Don't Let Your Emotions Run Your Life

When we are regularly undone by our emotions, we become victims of damaged relationships, trapped circumstances, self-sabotage, and illness. In this breakthrough new workbook, a psychologist who has had amazing results treating patients with emotional problems, helps all of us gain the upper hand on our feelings and our lives. Many of us know the helpless predicament of losing control of our emotions. We may not be clinically crazy but instead high reactors, experiencing overpowering feelings that knock us off balance, plunge us into depression, make us fly off the handle, or terrify us without warning. We can anticipate, understand, avoid and replace these high reactions by applying the methods of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). DBT is an eclectic mix of cognitive-behavioral techniques, skills training, Zen, and existentialism, that has been honed for the treatment of the highest reactors among us--those with Borderline Personality Disorder. Author Scott Spradlin uses proven DBT techniques, worksheets and assessment exercises, to teach us to pay attention to emotions when they arise, assess our blocks to controlling them, and finally overcome these blocks and eliminate overpowering feelings. We learn what emotional triggers exist in our environments, become less judgmental about ourselves when we do experience a surge, and avoid or reduce the distress that emotions cause us. This workbook ultimately equips us to reduce the impact of painful feelings and increase the effects of positive ones so that we may tolerate life's ongoing stresses and achieve a sense of calm co-existence with our emotions. Scott Spradlin, M.A., is a DBT therapist and certified counselor specializing in treating highly reactive clients. He currently works as a therapist and coordinator in the offices of Grace Presbyterian Church in Wichita, Kansas, where he treats clients, and trains professionals and students in the theory and practice of DBT. Spradli