MJ’s mother is worried.

“She’s so shy. Whenever we get together with people, I mean even one or two people, she hangs behind me. I don’t know how to encourage her.”

MJ is four years old. When I first meet her, I see what her mother means. MJ stands behind her mom. She sneaks a peak at me. She retreats. When she finally does come forward, she holds tight to her mom’s hand. I ask her to tell me her whole name. “MaryJane,” she whispers. I tell her that her mom and I are going to talk a bit and that it’s okay if she decides she’d like to see what’s in the toy corner. Mom and I talk. Sure enough, in about 10 minutes, MJ is exploring the books and toys.

Normal Shyness

MJ is perfectly normal. What looks to her mom like shyness is a developmental stage. Many preschoolers are reticent when confronted with new people, new situations, or new demands. They hang back a bit and observe what is going on rather than jump right in. Once MJ had time to survey the room and to decide that I was probably a benign grownup, she felt confident enough to explore new territory. As kids like MJ get more accustomed to meeting new people and mastering new challenges, their “shyness” often naturally fades away.

Other children are “shy” by temperament. Ask any mother of two or more children. Children are different from the time they start moving in the womb. Some are active and bouncy. Others quietly shift from one position to another. Once they pop out into the world, they are still very much themselves with temperaments to match the activity their mothers felt while they were getting ready to be born.

Quieter infants often become the children who are more comfortable being with one or two friends instead of a large group, who are uncomfortable with unexpected social demands, and who are sensitive to how others are behaving. Often they are more easily upset by transitions and change and take longer to settle down. This shy temperament is as much a part of who a child is as eye color and handedness.

Not surprisingly, temperamentally shy children often have at least one shy parent. The shy child may have inherited his temperament from his shy and sensitive parent or he may have learned to approach new situations with some caution because that’s what he’s observed his parent doing. Probably, as with most things, it’s a combination of both nature and nurture.

Dos and Don’ts for Helping Normally Shy Children Learn to Manage the Social World

• Don’t consider shyness a character flaw. It’s a difference, not a defect. Shy people are often sensitive observers who provide balance, thoughtfulness, and care to the social mix.

• Don’t try to cajole, scold, or pep-talk the child out of his shyness. This will only frustrate you and embarrass the child. Some kids even come to believe that their parents don’t like them!
• Don’t insist that your child show off new skills. Some children are natural performers. Not the shy child. The shy child prefers to be in the audience or stay backstage. Accept that not everyone needs to be in the spotlight.

From Amazon.com: Do your relationships always crash? Do your married friends wonder what’s wrong? “They write sitcoms about people like us,” says “commitment-phobia” expert Steven Carter, “but it looks a lot more fun on the small screen than it feels in real life.” The problem may be your fear of the risks of intimacy and commitment. Carter himself was a closet “commitment-phobic” when he wrote Men Who Can’t Love. Now, in Getting to Commitment, he explains how to break those patterns and forge intimate connections — as he has done in his own life.

Carter sees eight hurdles between you and the relationship you deserve. He deftly analyzes each problem, points out self-destructive nonsolutions, and explains the steps necessary to break the barrier. For example, one hurdle is blaming your partners’ shortcomings for the failure of previous relationships. Breaking the pattern involves seeing how you choose particular partners and self-destruct in relationships–going from blame to responsibility. Other hurdles include relationship-history ghosts, living in fantasy, and ineffective behavior patterns. “If we are to experience intimacy, our hearts have to be brave as well as loving,” says Carter. Getting to Commitment will help you find that courage.

Softcover, 256 pages.

Readers are taught to create their own goals for love, clarifying what they really want in their relationship, healing past relationships that might be getting in their way, and affirming and rehearsing their best selves to attract the love they want. The book is additionally poignant because the author’s husband died suddenly just after the manuscript was completed. The book contains a touching tribute to his memory and the lasting legacy of his love.

Softcover, 318 pages.

A moving, telling memoir of Elyn Sak’s profound battle with schizophrenia. It is an inspiring journey for family members or for anyone suffering from a schizophrenia-related disorder. Saks is a professor of law and psychiatry at the University of Southern California, and with that background, she has crafted something that often reads more like a gripping novel than a personal, first-hand account of her life.

