If you experienced physical or emotional abuse, neglect, or abandonment as a child, you may struggle with unhealthy relationships as an adult. Hurtful attachments with our caregivers in early childhood can lay the foundation for toxic relationships. Those experiences can even affect the way we handle conflict, our feelings toward sex, and our expectations of our partners. But this doesn't mean you can't change. This book will help you gain a greater awareness of the trauma bonds that prevent you from getting the love, safety, and security you desire. In Why Can't I Let You Go, relationship expert Michelle Skeen will help you identify your attachment style, core beliefs, and the harmful behaviour patterns that are keeping you stuck in toxic relationships. You'll learn proven-effective skills to help you interrupt these unhelpful patterns and attachments in new and old relationships. You'll also discover what you really value in relationships and go on to develop healthy, secure, and lasting love. Understanding yourself and your deeply held, and often unconscious, beliefs is the first step toward liberating yourself from trauma bonds. Change isn't easy, but in time you'll realize that it's easier and less painful than the heartache and self-doubt you've been enduring for years. With this compassionate guide, you'll find the support and guidance needed to create the loving relationships you truly want.

Stop comparing yourself to others-you're special just as you are! In this fun, practical guide, you'll learn how to silence your nit-picky inner critic, cultivate self-compassion, and discover what really matters to you. If you're like many teens, you probably feel pressured to live up to the impossible standards set by our culture, the media, and even by your peers. After all, everyone wants perfect hair, a perfect body, cool friends, and good grades. But while it's okay to strive to be your best, it's also easy to get caught up in a never-ending comparison game that can feed your inner critic and rob you of your happiness. So, how can you break free from negative self-criticism and learn to appreciate your strengths? In Just As You Are, psychologist Michelle Skeen and her daughter, Kelly Skeen, offer simple tips to help you overcome feelings of inadequacy and unworthiness, stop comparing yourself to others, and be more open and accepting of all aspects of who you are. You'll also learn how to be more aware of your thoughts and feelings in the moment using powerful mindfulness tools, and build a plan of action for the future based on your values. Sometimes it's hard to see yourself with clarity and kindness. With this important guide, you'll learn to move past your faults, celebrate your true strengths, and discover what really matters in your life. What are you waiting for?

For many people, there are few things in the world scarier than the thought of being alone. As humans we thrive on love, comfort, and the safety of family, friends, and our community. But if you are denied these basic comforts early in life, whether through a lack of physical affection or emotional bonding, you may develop intense fears of abandonment that can last well into adulthood--fears so powerful that they can actually cause you to push people away. If you suffer from fears of abandonment, you may have underlying feelings of anger, shame, fear, anxiety, depression, and grief. These emotions are intense and painful, and when they surface they can lead to a number of negative behaviors, such as jealousy, clinging, and emotional blackmail. In "Love Me, Don't Leave Me," therapist Michelle Skeen combines acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), schema therapy, and dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) to help you identify the root of your fears. In this book you'll learn how schema coping behaviors--deeply entrenched and automatic behaviors rooted in childhood experiences and fears--can take over and cause you to inadvertently sabotage your relationships. By recognizing these coping behaviors and understanding their cause, you will not only gain powerful insights into your own mind, but also into the minds of those around you. If you are ready to break the self-fulfilling cycle of mistrust, clinginess, and heartbreak and start building lasting, trusting relationships, this book will be your guide.

In an age of social media, texting, and ever-evolving technology, it's easy to forget how to engage in real, face to-face communication, a critical skill for your future success! As you become more connected to your smartphone and the internet, your ability to connect in person may diminish. But technology doesn't replace the need for effective communication skills. In fact, successful personal and professional relationships are dependent upon connecting with people face-to-face. Communication Skills for Teens provides the guidance you need to become a better communicator and succeed in all areas of life. You'll also learn tons of essential life skills, including active listening, assertiveness, clarifying language, the art of an apology, compassion, interviewing skills, family communication, and more. Each chapter focuses on one key aspect of communication, offers a real teen's perspective, and includes practical exercises to help you apply what you've learned in the real world-away from your computer and smartphone screens. The practical, skills-based tips in each chapter, you'll learn powerful communication techniques to last a lifetime.

Mississippi Congressman T J Samuels is dissatisfied with the direction in which the federal government is moving, so he runs for President. His goal? To shrink the size of government and bring the national debt under control. As President, T J works to advance his radical new ideas, but soon discovers that other radicals have ideas as well. A smallpox epidemic is launched by undocumented immigrants, while Russian ICBMs are placed in Venezuela. And that is only the beginning as T J soon is faced with foreclosure by the Chinese and with military actions all over the globe. TJ is challenged by secret organizations, naval blockades, laser weapons, and new uses of nuclear weapons-all in the first six months of his presidency. With support dwindling quickly and even his friends becoming involved in assassination plots, T J realizes that his noble quest to improve the status of the government is spiraling out of control. Who is the real enemy behind this steady stream of crises? And will the United States survive?

"Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Interpersonal Problems" presents a complete treatment protocol for therapists working with clients who repeatedly fall into unhealthy patterns in their relationships with friends, family members, coworkers, and romantic partners. These clients may blame others, withdraw when feeling threatened, react defensively in conflicts, or have a deep-seated sense of distrust--all interpersonal problems that damage relationships and cause enormous suffering.

This book presents an acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) approach--utilizing a schema-based formulation--to help these clients overcome maladaptive interpersonal behavior. First, clients learn how schema avoidance behavior damages their relationships. Second, clients face "creative hopelessness" and practice new mindfulness skills. Third, clients examine what they value in their relationships and what they hope to gain from them, and translate their values into clear intentions for acting differently in the future. And lastly, clients face the cognitive and emotional barriers standing between them and values-based behavior in their relationships. By learning to act on their values instead of falling into schema-influenced patterns, clients can eventually overcome the interpersonal problems that hold them back.