Back to Life: Getting Past Your Past with Resilience, Strength, and Optimism - Hardcover

Salzer, Dr. Alicia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0061771066 ISBN 13: 9780061771064

Publisher: William Morrow, 2011

Synopsis

“Dr. Salzer offers an empowering new approach to trying on the coping skills and outlooks of heroic overcomers. These are life skills we all should have learned as kids.”

—Dr. Mehmet Oz, bestselling author of YOU: The Owner’s Manual, host of The Dr. Oz Show

Back to Life by Alicia Salzer, M.D. is a wise, sympathetic, and practical guide for overcoming traumatic setbacks, and living a normal, happy life without being a victim. The former resident psychiatrist on the Montel Williams show, Dr. Salzer offers a fresh new take on trauma treatment, a method for “getting past your past with resilience, strength, and optimism” designed for anyone who has experienced catastrophe. Destined to become a classic work on emotional recovery, this remarkable volume points the way down the path Back to Life, and belongs on every bookshelf next to When Bad Things Happen to Good People.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Back to Life is a feel-good approach to overcoming that lets you try on the skills of the heroes you most admire. From icons of survival like Rosa Parks and Nelson Mandela to contemporary heroes like Michael J. Fox and Elizabeth Edwards, this book allows you to see what resilient survivors actually do when they feel lousy.

This is a revolutionary approach to feeling better, rooted in the science of positive psychology and resilience theory, and would help anyone get a dose of soul food into their emotional diet; but these techniques are specially tailored to those trying to overcome traumas big and small—from Big-T Traumas, such as combat, abuse, and bereavement, to challenges one might think of as little-t traumas, like breakups, betrayals, job loss, health problems, and financial hardships.

After years of working in the trenches of psychiatry, it became clear to Dr. Alicia Salzer that we needed some new methods to help people overcome, since the old methods often proved too painful for many to bear. It's all about being in the present and focusing on the future—no retelling and revisiting the past, no opening Pandora's box, no picking at old scabs.

Back to Life is a creative and empowering way to learn the habits of resilient survivors while getting to know what you stand for, what makes you happy, and what emotions you need in your diet in order to thrive. In this book you will create a "holistic pillbox" of ten stones—each symbolizing a healthy new way of coping—that you can utilize when your past rears its head.

The truth is, there have always been people in our midst who remain positive and passionate despite enormous challenges while others just get stuck. This is the secret playbook of those people, and it's full of accessible and fun exercises to help you try on the rose-colored glasses of those survivors we so admire.

About the Author

Alicia Salzer, M.D., completed her B.A. at the University of Pennsylvania and obtained her M.D. from Cornell University. She has held posts at UCLA, Columbia University, and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. An advocate for victims of psychological trauma, she has served on the Speaker's Bureau of the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) and has volunteered for Disaster Psychiatry Outreach, an organization that provides free mental health staffing and treatment following disasters such as 9/11. After volunteering at Ground Zero and at the family assistance center after the 9/11 attacks, Dr. Salzer worked for three years at a clinic that exclusively served Ground Zero rescue workers and volunteers.

Edition details

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0061771066
• ISBN 13: 9780061771064
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 304