From Amazon.com: “Saks struggled mightily to balance her ambitions with her illness, which was eventually diagnosed as schizophrenia. Never wanting to concede to her mental illness, Saks founds calm and comfort in a rigorous work routine. An analyst characterized her as having three lives: as Elyn, as Professor Saks, and as the Lady of the Charts mental patient. As Saks battled to get off medication and leave behind the Lady of the Charts, she fought for the rights of mental patients, and came to terms with her own limitations.”

Softcover, 368 pages.

Despite ever-widening media attention and public awareness of the problem, American women continue to suffer from anorexia nervosa in greater numbers than ever before. This severe psychophysiological condition—characterized by an abnormal fear of becoming obese, a persistent unwillingness to eat, and severe compulsion to lose weight—is particularly difficult to treat, often because the victims are unwilling to seek out help. This book uses innovative new techniques based on a revolutionary model of psychotherapy called acceptance and commitment therapy, or ACT, to teach readers that efforts to control and stop anorexia may do more harm than good. Instead of focusing efforts on judging impulses associated with the disorder as “bad” or “negative,” this approach encourages sufferers to mindfully observe these feelings without reacting to them in a self-destructive way. Guided to this more compassionate, more receptive frame of mind, readers are coached to employ various acceptance-based coping strategies.

Structured in a logical, step-by-step progression of exercises, the workbook first focuses on providing readers with a new understanding of anorexia and the ways they might have already tried to control the problem. Then the book progresses through techniques that teach how to use mindfulness to deal with out-of-control thoughts and feelings, how to identify choice that will lead to better heath and quality of life, and how to redirect the energy formerly spent on weight loss into those actions that will heal the body and mind. Although this book is written specifically to anorexia sufferers, it includes a clear and informative chapter on when readers need to seek professional treatment as well as advice on what to look for in a therapist.

From Amazon.com: “You will learn to accept and live with the uncontrollable thoughts and feelings that haunt you about your weight, and you will learn to take charge and move your life in directions that you value,” promise the authors, both specialists in treating people with anorexia. They use the ACT (acceptance and commitment therapy) philosophy: Accept the thoughts and feelings, and commit to actions that take charge of your life in a positive way. Step by step, you learn to understand that what you’ve been doing isn’t working, deal with emotions and thoughts more effectively, identify your life values, start living a life that reflects those values, and cope with barriers. The overriding point is that you can act before you “get things right in your head.” The style is warm, simple, and accepting–no stern lectures or commands to eat. The workbook has large pages and is well laid-out and easy to follow. Each chapter presents bulleted preview points at the beginning, clear content, and plenty of self-tests, exercises, and worksheets to get you immediately involved in each part of the process. Highly recommended for people challenged by anorexia and those who love them or work with them.”

Softcover, 200 pages.

She traces her disease from its elusive origins, through its darkest moments of deprivation, guilt, and self-loathing. As she recounts her journey towards recovery, Emily draws us into her raw experience of anorexia, exposing its secrets and dispelling some of the myths that shroud it. Beautifully written and alive with self-awareness, but never self-pity, this inspiring read will offer those battling with this all-consuming disease a glimpse of perspective and hope, and help those on the outside to understand more.

Softcover, 336 pages.

In this vivid, emotionally wrenching memoir, the author recreates the experience and illuminates the tanble of personal, family and cultural causes underlying eating disorders in modern society. The book is the engaging story of one woman’s travels to the darker side of reality and her decision to find her way back… on her own terms.

From Amazon.com: “I fell for the great American dream, female version, hook, line, and sinker,” Marya Hornbacher writes. “I, as many young women do, honest-to-God believed that once I Just Lost a Few Pounds, suddenly I would be a New You, I would have Ken-doll men chasing my thin legs down with bouquets of flowers on the street, I would become rich and famous and glamorous and lose my freckles and become blond and five foot ten.” Hornbacher describes in shocking detail her lifelong quest to starve herself to death, to force her short, athletic body to fade away. She remembers telling a friend, at age 4, that she was on a diet. Her bizarre tale includes not only the usual puking and starving, but also being confined to mental hospitals and growing fur (a phenomenon called lanugo, which nature imposes to keep a body from freezing to death during periods of famine).

