BiblioVault - Books about Self-help

Sacred Desire

Growing in Compassionate Living

Nancy K. Morrison

Templeton Press, 2009

Is the call to spirituality embedded in human biology? Authors Nancy K. Morrison and Sally K. Severino draw on cutting-edge research, including the recent discovery of brain "mirror neurons" and the elucidation of the physiology of social affiliation and attachment, to make a bold case that we are, in fact, biologically wired to seek oneness with the divine. They have termed this innate urge "sacred Desire."

In their new book on the subject, ,em>Sacred Desire: Growing in Compassionate Living, Morrison and Severino, both highly esteemed academic psychiatrists, draw on neurophysiology, relationship studies, research on spiritual development, and psychotherapy to show how spirituality is intimately connected with our physical being. The authors offer several clinical examples of how recognizing sacred Desire can advance a person's healing and they provide an action plan for using Desire to move from fear to love of self, others, and all creation.

In addition to psychiatrists and neurophysiologists, who will undoubtedly welcome this significant contribution to their fields of study, Sacred Desire is sure to appeal as well to the much wider audience of spiritual seekers looking for intellectually and scientifically credible ways to understand spirituality in today's world.

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Searching for Soul

A Survivor’s Guide

Bobbe Tyler

Ohio University Press, 2009

To dive deep into your inner life. To navigate its complexity and explore your story in depth. To discover who you are exactly—the courage you have when life breaks apart, how conscious you become in that process, and how rich you feel learning the meaning of your life. On a search for wholeness, Bobbe Tyler delves deep to find and tell her story—the trauma of familial mental illness, marriage and divorce, spiritual despair, accountability, addiction and the joy of recovery, surviving loss, and finally that which matters most: love in all its ways. The rewards of her wisdom belong not to her alone but, by way of her unflinching examination of life’s many paths, to all who have a story of their own to tell—who have faced a life-choice gone wrong, or met the peace that had always seemed just out of reach. This searing self-appraisal provides a model for those who seek to know themselves better and are willing to sound their depths to find their story in full.

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Searching for Soul

A Survivor's Guide

Bobbe Tyler

Ohio University Press, 2009

Winner of a da Vinci Eye Medal for Superior Cover Design
Shortlisted for the 2010 Eric Hoffer Award’s Montaigne Medal

To dive deep into your inner life. To explore what matters most: wisdom, happiness, the pain of loss, self–accountability, aging, and more. Searching for Soul: A Survivor’s Guide is a breathtakingly honest case study: a self-examination resulting in the discovery of a meaningful life.

Bobbe Tyler blends her story with in-depth commentary, framing each chapter as a response to one of a set of questions, appended to the book, entitled The Harvesting Wisdom Interview. In her search for fulfillment, Tyler asks and answers the most difficult questions about the trauma of mental illness, divorce, financial and emotional despair. The rewards of this hard–won wisdom belong not to her alone but by way of her unflinching examination of life’s many paths, dead ends, and circuitous routes — to anyone who has faced a life–choice gone wrong — or known the indescribable recovery from addiction or abuse, or longed for the peace that seems just out of reach. This searing self–appraisal provides hope and fellowship for those who seek to know themselves better.

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Self-Alteration

How People Change Themselves across Cultures

Jean-Paul Baldacchino

Rutgers University Press, 2024

Many of us feel a pressing desire to be different—to be other than who we are. Self-conscious, we anxiously perceive our shortcomings or insufficiencies, wondering why we are how we are and whether we might be different. Often, we wish to alter ourselves, to change our relationships, and to transform the person we are in those relationships. Not only a philosophical question about how other people change, self-alteration is also a practical care—can I change, and how? Self-Alteration: How People Change Themselves across Cultures explores and analyzes these apparently universal hopes and their related existential dilemmas. The essays here come at the subject of the self and its becoming through case studies of modes of transformation of the self. They do this with social processes and projects that reveal how the self acquires a non-trivial new meaning in and through its very process of alteration. By focusing on ways we are allowed to change ourselves, including through religious and spiritual traditions and innovations, embodied participation in therapeutic programs like psychoanalysis and gendered care services, and political activism or relationships with animals, the authors in this volume create a model for cross-cultural or global analysis of social-self change that leads to fresh ways of addressing the 'self' itself.

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Self-Control in Seven Steps

Christine B. Whelan

Templeton Press, 2012

When you want to get up for an early flight, what do you do? You set an alarm. If you want to benchpress your body weight, how do you start? You slowly build up your muscles so you can achieve your goal. And when you’ve got a big deadline looming, what’s the best way to handle it? Plan out your time.

