This week on Relationships 2.0 my guests are Rebecca Williams PhD and Julie Kraft MA, LMFT (part 2 of a 2 part interview) authors of The Gift of Recovery: 52 Mindful Ways to Live Joyfully Beyond Addiction

About the book:

If you’re recovering from addiction, The Gift of Recovery offers quick, in-the-moment tips and tricks to help you cope with daily stress and stay firmly on the path to wellness. With this gentle, easy-to-use guide, you’ll learn how to navigate relationships, take time for self-care, and build a mindful, sustainable, and joyful recovery.

Deciding to get help for addiction is the first step toward recovery. But addiction recovery doesn’t happen all at once—it’s something that must be worked for, every day. Sometimes, it will be easy. When things are going well, you may not be tempted to give in to your cravings. But when life is stressful, you’ll need strategies to help you cope.

Written by the authors of The Mindfulness Workbook for Addiction, this on-the-go mindfulness guide offers fifty-two powerful and effective meditations to help you manage the stress, depression, and strong emotions that can get in the way of a full and lasting recovery. You’ll also find skills based in cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) to help you stay grounded, as well as links to online resources.

Deciding to overcome an addiction can feel like leaving a relationship. It’s hard and sometimes lonely—but it is truly an act of courage. This book will help guide you as you continue making courageous steps toward peace, joy, and fulfillment.

About the authors:

Rebecca E. Williams, PhD, is an award-winning author, consultant, and clinical psychologist specializing in healthy recovery from mental illness and addiction. Her work focuses on building resilience and embracing well-being. She is associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, and program director at the Veterans Affairs San Diego Health Care System.

Julie S. Kraft, MA, LMFT, is a licensed marriage and family therapist. She has been working in the fields of addiction and mental health since 2008. Julie is an adjunct faculty member at the University of San Diego, where she teaches systemic treatment of substance abuse. Julie has a private practice in San Diego, CA, where she works to help her clients find all the gifts that they deserve.

Williams and Kraft are coauthors of The Mindfulness Workbook for Addiction, which won the San Diego Book Award. Their workbook has been translated into Korean.

This week on Relationships 2.0 my guests are Rebecca Williams PhD and Julie Kraft MA, LMFT authors of The Gift of Recovery: 52 Mindful Ways to Live Joyfully Beyond Addiction

About the book:

If you’re recovering from addiction, The Gift of Recovery offers quick, in-the-moment tips and tricks to help you cope with daily stress and stay firmly on the path to wellness. With this gentle, easy-to-use guide, you’ll learn how to navigate relationships, take time for self-care, and build a mindful, sustainable, and joyful recovery.

Deciding to get help for addiction is the first step toward recovery. But addiction recovery doesn’t happen all at once—it’s something that must be worked for, every day. Sometimes, it will be easy. When things are going well, you may not be tempted to give in to your cravings. But when life is stressful, you’ll need strategies to help you cope.

Written by the authors of The Mindfulness Workbook for Addiction, this on-the-go mindfulness guide offers fifty-two powerful and effective meditations to help you manage the stress, depression, and strong emotions that can get in the way of a full and lasting recovery. You’ll also find skills based in cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) to help you stay grounded, as well as links to online resources.

Deciding to overcome an addiction can feel like leaving a relationship. It’s hard and sometimes lonely—but it is truly an act of courage. This book will help guide you as you continue making courageous steps toward peace, joy, and fulfillment.

About the authors:

Rebecca E. Williams, PhD, is an award-winning author, consultant, and clinical psychologist specializing in healthy recovery from mental illness and addiction. Her work focuses on building resilience and embracing well-being. She is associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, and program director at the Veterans Affairs San Diego Health Care System.

Julie S. Kraft, MA, LMFT, is a licensed marriage and family therapist. She has been working in the fields of addiction and mental health since 2008. Julie is an adjunct faculty member at the University of San Diego, where she teaches systemic treatment of substance abuse. Julie has a private practice in San Diego, CA, where she works to help her clients find all the gifts that they deserve.

Williams and Kraft are coauthors of The Mindfulness Workbook for Addiction, which won the San Diego Book Award. Their workbook has been translated into Korean.

This week on Relationships 2.0 my guest is Andrea Lieberstein author of Well Nourished: Mindful Practices to Heal Your Relationship with Food, Feed Your Whole Self, and End Overeating

About the book:

Many people use food to nourish themselves when what they are really hungry for is other forms of nourishment. What if we were living a life where we felt well-nourished emotionally, intellectually, physically, psychologically, spiritually, socially, and creatively? What if we were mindfully present to receive, experience, plan for, and engage in nourishing activities, moments, and practices regularly that fed us on many levels. What if we were able to maintain an inner sense of balance and nourishment even when things are not perfectly in balance, and have the tools and practices to do so rather than turn to food at those times?

