Staying OK: Amy Bjork Harris and Thomas A. Harris, M.D.

Painful feelings can sabotage us, often when we least expect it. We can wake up feeling like a million dollars, but it can take only a second for a frown, a slight, a remembered failure to reduce us to zero - and that zero can last all day. Someone pushes a hot button, and in an instant self-castigating feelings are surging along every nerve fibre to knock out our self esteem. This book can teach how to identify and dispel those joy-robbers, those oppressive voices from the past which undermine us in the present. There are specific steps to examine those parental messages 'recorded' when we were children together with the often distorted assumptions we made about them. There's information on how to get the life-giving responses and recognition of others; how to identify the conflicting internal demands that tear us apart; and how to substitute effective types of protection for those unsatisfying habits of withdrawal, passivity, hostility and intellectualisation, all of which push people away and deprive us of love and support. And so much more. The Harrises write with personal experience and caring, careful sensitivity.