Softcover, 320 pages.

Cyclothymia is a mood disorder characterized by cycling periods of hypomania-unusual emotional highs-and periods of mild to moderate depression. The condition is similar to the better known bipolar disorder, but cyclothymics never experience episodes of full mania or deep depression. In order for a therapist to diagnose someone with cyclothymia, the cycling of moods must continue for at least two years. Since the emotional episodes of cyclothymics tend to be more mild, they often go undiagnosed and untreated. Clinical studies have demonstrated, though, that leaving these symptoms untreated carries a particular risk: between 15 and 50 percent of cyclothymia sufferers will eventually develop a diagnosable bipolar disorder.

This book, the first written specifically to cyclothymia sufferers, helps readers learn more about this condition. It explores hereditary and stress-related possible causes of the disorder, as well as the history of the condition and its treatment. The book offers exercises to help readers recognize their emotional cycles and any conditions that might trigger changes from one phase to another. The book introduces readers to cognitive behavioral techniques that are effective at limiting and controlling shifting moods. Later chapters explore treatment options-medical and psychotherapeutic-and offer advice on how to manage relationships when one partner suffers from cyclothymia.

Softcover, 197 pages.

The voice of the recovered narrator provides context, reliability, and credibility. Where the manic narrator is relentlessly entertaining and delusional, the recovered narrator is tough minded, concise, and determined to reveal the truth, no matter how painful. With a cold eye he examines the forces that shaped him in order to shed light on the psychological architecture driving the episode. The interplay between these two perspectives underscores the bipolar nature of Manic Depression; the greatest personal challenge is reconciling them. Ultimately, the narrator must confront his own worst nightmare and in doing so gain character, insight, and acceptance.

About the Author

Alistair McHarg spent his early years in Edinburgh and Amsterdam, moving to Philadelphia with his father, Ian, and mother, Pauline, at age six. He attended Germantown Friends School, Haverford College, and the University of Louisville. Convinced at an early age that fate had chosen writing as his calling, he followed a characteristically slow and circuitous path. McHarg has found employment as deck hand on a Norwegian tramp freighter touring South America, Bureau of Land Management Emergency Fire Fighter in Alaska, guide at a Canadian wilderness survival camp, truck driver crisscrossing Colorado’s continental divide, and inner city cabbie. Alistair has been arranging words on paper for a living since 1983. He is the author of three novels, a memoir, innumerable poems, hundreds of book, film, and music reviews, and an ever growing catalog of cartoons.

Softcover, 240 pages.

Here now is Marya Hornbacher to push the image further with her memoir, Madness. Hornbacher is a gifted writer who’s navigated the positive and negative effects of the illness on her writing career. She writes about writing while relating her life events in a way that isn’t self-aggrandizing. Well, not too much. This is a person who has had some very grandiose moments during her manic episodes, and enjoys sharing them in Madness.

But, she has led a truly grand life. Her first memoir, Wasted, a detailed (very detailed) account of her struggle with an eating disorder, made her rich and adored by millions. By reflecting her mirror image to readers she showed them that she was similar to what they see in their own mirrors, and inspired some to recover. Wasted helped readers with bulimia and anorexia to perceive themselves in new ways.

There is a similar dynamic here in Madness, using bipolar disorder. Revealing herself in this memoir about the turmoil of manic depression in her life (she wasn’t diagnosed until after Wasted was published, which is why that book doesn’t go into it), she created a doll to carry away. It’s a vividly and detailed replica of a person who lives with bipolar, its features both unique and universal. It’s all made of text.

Separating a behavior from a symptom is a challenge to everyone fighting stigma. Is the person acting strangely due to a moral failing or biology? Obnoxious or manic? Lazy or depressed? Slutty or hypomanic? By laying down snapshot after snapshot Hornbacher creates overlays, patterns clearly found in symptoms that are absent between episodes. In doing this she also shows us cracks in the mental health system: an early therapist ignored signs of mania and told her to self-soothe with a bubble bath, while a nurse accused her of malingering when she protested that Prozac was making her more manic and agitated (a common reaction to Prozac among people with bipolar, in the early days of SSRI antidepressants most doctors didn’t connect the dots - some still don’t). She describes these encounters with psychiatrists and therapists with humor, but it’s wry to bitter humor.

