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Rating: Summary: An eye-opener about recovery way beyond AA's 12-step Review: Addiction is a word that sends shivers through us! Whether the addiction is to alcohol, drugs, an eating disorder or obsessive/compulsive behavior, addiction takes its toll on our freedom, self-confidence, and self-reliance. Until recently, the best treatment has been the A.A. 12-step program. Psychotherapist Tina Tessina improved on that program with the publication of The Real 13th Step ten years ago. Now, her revised edition amplifies the latest research on addiction and helps people in recovery beyond what is not covered in the A.A. program. You see, while the Alcoholics Anonymous program has done a tremendous amount of good to help people free themselves from addiction, in doing so it teaches its membership that they are one drink away from total relapse. This can undermine one's self-esteem, inhibit outside activity and perhaps create an addiction to the program. The Real 13th Step shows us the means to growth beyond recovery "...that transcends any permanent dependency on the program to keep them free from addiction." Certainly Dr. Tessina holds the A.A. program in high esteem, but at the same time, shows the reader that there is life beyond the group and beyond recovery. And that life includes growth, accomplishment and achievement. Through the step-by-step, therapy-tested exercises and guidelines in her book, Dr. Tina Tessina opens the door to autonomy and lasting recovery from patterns of dependency. In this reviewer's opinion, The Real 13th Step is a must-read for an anyone in an addiction program---or anyone seeking assertiveness; lacking self-confidence; or fearful of confrontation!
Rating: Summary: Better Ways To Spend $14 Review: I read thru The Real 13th Step by Tina Tessina.Overall, my impression is treat this book like a buffet...take what you like and leave the rest. Also, I think this would have been a better pamplet than book. A commitment to a book made her feel she had to fill 250 pages, even though she really only had 50 pages of material. Her critique of the steps was a little off base. She posited strengths and weaknesses in each step. Tessina headlined each critique with "How Step __ Impedes Autonomy'. I thought that a bit misleading. It'd be more correct to say how misinterpreting this step could impede autonomy (and the examples she gives are great....like how people think they only have to decide to 'turn it over' in Step Three and take no more action after that). Chapter 3, From Dependency To Recovery was a very nice discussion on the process growing into recovery. But after that the book trails off into the pop-psych mush that almost is a parody of itself. Those 'Magical Tools' sound like they were written by comedy writers at Saturday Night Live (an aside: does SNL even employ comedy writers anymore...one can't tell from watching that exhausted show). She encourages 'talking to your inner child' as if we're still back in the early 1990s. Tessina sounds like a bad John Bradshaw retread. My take is that I have better things to blow $14 on. My recommendation: borrow it, don't buy it. Read till about page 110. Skip the rest.
Rating: Summary: Help To Reach Real Independence, Review by Bernie P. Nelson Review: If you desire real independence, help finding solutions to problems and managing failure- this is a must-read book. The author, a licensed marriage & family therapist with 25 years experience, provides evidence that some people are not born with addictive personalities and provides a model for moving beyond the dependency of a 12 step addiction program. Within these enlightening, uplifting pages are professional guidelines for anyone, struggling with addiction or not, wanting to find a true inner purpose, more self-confidence and self-reliance for rewarding, autonomous living.
Rating: Summary: Better Ways To Spend $14 Review: If you desire real independence, help finding solutions to problems and managing failure- this is a must-read book. The author, a licensed marriage & family therapist with 25 years experience, provides evidence that some people are not born with addictive personalities and provides a model for moving beyond the dependency of a 12 step addiction program. Within these enlightening, uplifting pages are professional guidelines for anyone, struggling with addiction or not, wanting to find a true inner purpose, more self-confidence and self-reliance for rewarding, autonomous living.
Rating: Summary: Not For Addicts Only Review: In spite of it's title, "The Real 13th Step" is on a path whose traffic is not restricted to the addicted, but to many others who, as a result of childhood experiences, have not grown, nor grown up, in a manner which offers the best chance at contentment, or ultimate happiness. Though substance abuse might be the ultimate response to abusive childhoods, the fact is that many of the abused are not addicted to substances at all, but, rather, to behaviors which might, almost as effectively, cut them off from loving relationships, or from success in other life "tasks". Dr. Tessina cites many examples of this type of behavior. Explaining, as an instance, that "children begin their first autonomous adventures into the world while. . .they are particularly vulnerable to the negative, critical, or fearful parental reactions." At this stage, the child has no capacity to think critically, to examine the reaction and, possibly, to see it as wrong. The result? Toxic shame: the child is unable to distinguish between "doing something wrong (making a mistake) and being something wrong (a bad child). . . Contempt for your own existence is, perhaps, the single most destructive feeling you can have about yourself, because it makes you feel unworthy to cope. . . and completely dependent on the effects and opinions of others." Besides explaining, there is doing: a series of self-tests and exercises takes the reader through the process of re-imagining and re-constructing this childhood self. There is a great deal of information in this work. For anyone who has grown up within a dysfunctional family, it is exceedingly valuable. And not for the substance-addicted alone.
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