Helping People Connect
The first two videos below will introduce you to Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) and Sue Johnson, Founder & Creator of this extraordinary model.
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) is an experiential method based on research into human bonding. It’s more than a marriage counseling resource. It helps explain how things go wrong in our relationships and what it takes to put them right. Dr. Sue Johnson, the co-creator of EFT shares more in this video.
In this TED Talk, Brené Brown, Researcher/StoryTeller, expands our perception in ways that change the way we work, love and parent. If you think of life as messy and you want to ‘clean it up’ this message is for you. She starts with connection and delves into our ‘opportunities for growth’.
Brené Brown reveals shame as an unspoken epidemic in all of us and the secret behind broken behavior. She talks about her own vulnerability hangover and describes shame. Brown dispels the myth that vulnerability is weakness. In fact, it’s ‘the most accurate measurement of courage’.
Johann Hari shares cutting-edge information about why depression and anxiety are on the rise. He explains our deep human need to be seen, heard, and valued. He also talks about remedies beyond pharmaceuticals. The antidote for anxiety and depression is connection.
Our cultural propensity for judging and punishing addicts may not be the right solution after all. New evidence about bonding tells us almost everything we know about addiction is wrong. Happy and connected lives can make a huge difference for most people.
The books below can help you better understand how healthy relationships thrive and how you can create emotional connection with the people you care about most. Take your time and explore. These resources can truly help you build the strong relationships you so richly deserve.
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By Dr. Sue Johnson
Although the method was once controversial, EFT resources are now easy to find. That wasn’t always true! ‘Hold Me Tight’ is the first book Dr. Sue Johnson wrote for the general public and it puts forward the idea that loving intimate partnership is an essential human bond. Sue postulates that a loving connection requires safe emotional space. In the book, she uses conversations, exercises, and sound advice for you and your partner to enjoy together.
By Dr. Sue Johnson
If you’re looking for another couples therapy resource, take in some cutting-edge research with ‘Love Sense’. It’s all about how and why we love. This new understanding changes everything because when we move from bargaining and negotiating to human bonding, we create the basis for a secure, long-lasting relationship. Connection is like human super-glue. It bonds us.
By Veronica Kallos-Lilly & Jennifer Fitzgerald
When clients ask about ‘homework’, we recommend this workbook. It’s one of the best therapeutic resources for couples that we know of. We suggest you set aside one hour a week to do this workbook together and we offer clients additional tips on how to use it effectively. Everything in this workbook is in alignment with the EFT model we use with clients at Wellness.
By Amir Levine
Understanding adult attachment offers you a roadmap for building stronger more fulfilling relationships. We’ve discovered that having information about Attachment Theory provides a lot of insight and is a great couples counseling resource for everyone. Once you determine an attachment style: Anxious, Avoidant, or Secure, it helps explain why some people navigate relationships easily while others struggle.
By Arielle Ford
No matter what stage of your relationship, Arielle Ford suggests using the ancient Japanese idea of illuminating the beauty in imperfection (known as wabi sabi). Wabi Sabi Love shows you how to experience more balance, harmony, and joy in your relationship than ever before.
By Janis A. Spring, Ph.D.
Often, when a partner has been unfaithful and the other partner experiences devastation, the path from infidelity to recovery seems impossible. Hurt partners can experience a profound shattering of their sense of self and fall into a depression that might last for years. For the relationship, infidelity can be a death blow or the opportunity for a new beginning. This book helps guide both partners through three stages of healing: normalizing the crisis, deciding whether to recommit to their partner, and rebuilding trust and sexual intimacy.
By Linda J. MacDonald, M.S., LMFT
When an affair comes to light and it feels like a wrecking ball just hit, partners often “wake up” and want to save their marriage. They scramble to win back their partner and sometimes things do not go as planned. Important emotions and conversations can also go unspoken….unattended. This author identifies behaviors and attitudes that can help an unfaithful partner mend their marriage after an affair. This practical book can be a great place to start for those who want to better understand what happened, the impact their behaviors have had, how to make amends and start again.
By Vivek Murthy
Vivek Murthy, U.S. Surgeon General, makes the case for loneliness as an urgent public health issue AND universal human condition. It affects our health, how children perform in school and how we perform in the workplace. He shares the profound importance of community and connection.