If you’re like most people, you know all these things are true, but at some point or another, you’ve dropped the ball: You’ve missed a flight because you cut it too close, you’ve overestimated what you can physically do, hurting yourself in the process, or you’ve tried to cram in a month’s worth of work into a frantic forty-eight-hour panic fest. Yes?

You’re not alone. Even Aristotle knew this when he said, “I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.”

You want the secret to success. You want to take control of your life and achieve your goals. We all do. Since research has repeatedly shown that self-control is like a muscle, think of this book as your personal trainer to build up your skills and strength. Self-Control in 7 Steps offers the proven mental tricks, organizational strategies, and tools to transform the bored, unfocused, and lazy in all of us.

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Self-Development Ethics and Politics in China Today

A Keyword Approach

Gil Hizi

Amsterdam University Press, 2024

This volume takes readers on a journey into a central aspect of life in China, so-called “self-development.” Whether prompted by the cultural values of educational success, capitalist competition for wealth, or the Chinese Communist Party’s prescriptions for “good” citizenship, few people in China are immune to the impetus to “improve” themselves and thus bring about a better future. Contributors to this volume, interdisciplinary sinologists, draw on materials from practices in education, labor, and self-help as they spotlight “keywords” by which individuals make sense of their self-development journeys – including new forms of resistance to social norms. Rather than simply classify self-development by different activities or groups, the chapters map together ethical features that cut across Chinese society. Contributors explore the nuanced and ambivalent attitudes towards self-development of individuals navigating various requirements and pursuing more complete forms of existence. In so doing, they offer a snapshot of China that intersects with timely global concerns.

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Self-Help Books

Why Americans Keep Reading Them

Sandra K. Dolby

University of Illinois Press, 2004

Understanding instead of lamenting the popularity of self-help books

Based on a reading of more than three hundred self-help books, Sandra K. Dolby examines this remarkably popular genre to define "self-help" in a way that's compelling to academics and lay readers alike. Self-Help Books also offers an interpretation of why these books are so popular, arguing that they continue the well-established American penchant for self-education, they articulate problems of daily life and their supposed solutions, and that they present their content in a form and style that is accessible rather than arcane.

Using tools associated with folklore studies, Dolby then examines how the genre makes use of stories, aphorisms, and a worldview that is at once traditional and contemporary. The overarching premise of the study is that self-help books, much like fairy tales, take traditional materials, especially stories and ideas, and recast them into extended essays that people happily read, think about, try to apply, and then set aside when a new embodiment of the genre comes along.

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The Soul of the Helper

Seven Stages to Seeing the Sacred within Yourself So You Can See It in Others

Holly K. Oxhandler

Templeton Press, 2025

There are many kinds of helpers in our world, the caregivers among us. They are the social workers who serve the vulnerable, the nurses and doctors who treat the ill, the teachers who instruct the young, the first responders who rescue the imperiled, the faith leaders who comfort the congregation, the volunteers who support the community. And whether or not it is our professional calling, each of us is likely to serve as a caregiver at some point in our lives, as a parent raising a child, for instance, or as a loved one caring for an aging relative. These and many other efforts to serve are among the most noble pursuits we can imagine, but they come with a danger worth recognizing.

In their devotion to the well-being of others, caregivers routinely put their own well-being last and can unintentionally burn themselves out physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Their self-neglect, paired alongside a deep desire to help others, has the potential to stir up feelings of anger and resentment, leading to a sense of guilt and shame. They often believe that if they were to grant themselves any rest or grace, they would be at risk of failing in their duty.

In The Soul of the Helper, Dr. Holly K. Oxhandler shows caregivers and fellow helpers a more self-compassionate way to cope with their overwhelming responsibilities and to attend to their own needs, particularly when it comes to their mental health and spiritual journey. She invites them to pause and realize that if they let their personal resources run dry, they cannot possibly care for others as fully as they wish. In fact, their efforts are likely to cause more harm than good.

With a background in spiritually-integrated mental health, Dr. Oxhandler teaches helpers a seven-step process to slow down and reconnect with the stillness within themselves. It is in this space of stillness that Oxhandler guides helpers to reconnect with the “sacred spark” within their soul. By allowing themselves to enter that stillness, caregivers will recognize that they, too, are worthy of care. And with that realization, they will see anew the sacred spark that dwells inside everyone else, especially within those they’re helping.