A spoonful of whipped cream is lavished on top. With ECT and the disorder itself causing amnesia, memories are lost, memories are blurred, and some are perhaps fantasized in impressionistic streams, but they do swirl into place as sincere and emotionally accurate. Hornbacher is diagnosed with Bipolar I ultra-rapid cycling. She describes her mood swings as diurnal (waking depressed, becoming hypomanic at night) as well as longer underlying cycles in seasonal episodes. Predictable for her is to be manic in summer, depressed in winter. Studies have also identified people who are manic in spring, and suicide rates also peak at that time of year. But in the bipolar spectrum, it’s different for every body. In the DSM-IV a manic episode is defined as four days or more of sustained symptoms. As more researchers are learning lately, though, and as Hornbacher describes from her own life, mixed states with symptoms of both depression and hypo/mania are more common than previously believed. It’s a problem when some mental health professionals don’t recognize or treat it appropriately, and this happened to her more than once.

The book jacket boasts that this memoir will “…powerfully change, too, the current debate on whether bipolar in children actually exists.” Memories plucked from childhood, going back as far as age four, are offered as proof of its existence. Developing an eating disorder at nine and doing cocaine at thirteen are explained as self-medicating her mood swings. I’m not sure that her testimony on the existence of childhood bipolar is compelling, but obviously she was not just, as one psychiatrist condescendingly labelled her, an “angry little girl.”

Hornbacher seems to have that competitive streak sometimes seen among people with severe mental illness: her disorder is the worst and she is the sickest. She’s an admitted perfectionist and overachiever so I suppose it’s no wonder. In some chapters she describes going into episodes so bad that she wanders around dazed and lost (but always somehow finds her way home) or can’t think well enough to work (but does finish writing a novel). She may be more capable than she’s giving herself credit for. But she would win a few “most extreme” prizes. The book opens with a scene describing a “slip” that severed an artery, the gory images and sequence far more dramatic than things most people have done. Heightened by vital, kinetic words.

This book is more than a memoir; it’s beautiful prose that exemplifies what is almost a new sub-genre. Work about her process, about herself, through her process, with exquisite insights that surely didn’t come from a mind that is too cognitively impaired. But describing helpless psychosis makes for better heroism, more to admire as clarity re-emerges from dark fogs.

Ultra high-achieving women who’ve written memoirs about bipolar disorder: Kay Redfield Jamison, Patty Duke, Terri Cheney, Jane Pauley, and now Marya Hornbacher. She’d invite them to a fabulous dinner party, perfect in every detail from the crystal and silver to non-alcoholic wine. Even in that ideal setting, among the books of those extremely smart and talented women, her memoir shines just a little brighter.

Softcover, 299 pages.

Raw, honest and brazen, The Bipolar Advantage draws its examples from the real-life experiences of its author, other people with a bipolar diagnosis and those who have relationships with bipolar people. Pulling no punches, Tom Wootton paints a realistic picture of the bipolar condition in its many faces, then gently guides the reader through the steps necessary to lead an introspective life that greatly ameliorates those symptoms, with the ultimate goal of helping bipolar people gain control of their lives.

Tom takes the reader on a journey through the good and bad aspects of bipolar, transforming negatives into positives and nurturing a mental environment where bipolar people can reshape their views of their condition and move fluidly from concepts of illness to excellence.

Ultimately, The Bipolar Advantage will stand as a guide book for those who don’t want to accept a diminished view of their lives after a diagnosis of bipolar. It s a road map to wellness and strength that will stand the test of time and the changing winds of popular bipolar treatment modalities.

Softcover, 200 pages.

