""I wish to be the thinnest girl at school, or maybe even the thinnest eleven-year-old on the entire planet,"" confides Lori Gottlieb to her diary. "I mean, what are girls supposed to wish for, other than being thin?"
For a girl growing up in Beverly Hills in 1978, the motto "You can never be too rich or too thin" is writ large. Precocious Lori learns her lessons well, so when she's told that "real women don't eat dessert" and "no one could ever like a girl who has thunder thighs," she decides to become a paragon of dieting. Soon Lori has become the "stick figure" she's longed to resemble. But then what? "Stick Figure" takes the reader on a gripping journey, as Lori struggles to reclaim both her body and her spirit.
By turns painful and wry, Lori's efforts to reconcile the conflicting messages society sends women ring as true today as when she first recorded these impressions. "One diet book says that if you drink three full glasses of water one hour before every meal to fill yourself up, you'll lose a pound a day. Another book says that once you start losing weight, everyone will ask, 'How did you do it?' but you shouldn't tell them because it's 'your little secret.' Then right above that part it says, "'New York Times" bestseller.' Some secret."
With an edgy wit and keenly observant eye, "Stick Figure" delivers an engrossing glimpse into the mind of a girl in transition to adulthood. This raw, no-holds-barred account is a powerful cautionary tale about the dangers of living up to society's expectations.

Increase the efficacy of your treatment interventions in intercultural couples therapy The Intercultural Exeter Couples Model: Making Connections for a Divided World Through Systemic-Behavioral Therapy provides practitioners with a thorough guide to effectively treating intercultural couples. The book consists of a systematic effort to translate systemic ideas that take into account a cultural perspective into a highly useable and practical form. The Intercultural Exeter Couples Model also attempts to marry two, often distinct, forms of practice: the systemic and the behavioral. Both approaches have much to contribute to effective couples' counselling but they are often theoretically siloed. This book demonstrates the value of using both approaches simultaneously. This book provides concrete and practical strategies for implementing systemic and behavioral approaches to intercultural couples' therapy in a manner consistent with clinical best practice. Rather than ignoring the significant and complex impacts that differing cultures can have on a relationship, The Intercultural Exeter Couple Model puts those differences front and center, encouraging the therapist to engage with the cultural mismatch that can be at the core of many couples' ongoing friction. The book's chapters tackle both the model itself and a variety of interventions, covering topics including: Teaching couples how to break patterns and prepare them to establish new ones Training couples to communicate effectively Establishing new modes of behavior in couples An explanation of empathic bridging maneuvers A description of the use of life-space explorations Perfect for clinicians, students, and professors interested in or practicing in the field of couples' therapy, The Intercultural Exeter Couples Model provides readers with an in-depth exploration of an increasingly important model of couples therapy and describes, in painstaking detail, the interventions necessary to achieve positive patient outcomes.