As a social worker, researcher, and person of faith, Dr. Oxhandler writes in a warm and welcoming style, shares many relatable stories, and widens her scope to include believers of all faiths and spiritual traditions. Her book is for caregivers everywhere who sense the sacred spark within them saying, in effect: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”

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Sound Sense

Living and Learning with Hearing Loss

Sara Laufer Batinovich

Gallaudet University Press, 2011

One out of every eight people between the ages of 18 and 67 in the United States has a hearing loss, estimated as 12 percent of the working-age population. Sound Sense: Living and Learning with Hearing Loss addresses the acute need of these people to function at the highest level in these income-earning years, the longest phase in their lives. In nine pointed chapters, author Sara Laufer Batinovich, who also has lost her hearing, shares her experience and knowledge in turning every challenge into an opportunity to become one’s best self-advocate.

Batinovich begins in the workplace, advising on winning a job, keeping it, and developing a long-term career, plus how to reduce stress and establish fulfilling professional relationships with colleagues. She offers tips on communication ranging from having sales people face you for easier speechreading to parsing boarding announcements at airports and play-by-play at ballparks. Her practical handbook also provides step-by-step guidance for getting a hearing aid or a cochlear implant and finding one’s way through prickly insurance claim mazes.

Sound Sense features information on finding a service dog, securing legally mandated accommodations for continuing education, tips on exercise and health, and even sensitive suggestions on strengthening personal relationships. Batinovich’s vivacious style and her own anecdotes add an upbeat, genuine sensibility to her book’s value as a positive guide to living with hearing loss.

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Spiritual Connection in Daily Life

Sixteen Little Questions That Can Make a Big Difference

Lynn Underwood

Templeton Press, 2013

How often do you find moments of deep peace and satisfaction in your day-to-day life? How often does connection with other people, the divine, or nature make you feel more alive? How often are you touched by a sense of awe-inspiring beauty, compassionate love, or pure joy? For many of us, these kinds of experiences tend to be fleeting and all too rare. Fortunately, new research is suggesting that a regular practice of paying attention to experiences like these can help any of us find them more often and cultivate richer, deeper, and more satisfying lives.

In Spiritual Connection in Daily Life, Lynn Underwood introduces her Daily Spiritual Experience Scale (DSES), which is comprised of sixteen simple, multiple-choice questions that invite us to become more attuned tothese extraordinary experiences in ordinary life. The DSES is the definitive set of questions for measuring the experience of spiritual connection and has been used in hundreds of studies, translated into over twenty languages, and used around the world by counselors, therapists, nurses, social workers, clergy from multiple faiths, and business leaders.

Spiritual Connection in Daily Life offers a step-by-step guide to using the DSES to improve our abilities to sense the “more than” in the midst of our days. Embraced by people from many different cultures, religious traditions, and professional backgrounds, the DSES doesn’t require any extraordinary experience like hearing divine voices or embarking upon a dramatic religious conversion. Nor does it belabor the exact definition of “spirituality.” Rather, it simply invites us to focus on aspects of our daily lives such as deep peace, sense of inner strength, longing, and compassionate love. The sixteen questions also provide a common, nonpolarizing language for communicating with others about the role of the “more than” in our lives.

Adherents of all faith traditions, as well as people with no religious leanings whatsoever, have experienced profound and lasting benefits from having these experiences, including improved health behaviors, better relationships, decreased stress and burnout, and improvements in daily mood. Now all of us can reap these same long-term benefits with just a little bit of self-reflection and Dr. Underwood’s expert guidance.

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Spiritual Recovery

A Twelve-Step Guide

Grant Schnarr

Swedenborg Foundation Publishers, 1998

Twelve-step programs, which are based on psychological and spiritual growth, serve all who desire a path to freedom from destructive tendencies and consequent suffering. Using a twelve-step approach, Grant Schnarr presents readers with the tools needed to live a life guided by a greater awareness of both others and self. Filled with practical advice for incorporating these twelve principles into one’s life, Spiritual Recovery provides a road map for developing a deeper relationship with God and experiencing greater joy.