Kids with ADHD need to be loved and shown how to become successful adults. Unfortunately, their lack of attention and restlessness often get in the way. Parents of these kids try so hard to stay connected and remain patient in the face of daily frustration. However, it is an incredible challenge to remain positive and involved when your child does not respond to the kinds of strategies that work for other children. Without guidance and systematic treatment, these bright, inquisitive children are unlikely to graduate from high school, are more prone to use illegal drugs, and struggle to maintain employment as adults.

This book gives parents a framework for building a successful parenting program at home. Drawing from his experiences in evaluating and treating thousands of children and teens with ADHD, Vincent Monastra presents a series of ten lessons that are essential for promoting the success of kids with ADHD. In simple language, Monastra explains the causes of ADHD and how nutrition, medication and certain therapeutic procedures can improve attention, concentration, and behavioral control. Recognizing the importance of school success, Monastra also reviews the educational rights of children with ADHD and outlines a process for working with school districts to get your child the help they need. Beyond this foundation, Monastra describes non-confrontational ways to teach your child essential life skills like organization, problem-solving, and emotional control. Through guiding principles like “Work for Play” and “Time Stands Still”, Monastra ends the struggle for control and helps children learn that in life you need to “earn your play” and apologize and “make amends” when you do something that hurts another person (or makes their life more difficult).

There is no substitute for experience, and this author shares his vast clinical and research experience and expertise in working exclusively with children and teens with ADHD. The book sets itself apart from the sometimes crowded field of ADHD literature by offering a novel nonmedication/lessons-oriented approach to the management and treatment of ADHD.

Softcover, 263 pages.

A great book for kids 6 to 12 years old.

Softcover, 119 pages.

Blake Taylor’s memoir, written when he was 17, offers, for the first time, a young person’s account of what it’s like to live and grow up with this common condition. Join Blake as he foils bullies, confronts unfair teachers, struggles with distraction and disorganization on exams, and goes sailing out-of-bounds and ends up with a boatload of spiders. It will be an inspiration and companion to the millions of others like him who must find a way to thrive with a different perspective than many of us.

Blake’s mother first suspected he had ADHD when he, at only three years of age, tried to push his infant sister in her carrier off the kitchen table. As time went by, Blake developed a reputation for being hyperactive and impulsive. He launched rockets (accidentally) into neighbor’s swimming pools and set off alarms in museums. Blake was diagnosed formally with ADHD when he was five years old. In this book, he tells about the next twelve years as he learns to live with both the good and bad sides of life with ADHD.

The book also features an introduction by psychologist Lara Honos-Webb, author of The Gift of ADHD, and a leading advocate for kids with ADHD.

Softcover, 176 pages.

From Amazon.com reviews:

This clear and valuable book dispels a variety of myths about attention deficit disorder (ADD). Since both authors have ADD themselves, and both are successful medical professionals, perhaps there’s no surprise that the two myths they attack most persistently are: (a) that ADD is an issue only for children; and (b) that ADD corresponds simply to limited intelligence or limited self-discipline. “The word disorder puts the syndrome entirely in the domain of pathology, where it should not entirely be. Although ADD can generate a host of problems, there are also advantages to having it, advantages that this book will stress, such as high energy, intuitiveness, creativity, and enthusiasm, and they are completely overlooked by the ‘disorder’ model.” The authors go on to cite Mozart and Einstein as examples of probable ADD sufferers. (The problem as they see it is not so much attention deficit but attention inconsistency: “Most of us with ADD can in fact hyperfocus at times.”) Although they warn against overdiagnosis, they also do a convincing job of answering the criticism that “everybody, and therefore nobody” has ADD. Using numerous case studies and a discussion of the way ADD intersects with other conditions (e.g., depression, substance abuse, and obsessive-compulsive disorder), they paint a concrete picture of the syndrome’s realities. Especially helpful are the lists of tips for dealing with ADD in a child, a partner, or a family member.

“[… W]hat I found in this book was plenty of information on recognizing ADD. The book starts off with case study after case study after endless case study, showing quite obvious ADD behavior. There is no solution or even attempt to curtail these activities in the case studies, it just shows the various examples. […] All in all, there is good information on the early stages: self-detection, getting tested, looking for patterns in children, introducing this to family and friends, but little in the way of actually finding solutions to work through the ADD in personal or business/school life.”

Softcover, 336 pages.