Do you feel stuck in your life? Do you wonder why? Does something seem wrong, but you can't put your finger on it? In The Lies We Tell Ourselves, psychotherapist Jon Frederickson reveals the ways we fool ourselves and how to get unstuck. Through dozens of stories and examples, he demonstrates that the apparent cause of our problems is almost never the real cause. In addition, he reveals what we really fear and how to face it. In the spirit of Stephen Grosz and Irving Yalom, Frederickson shows how to recognize the lies we tell ourselves and face the truths we have avoided--and stop saying yes when we really mean no. Although we may use falsehoods to escape pain, clinging to our fantasies actually becomes the source of greater suffering. This book shows how to create a better life by letting go of our lies and facing reality. It also demonstrates that therapy is not merely a chat; it is a relationship between two people devoted to facing the deepest truths of our lives so we can be he

Written for therapists, Co-Creating Change shows what to do to help stuck patients (those who resist the therapy process) let go of their resistance and self-defeating behaviors and willingly co-create a relationship for change instead. Co-Creating Change includes clinical vignettes that illustrate hundreds of therapeutic impasses taken from actual sessions, showing how to understand patients and how to intervene effectively. The book provides clear, systematic steps for assessing patients' needs and intervening to develop an effective relationship for change. Co-Creating Change presents an integrative theory that uses elements of behavior therapy, cognitive therapy, emotion-focused therapy, psychoanalysis, and mindfulness. This empirically validated treatment is effective with a wide range of patients.

About half of all psychotherapy clients have little to no response or can even worsen in treatment. Why? They unknowingly use treatment-defeating behaviors, or resistances, that prevent emotional closeness and successful collaboration with the therapist.

Reaching through Resistance will help you

detect treatment resistance from the first client contact

understand the emotional factors behind resistance

discern various degrees and forms of resistance

recognize signs of anxiety in the body

activate and monitor unprocessed, unconscious impulses and feelings

turn a client against his/her long-held defeating behaviors

regulate intense anxiety when emotions are activated

mobilize the client's unconscious wish to become well

recognize signs of a powerful healing force: the unconscious therapeutic alliance

By detecting avoidance patterns and using specific interventions developed to handle them, you can empower a collaborative, vigorous treatment alliance with yo

Some patients are crippled by fear and anxiety. To help the 50 percent of patients who drop out of therapy before they have received its full benefits, therapists must know how to make therapy a safe place. Only if patients feel safe in their body and with the therapist can they feel safe enough to change. Co-Creating Safety provides clear, systematic steps for assessing and meeting patients' needs.

Every technique is illustrated with a vignette. Representing hundreds of therapeutic impasses taken from actual sessions, the vignettes show therapists what to say so they can assess and respond to patients' needs moment by moment, help patients develop and keep an effective focus that leads to change, help regulate patients' anxiety, deactivate misperceptions of the therapist and therapy, help patients see and let go of defenses that cause their symptoms, help them overcome their fears and face their feelings, and help them let go of insecure attachment strategies to form a healing relat