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Sport Is Life with the Volume Turned Up

Lessons Learned That Apply to Business and Life

Joan Cronan

University of Tennessee Press, 2014

“Joan and Pat Summitt were what I call 'glass cutters' in building the Tennessee women’s athletics program. They did not break the glass ceiling; they carefully carved their way through.” —Sally Jenkins, Washington Post

“Joan has the ability to bring out the best in people and provide them with the skills to be the best that they can be. It’s refreshing that despite all her vast accomplishments Joan remains humble and sincere.” —Robin Roberts, co-anchor, Good Morning America

“Whether you’re in the board room or the the locker room, there is nothing more important than teamwork. Joan Cronan is a gifted leader of teams, whose passion and devotion has led generations of athletes to be the very best that they can be. Her learning and experience can be a hugely valuable lesson to us all.” —Kenneth W. Lowe, Chairman, President, and CEO, Scripps Networks Interactive

In Sport Is Life with the Volume Turned Up, Joan Cronan offers a refreshing and innovative perspective on strengthening performance and achieving success in both the business world and everyday life. During her twenty-eight years as Women’s Athletics Director for the University of Tennessee, Cronan built one of the most prominent and respected women’s athletics programs in the nation, resulting in ten NCAA titles and twenty-four SEC Tournament Championships for the Lady Vols during her tenure. She reveals in her book what happened behind the scenes in constructing a successful, nationally renowned women’s athletics program—and it turns out that game days were only part of the story.

Cronan’s lighthearted stories and succinct business tips will draw you in until you feel like you are present for every victory she describes on the court and in the workplace. Cronan’s business acumen and passionate approach to positive change will arm you with the outlook and the tools you need to revolutionize the professional and personal spheres in your life.

Joan Cronan is a nationally known speaker and business consultant. For nearly thirty years, she was Director of Women’s Athletics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She was appointed United Way Chair and Chair of Leadership Knoxville, as well as serving on the First Tennessee Bank Advisory Board, as a Trustee for the U.S. Sports Academy, and on the Board of Trustees at Carson-Newman College. Sports Business Journal named her a Champion in Sports Business. She was elected President of the national Association of College Directors of Athletics. Cronan has been inducted into the Louisiana State University Hall of Distinction, the College of Charleston Hall of Fame, the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame, the Knoxville Sports Hall of Fame, and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes’ Hall of Fame.

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States of Memory

Continuities, Conflicts, and Transformations in National Retrospection

Jeffrey K. Olick, ed.

Duke University Press, 2003

States of Memory illuminates the construction of national memory from a comparative perspective. The essays collected here emphasize that memory itself has a history: not only do particular meanings change, but the very faculty of memory—its place in social relations and the forms it takes—varies over time. Integrating theories of memory and nationalism with case studies, these essays stake a vital middle ground between particular and universal approaches to social memory studies.

The contributors—including historians and social scientists—describe societies’ struggles to produce and then use ideas of what a “normal” past should look like. They examine claims about the genuineness of revolution (in fascist Italy and communist Russia), of inclusiveness (in the United States and Australia), of innocence (in Germany), and of inevitability (in Israel). Essayists explore the reputation of Confucius among Maoist leaders during China’s Cultural Revolution; commemorations of Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States Congress; the “end” of the postwar era in Japan; and how national calendars—in signifying what to remember, celebrate, and mourn—structure national identification. Above all, these essays reveal that memory is never unitary, no matter how hard various powers strive to make it so.

States of Memory will appeal to those scholars-in sociology, history, political science, cultural studies, anthropology, and art history-who are interested in collective memory, commemoration, nationalism, and state formation.

Contributors. Paloma Aguilar, Frederick C. Corney, Carol Gluck, Matt K. Matsuda, Jeffrey K. Olick, Francesca Polletta, Uri Ram, Barry Schwartz, Lyn Spillman, Charles Tilly, Simonetta Falasca Zamponi, Eviatar Zerubavel, Tong Zhang

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Stations of the Lost

The Treatment of Skid Row Alcoholics

Jacqueline P. Wiseman

University of Chicago Press, 1979

When first published in 1970, Stations of the Lost won the C. Wright Mills Award for Best Book in the Area of Social Problems. The study considers the Skid Row alcoholic from two points of view, that of the alcoholic himself and that of the agents of social control who treat him. A major discovery of Wiseman's research was that Skid Row men spend only about one third of the year on Skid Row. The rest of the time is spent "making the loop"—going from Skid Row to city jail, to county jail, to the state mental hospital, to the missions, and back to Skid Row. While these facilities are designed to handle or rehabilitate Skid Row men, they are actually used by these men as a means of survival.

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Staying The Course

A Runner’s Toughest Race

Dick Beardsley

University of Minnesota Press, 2004

For a moment Dick Beardsley became the most famous runner in the world by losing a race. In the 1982 Boston Marathon, Beardsley, foiled by a motorcycle that cut him off, finished two seconds behind Alberto Salazar in one of the most memorable contests in marathon history. Staying the Course recounts that race and the difficult years that followed, including his recovery from a near-fatal farm accident, his subsequent addiction to painkillers, and a public arrest for forging prescriptions. His story of overcoming obstacles speaks to anyone who loves competition, who has survived catastrophe, or who has pursued a seemingly impossible goal.

