Treating Self Destructive Beha A Clinician's Guide

"Through her workshops, Lisa Ferentz has already become an important voice in the movement to depathologize self-destructive behaviors. I am thrilled that she has put her empowering message into book form because it will now reach the much larger audience that it deserves. The unfortunate state of the art is for therapists to pit clients against the parts of them that self-harm. Treating Self-Destructive Behaviors in Trauma Survivors is a much-needed antidote to that unproductive practice and provides clear guidelines for a new understanding of and effective approach to these dangerous behaviors, which typically scare therapists and contribute to their burnout." - Richard C. Schwartz, author of Internal Family Systems Therapy and developer of the IFS model "This is a wonderful book! Lisa Ferentz is a steady, regulated, and informed presence, and she offers concrete, creative, and constructive ways to support therapists. Her approach provides helping professionals with compassionate and effective ways to handle counter-transference responses and offers sound, inventive approaches to help clients discover alternative ways to self-soothe, self-regulate, and connect with other people. Her strength-based orientation empowers clients to use compassion to understand their behaviors, and, at the same time, to draw on their inherent strengths to generate new more constructive responses to the challenges of everyday living." - Nancy J. Napier, LMFT, author of Getting Through the Day: Help for Adults Hurt as Children and other books "Lisa Ferentz's book is a rare gift to clinicians. Her focus on how therapists can care for themselves while caring for their clients is a welcome antidote for the overworked trauma therapist. The CARESS model provides a handy sequence of steps that teaches clients to substitute new methods of affect regulation for their self-destructive habits. Reading this book is like sitting with a wise old friend over a cup of hot tea-restorative, enlightening, and honest." - Joyanna Silberg, PhD, author of The Child Survivor: Healing Developmental Trauma and Dissociation "In addressing the challenging issue of trauma-related self-harm, Lisa Ferentz manages to integrate trauma theory and neuroscience with the latest therapeutic approaches and a wonderful clinical common sense. This is by far and away the best book written on this complex and controversial topic." - Janina Fisher, PhD, author of Psychoeducational Aids for Working With Psychological Trauma