When people ask me what my focus is after 25+ years as a psychologist/neuropsychologist, my simplest response is “relationships”—even though I don’t see couples in my practice. Your relationship with yourself, and being committed to ongoing growth and “becoming,” is essential for all healthy relationships—not just with yourself, but with your partner, your kids, your boss, your friends. I wrote Rewire Your Brain For Love to weave together three of my passions, all of which are vital pathways for growth and well-being: the brain’s capacity to change, our innate drive to become the fullest version of ourselves, and the fundamental importance of meaningful connection.
I wrote...
Rewire Your Brain For Love: Creating Vibrant Relationships Using the Science of Mindfulness
It’s so easy to get tangled in the same old unhappy relationship patterns, tripped up by habits that get in our way whether we “know better” or not. In Rewire Your Brain for Love, neuropsychologist and psychotherapist Marsha Lucas helps you untangle those relationship snarls, bringing together the latest neuroscience with a practice consistently shown by world-class research to literally change the brain: mindfulness.
Dr. Lucas’s clear, highly readable, often laugh-out-loud style invites you to explore how your brain functions in relationships, and how you can rewire it. With compassion, wisdom, and humor, she takes you through seven key relationship benefits—everything from keeping your fear or anger from running the show, to cultivating healthy, balanced empathy—and offers specific mindfulness practices for each.
Your attachment style—how you “do” relationships—is most often a lifetime deal, because it gets in so early and deep, most powerfully in the first 18 months of life. It drives and influences how we interact with others and how we see ourselves in relationships, and it deeply influences the kinds of partners we attract and are attracted to (even when they end up being precisely what we don’t need).
Understanding your attachment style (and perhaps that of your significant other), including the strengths and the pitfalls, can make a world of difference.
Levine and Heller do a great job with examples and questionnaires, to help you learn about your attachment style, and how it affects your relationships. I often recommend it to patients, who come in after reading it with all kinds of “lightbulb” insights about themselves—and often their partners. It’s an accessible gateway to understanding and change.
“Over a decade after its publication, one book on dating has people firmly in its grip.” —The New York Times
We already rely on science to tell us what to eat, when to exercise, and how long to sleep. Why not use science to help us improve our relationships? In this revolutionary book, psychiatrist and neuroscientist Dr. Amir Levine and Rachel Heller scientifically explain why why some people seem to navigate relationships effortlessly, while others struggle.
Discover how an understanding of adult attachment—the most advanced relationship science in existence today—can help us find and sustain love. Pioneered by psychologist John…
We all pick up and develop a way of communicating that becomes second nature. We can’t really hear ourselves accurately, until (hopefully) someone complains. But when they complain, we can get a bit defensive, and/or clueless for what to do about it.
Even good, well-intentioned people can end up communicating with violence. That’s a strong word, yes, but it really just means that what we say (and how we say it) ends up hurting or harming another person, or a relationship. It’s not that you “can’t ever get it right” for them, or need to walk on eggshells. We’re just often unaware that we’re communicating in a way that’s dismissive, or blaming, or even just speaking without really listening.
Non-Violent Communication has been incredibly helpful to many of the very intelligent and thoughtful people I see who just. can’t. figure. out. why other people misunderstand them and get pissed off, or distant. “…[K]nowing how to ask for what we want, how to hear others even in disagreement, and how to move toward solutions that work for all” are bottom-line essential skills. This book nails it.
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What is Violent Communication?
If “violent” means acting in ways that result in hurt or harm, then much of how we communicate—judging others, bullying, having racial bias, blaming, finger pointing, discriminating, speaking without listening, criticizing others or ourselves, name-calling, reacting when angry, using political rhetoric, being defensive or judging who’s “good/bad” or what’s “right/wrong” with people—could indeed be called “violent communication.”
What is Nonviolent Communication?
Nonviolent Communication is the integration of four things:
• Consciousness: a set of principles that support living a life of compassion, collaboration, courage, and…
As a newbie psychologist, I was once in a workshop with much more advanced therapists. One of them (Jack, whom I revered) volunteered to do some personal work, and he laid down on the floor, literally supported by others—hands under his head, under his feet… I got assigned to support his elbow, because I was too chicken to volunteer early, ashamed of my inexperience, afraid of the potential vulnerability—his and mine.
Jack did some profound emotional work, and I was so moved that I (silently, embarrassedly) bawled. Like, a river of snot running down my face, red swollen eyes.... as soon as the exercise ended, I started to bolt from the room. Jack caught up, looked me in the eye, and said, “I hope you know how powerful you are at this moment.” His recognition of the power of my vulnerability, snot and all, together with his own vulnerability—opened my heart to myself, and helped transform me. It continues to, 30 years later.