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Successful Aging as a Contemporary Obsession

Global Perspectives

Lamb, Sarah

Rutgers University Press, 2017

In recent decades, the North American public has pursued an inspirational vision of successful aging—striving through medical technique and individual effort to eradicate the declines, vulnerabilities, and dependencies previously commonly associated with old age. On the face of it, this bold new vision of successful, healthy, and active aging is highly appealing. But it also rests on a deep cultural discomfort with aging and being old.

The contributors to Successful Aging as a Contemporary Obsession explore how the successful aging movement is playing out across five continents. Their chapters investigate a variety of people, including Catholic nuns in the United States; Hindu ashram dwellers; older American women seeking plastic surgery; aging African-American lesbians and gay men in the District of Columbia; Chicago home health care workers and their aging clients; Mexican men foregoing Viagra; dementia and Alzheimer sufferers in the United States and Brazil; and aging policies in Denmark, Poland, India, China, Japan, and Uganda. This book offers a fresh look at a major cultural and public health movement of our time, questioning what has become for many a taken-for-granted goal—aging in a way that almost denies aging itself.

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Surviving Alex

A Mother’s Story of Love, Loss, and Addiction

Patricia A. Roos

Rutgers University Press, 2024

In 2015, Patricia Roos’s twenty-five-year-old son Alex died of a heroin overdose. Turning her grief into action, Roos, a professor of sociology at Rutgers University, began to research the social factors and institutional failures that contributed to his death. Surviving Alex tells her moving story—and outlines the possibilities of a more compassionate and effective approach to addiction treatment.

Weaving together a personal narrative and a sociological perspective, Surviving Alex movingly describes how even children from “good families” fall prey to addiction, and recounts the hellish toll it takes on families. Drawing from interviews with Alex’s friends, family members, therapists, teachers, and police officers—as well as files from his stays in hospitals, rehab facilities, and jails—Roos paints a compelling portrait of a young man whose life veered between happiness, anxiety, success, and despair. And as she explores how a punitive system failed her son, she calls for a community of action that would improve care for substance users and reduce addiction, realigning public health policy to address the overdose crisis.

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Surviving Suicidal Ideation

From Therapy to Spirituality and the Lived Experience

Gina Cavalier and Amelia Kelley

Swedenborg Foundation Publishers, 2024

A guide to help those who experience suicidal ideation heal and find peace.

Surviving Suicidal Ideation embarks on a profound journey through the underlying causes, stages, and powerful emotions that shape the experience of having suicidal thoughts. More importantly, it provides proven tools, exercises, and steps to curtail and heal this preventable condition. With sensitivity and clarity, Dr. Amelia Kelley and Gina Cavalier explore the interconnectedness of addiction, mental health, and trauma.

Using a unique combination of analytic and spiritual practices, mindfulness, cutting-edge brain therapy, and compassionate support, this book offers therapies and self-help techniques with corresponding exercises; hand-inked illustrations by Cavalier; a foreword by Thomas Moore, New York Times bestselling author of Care of the Soul; and an extensive list of resources.

As a public speaker, Cavalier focuses on memoir-style storytelling about living with suicidal ideation. Together, the authors present holistic approaches to suicide prevention and debunk prevalent myths. They also go beyond individual healing, emphasizing the importance of community and relationships. Ultimately, Surviving Suicidal Ideation provides a nonjudgmental guide that enables the reader to develop self-compassion and work toward a positive future filled with hope and resilience.

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A Swedenborg Perpetual Calendar

Thoughts for the Day to Return to Year after Year

Emanuel Swedenborg

Swedenborg Foundation Publishers, 2023

A daily book of insights from Emanuel Swedenborg.

A Swedenborg Perpetual Calendar, originally published in 1902 by the Swedenborg Publishing Association, is a daily devotional calendar consisting of thought-provoking quotes by Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772), an Enlightenment-era philosopher, scientist, and mystic whose ideas have inspired generations of religious thinkers and literary figures alike. The Swedenborg Foundation’s new edition of this insightful collection not only includes modern translations of excerpts from the most up-to-date editions and translations of his works but it also provides a fresh perspective on a variety of Swedenborg’s spiritual themes, such as divine love and wisdom, regeneration, divine providence, correspondences, and the afterlife. A useful tool for anyone in search of daily inspiration, A Swedenborg Perpetual Calendar is a timeless treasure that will help guide readers at each step of their spiritual journey.

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