This book will show readers how to develop a mindful relationship to food and craft a well-nourished life with step-by-step examples, tools, and mindful practices that can be individualized to their unique needs.

About the author:

Andrea Lieberstein, MPH, RDN, RYT, is a registered dietitian nutritionist, mindful eating and mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) instructor, and coach. Andrea was a leader in developing and implementing mindfulness and mind-body programs at Kaiser Permanente Northern California for over 20 years and is a contributing author to the chapter on meditation in The Stress Reduction and Relaxation Training Workbook(5th edition), New Harbinger Press.

Andrea incorporates mindfulness-based eating awareness training (MB-EAT), MBSR, and other mindful eating and mindfulness-based mind-body practices in her private practice working with individuals on a wide range of nutritional challenges: nutrition for optimal well-being, disordered eating, overeating, weight management, body image, and stress-related issues and health concerns.

Andrea holds degrees from Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley.

This week on Relationships 2.0 my guest is Paul J. Christo, M.D. author of Aches and Gains: A Comprehensive Guide to Overcoming Your Pain

About the book:

Pain is often treatable but doctors, medical professionals, and patients don’t understand the intricacies of chronic pain. Millions who suffer from pain become hopeless. With Aches and Gains, Dr. Paul Christo, a Johns Hopkins physician and leading pain specialist sheds new light on what it means to live with and overcome chronic pain. Dr. Christo shares celebrity interviews, including Naomi Judd, Lisa Swayze, Montel Williams, Ally Hilfiger, and Clay Walker, from his Sirius XM radio show Aches and Gains®, and stories from patients who have found a way to overcome the pain that once controlled their lives. Offering traditional, integrative, and innovative methods of easing pain, the book is a life-changing tool for anyone associated with pain including pain sufferers themselves, doctors, nurses, medical professionals, and caregivers.

Features a foreword by renowned talk show host Montel Williams.

About the author:

Dr. Paul Christo is one of America’s leading pain experts and hosts Aches and Gains®, the first national radio talk show dedicated to overcoming pain, stress reduction, and healthy living. Listed as a Top Doctor and in the top 1% for Pain Management by U.S. News & World Report, Dr. Christo is widely consulted by the media for his expertise in pain diagnosis and treatment.

This week on Relationships 2.0 my guest is Karen Koenig, author of Outsmarting Overeating: Boost Your Life Skills, End Your Food Problems.

About the book:

The reason you turn to food when you’re stressed or distressed is that you don’t have better ways of managing life’s ups and downs. According to Karen R. Koenig, an expert on the psychology of eating, you can transform your eating habits—and your life—by developing effective life skills. When you have enhanced skills, you won’t need to turn to mindless eating to make it through the day and will get the best out of life rather than letting life get the best of you. With Koenig’s guidance, you’ll learn how to establish and maintain functional relationships, take care of yourself physically and emotionally, think rationally, and create a passionate, joyful, and meaningful life. When these behaviors take root and become automatic, food becomes what it is meant to be: nourishment and one of life’s many pleasures.

About the author:

I am a psychotherapist, national educator, international author, and an expert on the psychology of eating—the how and why, not the what, of it. For more than three decades, my mission has been to help people with eating and weight problems learn to eat “normally” and maintain a healthy, stable weight for life without dieting and deprivation. My therapy practice is in Sarasota, FL, where I do tele-coaching and Skype consultation worldwide. As a recovered chronic dieter and binge-eater, I meld my personal recovery wisdom with my professional knowledge and experience to resolve eating problems.

My books are Nice Girls Finish Fat, The Rules of “Normal” Eating, The Food and Feelings Workbook, and What Every Therapist Needs to Know About Treating Eating and Weight Issues.

My guest this week on Relationships 2.0 is Nick Turner MSW, author of Mindfulness-Based Sobriety: A Clinician’s Treatment Guide for Addiction Recovery Using Relapse Prevention Therapy, Acceptance & Commitment Therapy & Motivational Interviewing.

About the book:

Too often, clients with substance abuse and addiction problems achieve sobriety only to relapse shortly after. As a clinician in the addiction treatment field, you are undoubtedly familiar with this common scenario, and it can be a source of extreme frustration. To make matters worse, clients may see their relapse as evidence of personal failure and inadequacy, and as a result, they may resist more treatment. What if you could break this cycle and help clients maintain their progress?

