Bring Yourself to Love: How Couples Can Turn Disconnection Into Intimacy

by Mona Barbera

Book Overview

An expert in the Internal Family Systems model of couples counseling, Barbera offers wonderfully vivid examples and true stories of couples that have struggled with and worked through their... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1934787035
• ISBN13: 9781934787038
• Release Date: June 2008
• Publisher: DOS Monos Press
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

The Opposite of Your Typical Relationship Book

Great book. It has led to some great discussions with my spouse. Also, a great and practical introduction to some of the paradigm shifts in Internal Family System, if you’re heard about IFS, but don’t know where it fits in.

bringing hope

As a therapist, I have found this book so useful, both as it informs my own work, and also for the couples I see. It has helped them transform some of the really difficult dynamics that many couples believe are impossible to change. They, and I, both thank you for this book!

Help any relationship

Bring Yourself to Love: How Couple Can Turn Disconnection Into Intimacy by Mona Barbera, PH.D, is really a self-help workbook for anyone in a conflicted relationship, whether it be with spouse or other family members or friends whom you love. The author is an expert counsellor who uses the Internal Family Systems model for counseling couples. This book gives the necessary work sheet questions and ideas for anyone to explore how their relationship is undermined and how the individual can make changes in himself or herself to improve that relationship by changing responses to the partner's negative behaviour or negative comments. The book is straight-forward and easy to understand and it contains a wealth of knowledge from the experience of the author's counseling with hundreds of couples to help them rebuild their relationships. The price of the book and the hours to work through it will save you thousands of dollars in counseling and will augment any counseling experience. Save and rebuild your relationships for joy and mutual love by ordering this book today

Give Better Back

The author's honest, direct sharing of the revolution in her own marriage sets the stage for this self-help manual for couples who want more intimacy in their own relationships. The book uses the Internal Family Systems model of therapy, in which partners look into themselves to connect with their internal protectors, the "managers" who try to keep feelings under control and "firefighters" who jump in fighting when the situation feels out of hand. Rather than trying to shut out these internal parts, a person attends to them, seeking to understand their origins and to accept the feelings behind these coping mechanisms. This dialog opens the door to Self qualities of being curious, calm, compassionate, confident, courageous, clear, connected, and creative. A key concept in the book is that when a partner responds with verbal attack, distancing, or any other hurtful behavior, returning the attack only escalates the conflict. Successful couples who can keep their choice of partner alive and active through time learn to "Give Better Back" when their beloved is in distress. Barbara Stone, PhD, author of Invisible Roots: How Healing Past Life Trauma Can Liberate Your Present and Cancer as Initiation: Surviving the Fire (Dreamcatcher)

A must for any couples who want to rebuild what time has destroyed

The flames of passion will die without fuel. "Bring Yourself to Love: How Couples Can Turn Disconnection Into Intimacy" is a guide to restoring what was once there in a long standing relationship. Hoping to inspire passion into relationships through creativity, kinship, and most importantly intimacy. Acting as a workbook to help readers do what they need to do to fix themselves so they can fix their partner and their relationship, "Bring Yourself to Love" is a must for any couples who want to rebuild what time has destroyed.

Helpful and user-friendly

I think this is a wonderful book. It gives a very nice review of Internal Family Systems therapy as developed by Richard Schwartz. It is very user friendly and gives a number of practical guidelines in using this therapy in regard to relationships. The heart of this work is to "Give better back." The charts will guide you to develop a compassionate, Self-led response to your particular situation. Like many things that are simple, it is a commitment to do very important work. Also, only one person needs to do t work to get results, although it helps if both can do it. I hope the author will expland her ideas in another book by providing more examples and case histories of ther ideas.