog
Bibliotherapy: LOVE SENSE: The Revolutionary New Science of Romantic Relationships by Dr. Sue Johnson
In Love Sense: The Revolutionary New Science of Romantic Relationships Dr. Johnson shares how “Love is vital to our existence” and highlights the research to support that statement. She expresses concern “A tsunami of loneliness, anxiety, and depression is sweeping through Western societies.” She states that love is not a mystery, that belief is a disservice and leaves us feeling helpless in romantic relationships, “What you understand you can maintain, repair, and even enhance.” She urges ”we have to learn to turn toward each other and reveal our fears and longings” and describes a process of interrupting and dismantling destructive sequences and then constructing emotionally open, receptive ones.
Bibliotherapy: Emotional Survival for Law Enforcement by Kevin M. Gilmartin
The last few years have been challenging for law enforcement agencies and officers (LEOs) across our country. LEOs deal with the “maddest, baddest, and saddest” constituents in society. LEOs have a high stress, high stakes job. They are trained and prepared for survival on the streets, but are given little if any training on emotional survival in this high risk role. The current national rates of suicide for LEOs are 2x that of the general population. In his book, Emotional Survival for Law Enforcement: A Guide for Officers and Their Families, police psychologist, Kevin M. Gilmartin states we need to “stop breaking cops.” His book encourages LEOs and their families to make self-directed decisions on how life can function and strategy implementation to insure emotional survival.
Are You an Allosexual? BIBLIOTHERAPY: ACE: What Asexuality Reveals about Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex
One of the core values of Coriander Living Collective LLC is EXPANSION! To move into feeling alive, space to heal what holds us back, to adventure, to change, and to grow.
The book, ACE: What Asexuality Reveals about Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen challenges the idea of compulsory sexuality that pervades Western culture.
She makes the argument that if asexuality was better understood and accepted, in turn it would create sexual and romantic liberation for all.
Bibliotherapy: The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent by Betty Martin, D.C.
Due to conditioning, family and cultural expectations, and personal history, knowing what we want, how to express it, and holding clear boundaries can be a challenge for many of us.
Dr. Betty Martin has created the Wheel of Consent framework to help us learn about what we really want, empowering us to set limits, to create clear communication, and satisfaction in relationships. Her book, The Art of Receiving and Giving, is a framework that can heal trauma by empowering choice and voice.
Bibliotherapy: Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament by Michael A. Singer
Many years ago, I read Singer’s The Untethered Soul and a few months ago, Singer’s new book Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament showed up on the required reading list of my Open Floor Teacher Training. This book includes spiritual ideas and wonderful, provoking thoughts. It is about how to accept reality and the flow of life. He talks about acceptance as non-resistance; how we resist and cling to things, and how this creates suffering. Singer discusses how to live life free from the past. My favorite parts of this book were the chapters: The Origin of Matter, The Power of Creation, and It’s Not Personal. It was a comprehensive science lesson on evolution. These ideas landed for me like never before.
Bibliotherapy: No Bad Parts by Richard C. Schwartz, PhD
You know, I love bibliotherapy and that I’m committed to ongoing growth and learning! In the Brainspotting work I do, I incorporate parts work. It’s pretty easy to understand that we all have parts of self, some are protectors, exiles, or managers, some are childlike, adultlike, or wise ones, others are wild ones, destructive ones, you get the point. We’ve all got lots of parts and they are all self-created to serve certain purposes. In the healing world, Richard C. Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems Model (IFS) is becoming increasingly popular. I picked up his book, No Bad Parts to learn about his IFS Model.
BIBLIOTHERAPY: Opening to Darkness by Zenju Earthlyn Manuel
Zenju Earthlyn Manuel in this book, states that we are in an era of deep darkness on this planet and in our culture due to social issues, climate change, and the recent pandemic. She believes that darkness and blackness have been misused and misunderstood in America. She shares that “a collective opening to darkness is crucial to love,” and to create a positive shift in our culture and on our planet. She asks for us to bring consciousness to the light and dark parts of ourselves, others, and spirit.
BIBLIOTHERAPY: When the Past Is Present by David Richo
Does our past impact our present and future? Absolutely! We are products of nature and nurture, and for many of us a lack of nurturance. Much of the work we do at Coriander Living Collective is supporting clients in understanding, processing, and healing from past experiences so they are able to show up differently now and in the future. Brainspotting and EMDR are wonderful modalities that create lasting shifts around past experiences and their impacts. Richo states, “We grow in our ability to know ourselves as we stabilize our lives through psychological and spiritual work.” Coriander Living Collective is here to support you in your growth! Just reach out. Open Floor classes are a wonderful way to practice our spiritual and psychological work! Join one soon!
BIBLIOTHERAPY: Hormone Repair Manual: Every Woman’s Guide to Healthy Hormones After 40
If you are a woman that is 35+ years old, you must read this book. It’s wild to learn things about my own body that I did not know, curious why culturally we do NOT talk more about menopause and perimenopause, and empowering to have a guide as I navigate these coming years with clear, concise data and treatment interventions for optimal health.
