Confident people react positively and successfully to life's problems and challenges. Those who lack confidence often view themselves as victims--blaming others or bingeing on drugs, sex, food, or alcohol to mask their feelings of shame or worthlessness.

In "Complete Confidence," renowned psychotherapist Dr. Sheenah Hankin points the way to a confident life free of self-criticism, anxiety, and immature anger. Her Winning Hand of Comfort technique is a clear, concise, and powerful prescription for dealing with everyday situations--from resolving conflicts to ending unhealthy habits like overeating, complaining, and procrastinating. This essential handbook will teach you how to retrain your brain to manage your emotions and put your problems into perspective. You will learn how to calm down, clarify your thinking, challenge your blame habit, comfort your negative feelings, and achieve confidence. That is Dr. Hankin's promise.

"I know that I am doing therapy correctly and well, so why aren't some of my clients changing?" "Why do I feel anxious when I think about my next session with that difficult client?" When psychotherapy stalls, it's time to try new ideas. The authors' experience with difficult clients -- uncooperative, hostile, uncommitted to change -- gave them a new perspective on working with therapeutic impasses. Papers describing Cognitive Appraisal Therapy have appeared in many books and journals, and now for the first time these ideas are compiled into a single volume. Heavily influenced by the psychotherapy integration movement and in a radical departure from conventional cognitive-behavior therapy, they see motivation in terms of affect and attachment rather than cognitive schemas, and resistance and setbacks as the result of emotional setpoints. Practitioners from all corners of the psychotherapy landscape will be able to integrate Cognitive Appraisal Therapy into their therapeutic approaches to help them work successfully and confidently with difficult clients as individuals, as couples and in groups.
Key Features
* Novel therapeutic strategies and formulations to use when all else is failing
* Provocative conceptualizations of self, personality and psychopathology
* A fresh approach to treating personality-related disorders
* Numerous case illustrations, and excerpts from actual psychotherapy sessions and supervision sessions
* Straightforward, common sense writing free of jargon and psychobabble