Fighting To Sleep

Sleeping is like breathing and eating, we all need to do this, but what happens when out of the blue you suddenly discover you are awake all night and the little sleep you do manage is barely enough to get by on and nothing you do seems to help? You try everything you can think of, but the trouble is the less you sleep the more you are unable to function and think properly. Learning to cope with every day is an effort and you are trying to combat being perpetually tired and depressed. Then days turn into weeks and weeks into months and even medication doesn’t seem to work. Even though on the outside you look normal, you do not feel normal, EVER. What happens then? Are you able to live as usual? Should you accept this and just try and manage or do you fight? This is the story of one woman’s attempt to free herself of insomnia and get on with life because, as we know, we all need sleep.

Compos Mentis - Of Sound Mind

Have you ever suffered with your mental health?

Did you notice that all the CBT and self-help books, work in the longer term and want you to change your thinking?

And have you ever found that hard to do when you are feeling distressed in that moment?

Then this book is your answer!

Based on Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT) which is a skills-based therapy designed to help you in that moment of distress. I have compiled a variety of skills based on this and on techniques I have learned over the years to help you the way they helped me.

Complex Trauma Syndrome

Complex Trauma Syndrome covers over a decade of research and clinical experience of complex psychological trauma. This book provides a concept: a practical framework and therapy model in treating complex trauma syndrome. The heart of this book is made up of the practical steps of using the Dynamic Therapy Model of which the author is a founder. This is a patient-oriented, holotropic and phased-therapy model designed to integrate the shattered personality caused by diverse, long-lasting, and pervasive effects of the psychological trauma.

Dr Zepinic defines complex trauma syndrome as involving traumatic events that (1) are repetitive and prolonged; (2) have involved direct harm and/or direct threat to the trauma victim; (3) occur at a vulnerable time in the victim’s life; and (4) have a severe impact upon the victim’s entire life and personality, causing social and cognitive dysfunctions.

This book not only covers unique matters of clinical expertise in research and therapy of the complex trauma syndrome, but also provides a guideline in treating other complex mental health disorders. Multimodal and phase-oriented treatments of complex mental health disorders, as described in this book, are practical guidelines to those professionals who are dealing with mental health issues.

Brain's Got the Sh*ts Again

Has your brain ever had the sh*ts? Feeling down, feeling tired, the works?

Well so had mine, until a vastly uneventful Eurotrip that led me to intense joint pain, that led me to celiac disease diagnosis, that led me to initially eating cardboard-flavoured things, that led me to tastier options, that led me to the slimey miracle that is the human gut, and to the life-affirming railroad that is the gut-brain axis. Whether your brain is constipated or has full-blown diarrhoea (I promise this book is serious once you actually buy it), this dubious title promises to share fun-facts about gut-brain health, all through real and imagined short stories that will keep you interested. If you are having doubts about trusting a sass-mouthed writer with your gut-brain health, let me try to change your mind by saying all my facts are cited through respected academic research, I’m a Neuropsychology extern and a Neuroendocrinology gut-brain researcher and I’m currently pursuing a Psychology PhD (no one said I’d catch it though).

@daphnespyropoulos

Born into a World I Don't Belong In

For women and girls who have been misunderstood, miss-diagnosed and quite frankly missed altogether in getting an autism diagnosis – THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU.

For decades females on the spectrum went undetected causing a lifetime of struggles, anxiety, depression, missed opportunities and incorrect diagnoses. Women and girls tended to fly under the radar due to the fact that they learned from an early age how to mask, mimic and role-play in order to fit in with societal norms and expectations. Due to a lot of research in this field, there are now a lot more evidence-based theories to support the view that autism is just as prevalent in females as it is in males, but it just wasn’t picked up due to the gender difference in presentation. There still needs to be a lot more awareness and information available for women and girls who may feel different but don’t know why. Maybe they have been searching for answers in the wrong places. My mission is to help raise awareness of this condition. And who can do this better than a female on the spectrum that walks, talks and lives each day in those shoes?

Anxiety, It's Time to Go

Anxiety, It’s Time to Go is not just another self-help book. It is ‘the’ self-help book. It uses cutting-edge tried and tested methods that have been used time and time again to remove anxiety from people each and every day. Anxiety, It’s Time to Go will explain everything in simple terms and then show you exactly how to combat the things that hurt and control us when it comes to anxiety. The easy-to-follow exercise and instructions have been made straightforward without all the psychobabble that most people use. We say it as it is and then show you exactly how to remove it. This might just be the best thing you have done when it comes to beating crippling anxiety once and for all. 

Review:

I was given the book to read and I loved it. It was one of those books that I did not want to put down but equally did not want to finish, as I was enjoying it too much (like saving a new
dress ‘for best’). It was all so simple, it made sense and it worked!!! Now, I am not going to elaborate more, because I am now too busy living anxiety-free!
Too busy enjoying life.
Planning life.
Too happy to even think about the old me who wasted so much time feeling anxious, stressed, miserable, not wanting to be here.
So, read it for yourself.

Anxiety & Me

An open and honest account of my four-year battle suffering from mental health, anxiety and panic attacks with uplifting stories, tips and advice that has helped me with an added self-belief confidence boost added for good measure. If you are struggling or know of someone suffering from mental health, then this book will most certainly help and inspire you to deal with your mental health and come out a stronger person for it.

Accepting ME

What do you do when your life is turned upside down by an illness?

Learning to adapt and cope with illness is extremely difficult and can lead even the most confident person to becoming vulnerable.

Follow Lou through her fascinating true journey of how she learned to live with her illness and how she discovered a way to live again.

A New Drive-Relational-Neuroscience Synthesis for Psychoanalysis

This book critically examines the shift from instinctual drive theory to relational theory in psychoanalysis, based on the premise that drive formulations are incompatible with relational configurations. It demonstrates that the original shift was misguided, based on misinterpretations and misconceptions of Freudian theory, informed by a problematic dualist social constructionist and relativist philosophical stance which sees mind as somehow disconnected from biological processes, therefore requiring a different epistemological approach. It illustrates how recent attempts at synthesis, and attempts to combine psychoanalysis and neuroscience, have inherited these earlier problems, leaving them equally unable to withstand critical scrutiny. As a result, this book aims to make a positive contribution by presenting a new drive-relational-neuroscience synthesis that is both philosophically coherent and empirically compatible with recent developments in psychology and the neurosciences. Specifically, the new synthesis: (1) is based on a conceptually sound realist philosophy which posits mind as extended and embodied; (2) emerges from a re-examination of Freud's writings by demonstrating how instinctual drives and relational strivings constitute interlinked aspects of an overall motivational structure; (3) includes a much-needed clarification of the role of the central concepts of evolutionary theory and motivational conflict; (4) is strengthened and supported by appropriately interpreted current neuroscientific research; and (5) addresses implications for psychotherapeutic theory. In this way, the book is clearly located within the broader context of integrating psychoanalytic theory into mainstream developments in contemporary psychology, including neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, embodied/hot cognition, personality, and psychotherapy.

50 things we all take too seriously

Do you find yourself stressing out each and every day? Does it seem like it's one thing after another? Do you wish things could seem a bit easier and lighter?
Well, look no further! 50 things We All Take Too Seriously will take you on a journey of relief. As you read, you will begin to realise how we make things seem a lot more stressful than they actually are. To put it bluntly, we are all guilty of TAKING THINGS TOO SERIOUSLY! This book will allow you to change the way you perceive stressful situations to make them ‘not so stressful’ after all. If you are looking for a fun, light-hearted, yet thought-provoking read, then this is the book for you.