Building a Life Worth Living

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In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers’ capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. I also found (quite) surprising the high number of psychological blind spots that she still carries. It was a difficult process—­and, more than that, I was about to reveal publicly for the first time extremely intimate details about my life that for decades I had kept a carefully guarded secret, outside of a few very close friends and my family. Toward the end of her time there, she made a vow to God that once she got herself out of hell, she would do everything she could to get others out, too. I personally did not mind how much Marsha tied everything back to DBT because I love DBT and find it so helpful both for myself and my clinical work.

Everything in Marsha Linehan's life and remarkable memoir uncovers the dark--the hell of the unhappy self and the hell of inadequate help--and brings us into the light, with humor and detail in her grappling and growth, and in her courage and vision of how to create a treatment for even the most unhappy of us. After several miserable years in a psychiatric institute, Linehan made a vow that if she could get out of emotional hell, she would try to find a way to help others get out of hell too, and to build a life worth living. Linehan was featured in a special issue of Time magazine, 'Great Scientists: The Geniuses and Visionaries Who Transformed Our World. I abandoned the book fifty pages in, because already by then, it was repetitive, poorly written, not at all engaging nor gripping, and more or less an infomercial for Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT, the quite wonderful therapy she created.The writing is pleasant enough, but the disorganized hops across time muddle the clarity of the story’s chronology. She says, "You can't think yourself into new ways of acting; you can only act yourself into new ways of thinking. Shocking and heart-wrenching on one end, triumphant on the other, and an inspiration of hope all the way through.

Marsha advises that DBT practitioners often burn out after a couple of years and will not conduct the therapy for longer than this. Linehan is the founder and the convener of both the Suicide Strategic Planning Group and the DBT Strategic Planning Group. The majority of her anecdotes appeared to have zero point to them or did not relate to the rest of the chapter. In the 1980s, she achieved a breakthrough when she developed Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, a therapeutic approach that combines acceptance of the self and ways to change. Potrzebujemy więcej takich historii - nie historii sukcesu, a historii porażek, które prowadzą do dobra.You'll no doubt find its ambiguity, not to mention the many dead ends and detours, a bit frustrating. It is a story that reinforces, for me, that with effort our negative life experiences can be turned into something good even when we think it is impossible! Unfortunately, living in a neurotypical world means it can also be a source of incredible alienation and pain.

He was thrilled, until I told him I wanted to give the talk in one of the large rooms, because I knew it would draw a big audience.

Linehan's steely intelligence and surprisingly spiritual heart, smoothed out the rough bits and made every page worth my while. For example, she suddenly one day just decided to make a vow to God to help others out of hell, and that was what made her snap out of her suicidality. I consider this memoir such a courageous accomplishment from a well-known clinician scientist in the field of Psychology. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.