'She's so good, Brene Brown, at finding the language to articulate collective feeling' Dolly Alderton
Every time we are faced with change, no matter how great or small, we also face risk. We feel uncertain and exposed. We feel vulnerable. Most of us try to fight those feelings - or feel guilt for feeling them in the first place.
In a powerful new vision Dr Brene Brown challenges everything we think we know about vulnerability, and dispels the widely accepted myth that it's a weakness. She argues that, in truth, vulnerability is…
EMDR stands for “Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing,” which as a trained neuropsychologist was a phrase that made me want to roll my eyes (pun intended)—until I tried it. Being a woman of science, I don’t like that we don’t have a definitive explanation about why EMDR works for resolving things like trauma and anxiety (synchronization of the brain's two hemispheres? similarity to the eye movements during REM sleep?). But it does work (confirmed by solid research), and Francine Shapiro is the pioneer. In Getting Past Your Past, she takes EMDR treatment strategies and translates them into self-help techniques, giving even more people access to the potential transformation of emotional pain.
Whether we've experienced small setbacks or major traumas, we are all influenced by our memories and by experiences we may not remember or fully understand. "Getting Past Your Past" offers practical techniques that demystify the human condition and empower readers looking to take charge of their lives. Shapiro, the creator of EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing), explains the brain science in layman's terms and provides simple exercises that readers can do at home to understand their automatic responses and achieve real change.
Yes, I know, we’re all saturated with how we’re all supposed to be meditating. And meditation can still conjure up images of blissed-out navel-gazers. But as a neuropsychologist, I see it as a highly refined form of attentional training—it trains your brain to run less on “autopilot” (where you keep perpetuating habits and thoughts that get in your way). It helps develop better neural pathways that integrate the different regions and functions of your brain so it works better. It slows down age-related loss of brain volume, and… well, there’s a lot more to be said about the brain benefits of it. No need to be a Buddhist to benefit.
This book, in my thinking, is where the use of mindfulness as a vital part of modern medicine all began, and Jon. He was a microbiologist at UMass Medical School, who just happened to wonder if the highly refined form of attentional training known as mindfulness meditation might help reduce the physical pain and suffering of medical patients. It did, and it does.
The landmark work on mindfulness, meditation, and healing, now revised and updated after twenty-five years
Stress. It can sap our energy, undermine our health if we let it, even shorten our lives. It makes us more vulnerable to anxiety and depression, disconnection and disease. Based on Jon Kabat-Zinn’s renowned mindfulness-based stress reduction program, this classic, groundbreaking work—which gave rise to a whole new field in medicine and psychology—shows you how to use medically proven mind-body approaches derived from meditation and yoga to counteract stress, establish greater balance of body and mind, and stimulate well-being and healing. By engaging in these…
Coming from the perspective of a neurosurgeon, I have witnessed many successes and failures over more than four decades. I recognized decades ago that communication with patients at a level that involves emotions is a necessary part of being a complete physician. This involves being empathetic and, henceforth, digging deep to find the strength to be transparent, vulnerable, compassionate, understanding, and, when needed, forceful (some would call this paternalism). Although the five books I have chosen to highlight vary widely in content, they have one common theme – finding within us the will and wherewithal to succeed.
My book is a collection of monthly Editor-in-Chief letters to the readership of World Neurosurgery, a journal that I edit. Each essay is short and sweet. The letters were written for neurosurgeons but have been re-edited so that they apply to all human beings. They cover topics such as leadership, empathy, vulnerability, stress, burnout, and on and on…. These essays are relevant for all who strive to craft a better version of themselves.
Life lessons learned by the author during his 40+ year neurosurgery career are shared and translated into real-life scenarios. Between the covers are many lessons that are derived from the experiences of the author and then applied to all humans. The mastering of these lessons should translate into a sense of pride and satisfaction. In keeping with the theme of the book, this process should culminate in the feeling at the end of the day that ‘Today was, indeed, a good day.’
Today Was A Good Day: A Collection of Essays From The Heart Of A Neurosurgeon
About the Book Today Was A Good Day: A Collection of Essays From The Heart Of A Neurosurgeon features many topics that pertain to how neurosurgeons interact with others and how each of us can use introspection to modify how we are using tools and strategies such as empathy, respect, stress management, and much more. This book provides some insights into leadership, effective communication, and fulfillment from the perspective of a neurosurgeon, and it causes the reader to think about and consider many, many attributes of a leader. We all want to have a good day. This book provides strategies…
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