Mindfulness-Based Sobriety presents a breakthrough, integrative approach to addiction recovery to help you treat clients recovering from substance abuse and addiction using mindfulness-based therapy, motivational interviewing, and relapse prevention therapy. Research has indicated that mindfulness-based therapy is highly effective in treating emotion dysregulation, stress, depression, and grief—all emotions that lie at the root of addiction. Motivational interviewing is helpful in treating addiction because it helps clients learn to change the behaviors that cause addiction. And finally, relapse prevention therapy teaches individuals with addiction to anticipate and cope with potential relapse. This book combines all three of these highly effective treatments.

This powerful manual was developed by Gateway Foundation clinicians in order to better fulfill the mission of reducing substance abuse and co-occurring mental health problems. The book provides two curricula: an outpatient treatment curriculum and a residential treatment curriculum. Both are user-friendly and can be implemented in an open group format, which means that you can say goodbye to the days of tailoring one-on-one treatment to fit a group setting.

The integrative approach outlined in this book will help your clients conquer substance abuse by identifying their own values, strengthening their motivation, and tackling other mental health problems that may lie at the root of their addiction. Furthermore, the book’s strong emphasis on relapse prevention means that you can help clients stay on the path to sobriety.

About the author:

Nick Turner, MSW, received his master of arts degree in social work from the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration. Turner is currently the clinical supervisor at Gateway Foundation in Chicago, IL, where he specializes in providing staff supervision and individual and group counseling for substance abuse and mental health needs. He is a licensed clinical social worker (Illinois), certified alcohol and drug counselor (Illinois IAODAPCA), and a member of the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science and the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers.

My guests on Relationships 2.0 this week are Rebecca Williams and Julie Kraft, authors of The Mindfulness Workbook for Addiction: A Guide to Coping with the Grief, Stress and Anger that Trigger Addictive Behaviors.

About the book:

Most addictive behavior is rooted in some type of loss, be it the death of a loved one, coming to terms with limitations set by chronic health problems, or the end of a relationship. By turning to drugs and alcohol, people who have suffered a loss can numb their grief. In the process, they postpone their healing and can drive themselves further into addiction.

The Mindfulness Workbook for Addiction offers readers an effective program for working through their addiction and grief with cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). Created by a psychologist who works for the Department of Veterans Affairs and a marriage and family therapist who works for Sharp Mesa Vista Hospital, this mindfulness training workbook is effective for treating the emotion dysregulation, stress, depression, and grief that lie at the heart of addiction. No matter the loss, the mindfulness skills in this workbook help readers process their grief, determine the function their addiction is serving, and replace the addiction with healthy coping behaviors.

About the authors:

Rebecca E. Williams, PhD, is a clinical psychologist specializing in recovery from mental illness and addictions. She received her master’s degree from Harvard University and her PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is currently the director of the Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System’s Wellness and Vocational Enrichment Clinic. In addition, she is an associate clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, an adjunct faculty member at the University of San Diego, and coauthor of Couple Therapy for Alcoholism. She has a psychotherapy practice in San Diego, CA.

Julie S. Kraft, LMFT, received her master’s degree in marriage and family therapy from the University of San Diego’s School of Leadership and Education Sciences. She has provided counseling to veterans and their family members at the Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System and has provided psychotherapy to individuals, couples, families, and groups in community settings. In her current position with Sharp HealthCare, she treats clients struggling with both addiction and mental health concerns. She lives and works in San Diego, CA.

This week my guest on Relationships 2.0 is Kelly C. Allison, PhD, author of Overcoming Night Eating Syndrome: A Step-by-Step Guide to Breaking the Cycle.

About the book:

The statistics are powerful and alarming: perhaps as many as 6 million Americans suffer from night eating syndrome, or NES, an eating disorder which describes behavior patterns in which an individual obsessively consumes more than half of his or her daily caloric intake after eight o’clock in the evening. More significant is the further finding that more than 33 percent of morbidly obese individuals, persons who are 100 or more pounds overweight, are affected by this disorder. Experts agree that NES shares characteristics of not only eating disorders but also sleep and mood disorders. Sufferers tend to exhibit symptoms such as feelings of anxiety and guilt, insomnia, or interrupted sleep. Typical NES behaviors include absent appetite during the day, a consistent pattern of eating more food after dinner than during the meal itself, and recurrent episodes of waking and eating throughout the night. This book offers a step-by-step strategy for managing and overcoming this disorder.