Bibliotherapy: The Whole-Brain Child
I had the privilege of seeing Dr. Dan Siegel speak in California years back, he is one of the leaders in the field of psychiatry. The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child’s Developing Mind by Daniel J. Siegel, MD and Tina Payne Bryson, PhD has been on my bookshelf unread for years. The whole time, I was reading it, I kept thinking, I should have read this earlier! Everyone that interacts with kids must read this book!
Do You Ever Feel Like Two Separate People?Bibliotherapy: Of Two Minds/Dual-Brain Psychology
Dr. Fredric Schiffer is a psychiatrist and teaches the theory and practice of Dual-Brain Psychology. In his book, Of Two Minds he describes how after reviewing the split-brain studies of the 1960s, patients who had their corpus callosums cut, manifested two separate minds and personalities!
He believes that most of us have two minds, one linked to each hemisphere; one that is more mature, reasonable, and present orientated, and one that is more childlike, emotional, and holds traumatic experience. He shows how this explains changes in mood and personality where someone might seem like two different people.
Bibliotherapy: Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown
Brené Brown’s new book, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience serves as a reference guide to understand the language of emotions and human experience. She states, “research shows that the process of labeling emotional experience is related to greater emotion regulation and psychosocial well-being.”
Bibliotherapy: Ilene Smith’s Moving Beyond Trauma
I loved an analogy she used about leaning into emotions verses avoiding or resisting them. Imagine pushing against a heavy object such as a boulder, think of the effort and resistant you experience? Now imagine leaning into the boulder, what happened to the resistance in your body? Maybe you sense support and relaxation instead? We need to lean into our sensations to move through them and find health and ease.
BIBLIOTHERAPY: Love Worth Making: How to Have Ridiculously Great Sex in a Long-Lasting Relationship by Stephen Snyder, M.D.
As humans, we are sexual beings. Our sexual development, sexual health, sexual expression, and sexual satisfaction contribute to our overall well-being. And yet often, for different reasons, many struggle around sexuality.
Dr. Stephen Snyder is a sex therapist in Manhattan. His book, Love Worth Making: How to Have Ridiculously Great Sex in a Long-Lasting Relationship includes three parts: Your Sexual Self, Women and Men, and Sex for Life. Dr. Snyder writes with a no-nonsense, direct approach that offers practical actions to better sex in a long-lasting relationship.
BIBLIOTHERAPY: What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD, and Oprah Winfrey
When Oprah writes a book about trauma, you know trauma awareness has hit the mainstream! In What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing, Dr. Perry and Oprah write about the paradigm shift from the question of “What’s wrong with you? to “What happened to you?” They discuss the developmental impact of trauma on the brain, pointing to how formative the first year of life is. They converse on regulation and rhythm, balance, connectedness, transgenerational transmission of trauma, and ways to move towards healing. This book serves as an introduction to trauma, or a review for the trauma specialist.
FREE Therapy: Bibliotherapy!
It’s not out of the ordinary for me to recommend certain titles to clients that I think will enrich their therapy. Using books to support the therapy process is termed, BIBLIOTHERAPY. It’s also not uncommon for me to find myself reading books that clients have recommended! That’s why I share about certain books on my BLOG. It’s all in the hopes of helping people out and growing together!
Stress Can Be Toxic and Cause Brain Damage!
The brain can get stuck in an unconscious state of emergency that creates inflammation and illness. Brain injuries can lead to disorganization and cross-wiring in the nervous system. Meaning distorted messages can be sent that are no longer the truth resulting in symptoms such as those found in post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic pain, environmental/sensory/food sensitives, irritable bowel syndrome, and fibromyalgia.
Bibliotherapy: In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction by Gabor Maté
In his book, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction Gabor Maté discusses how “addiction is neither a choice nor primarily a disease,” instead it is a human being’s “desperate attempt to solve a problem: the problem of emotional pain, of overwhelming stress, of lost connection, of loss of control, of deep discomfort with the self.”
Bibliotherapy: Attached. THE NEW SCIENCE OF ADULT ATTACHMENT AND HOW IT CAN HELP YOU FIND- AND KEEP- LOVE
Attached. THE NEW SCIENCE OF ADULT ATTACHMENT AND HOW IT CAN HELP YOU FIND- AND KEEP- LOVE by Dr. Amir Levine and Rachel S.F. Heller is a must read for all adults! Understand your attachment style to get and keep the relationships you desire!
OUR LIFESTYLES ARE KILLING US + CREATING UNWELL CHILDREN
How come we continue to do so many things that are not good for us and our children? Our lifestyles are killing us and making our children unwell.
For some of us, that’s a literal statement. Mental and physical illnesses are on the rise in this country. High levels of stress, busyness, materialist and autonomous values, a lack of interpersonal connection, climate change, a toxic food system, high electronics use, and disconnection from nature. We are amid a spiritual and cultural crisis.
Coriander Living Collective encourages life satisfaction through connection to self, others, and the world by embracing one’s humanity and lifestyle with insight, intention, and action through psychotherapy & counseling, workshops & retreats, and collective growth practices. Join us!