By Mel Robbins
Mel Robbin’s ‘Let Them Theory’ is a great read and entirely compatible with EFT, the method we use at Wellness. If you feel frustrated, overwhelmed or stuck these two simple words (Let Them) are likely to slow you down just a little and help you see what’s going on. It will also help you stop trying to manage everything and everyone else. Try it on for size and see if it fits.
By Gary Zukav
Explore the new and emerging understanding of power; the alignment of your personality with your soul. This kind of power requires each of us to make the values of the soul our own – while creating meaning and purpose in our own lives. This will change the way you interact with people.
By bell hooks
bell hooks offers a proactive new vision of love. This intensely personal work declares that our society has failed to provide a model for learning to love. Using love as a verb rather than a noun, she explores what love is and provides us with a new path that is sacred, redemptive, and healing.
By Gary Zukav
Explore relationship as an everyday path to authentic power. Today most of us understand power as the ability to manipulate and control and we’re beginning to understand power as harmony, cooperation, sharing, and reverence for life. This changes the way we see the world and each other.
By Emily Nagoski
Groundbreaking science and research served up as an accessible informative guide. Stress, mood, trust, and body image are central factors in a woman’s sexual wellbeing and not to be overlooked.
By Emily Nagoski
Finally a practical workbook from the New York Times bestselling author of ‘Come As You Are’ that allows you to apply the book’s groundbreaking research and understanding of why and how women’s sexuality works.
By Emily Nagoski
Come Together, takes on a fundamentally misunderstood subject: sex in long-term relationships. (It isn’t about how much we want sex, or how often we’re having it; it’s about whether we like the sex we’re having.) The author breaks down the obstacles that impede us from enjoying sex and presents the best ways to overcome them.
By Gabrielle Stanley Blair
Gabrielle Blair is an American and mother of six children currently living in France where she and her husband Ben are renovating an historic home. In this book – a series of 28 brief arguments – she deftly makes the case for moving the abortion debate away from controlling and legislating women’s bodies and instead directs the focus on men’s accountability in preventing unwanted pregnancies.
By Bessel van der Kolk
Bessel van der Kolk explores trauma as a fact of life and exposes the tremendous power of our relationships to both hurt and heal. He offers hope for reclaiming our lives and relationships by explaining how trauma reshapes both our bodies and brains and what we can do about it.
By Resmaa Menakem
Trauma is deeply embedded in our bodies and is where we experience the fight, flee, or freeze response. Beautifully written, Resmaa Menakem examines the effects and generational anguish impacting Americans resulting from our deeply entrenched racialized divide. Menakem is an author and psychotherapist specializing in the effects of trauma on the human body.
By Bruce Perry & Oprah Winfrey
If you’ve ever judged yourself or others while thinking “What’s wrong with me?” or “What’s wrong with that person?” this book is essential. Oprah Winfrey and brain and trauma expert, Dr. Bruce Perry offer a profound shift from asking “What’s wrong with you?” to “What happened to you?”
By Foster Cline & Jim Fay
Simple wisdom on how to lovingly raise responsible children. This book includes solutions for lots of topics including tantrums, chores, grades, peer pressure, navigating a crisis, taming tempers and re-establishing a calm, healthy relationship with your child.
By Hunter Clarke-Fields
A kinder, more compassionate world starts with kind and compassionate kids. In Raising Good Humans, you’ll find powerful and practical strategies to break free from “reactive parenting” habits and raise kind, cooperative, and confident kids.
By Jeffrey Foote et al.
This book eschews the theatrics of interventions and tough love to show family and friends how they can use kindness, positive reinforcement, and motivational and behavioral strategies to help their loved ones overcome addiction problems and compulsive behaviors.
By Laura Delano
This work is Laura Delano’s compelling and powerful memoir about her struggle with a long list of psychiatric diagnoses and the dark side of the medications she took…starting at age 14. One rarely has the opportunity to witness the struggles she describes with such insight and self-awareness. A must read for anyone interested in doing their own research around mental health, modern pharmaceuticals and what it means to be human.
By Robert Whitaker
Anatomy of an Epidemic challenges readers to dive into the research and think for themselves. First, the author investigates what is known today about the biological causes of mental disorders. Do psychiatric medications fix “chemical imbalances” in the brain, or do they, in fact, create them? Researchers spent decades studying that question, and by the late 1980s, they had their answer. Readers will be startled—and dismayed—to discover what was reported in the scientific journals and what has been withheld from the public.
