Building a Life Worth Living by Marsha M Linehan

Building a Life Worth Living by Marsha M Linehan

Marsha Linehan tells the story of her journey from suicidal teenager to world-renowned developer of the life-saving behavioral therapy DBT, using her own struggle to develop life skills for others.

"This book is a victory on both sides of the page."--Gloria Steinem

"Are you one of us?" a patient once asked Marsha Linehan, the world-renowned psychologist who developed Dialectical Behavior Therapy. "Because if you were, it would give all of us so much hope." 

Over the years, DBT had saved the lives of countless people fighting depression and suicidal thoughts, but Linehan had never revealed that her pioneering work was inspired by her own desperate struggles as a young woman. Only when she received this question did she finally decide to tell her story.

In this remarkable and inspiring memoir, Linehan describes how, when she was eighteen years old, she began an abrupt downward spiral from popular teenager to suicidal young woman. After several miserable years in a psychiatric institute, Linehan made a vow that if she could get out of emotional hell, she would try to find a way to help others get out of hell too, and to build a life worth living.  She went on to put herself through night school and college, living at a YWCA and often scraping together spare change to buy food. She went on to get her PhD in psychology, specializing in behavior therapy. In the 1980s, she achieved a breakthrough when she developed Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, a therapeutic approach that combines acceptance of the self and ways to change. Linehan included mindfulness as a key component in therapy treatment, along with original and specific life-skill techniques. She says, "You can't think yourself into new ways of acting; you can only act yourself into new ways of thinking."

Throughout her extraordinary scientific career, Marsha Linehan remained a woman of deep spirituality. Her powerful and moving story is one of faith and perseverance. Linehan shows, in Building a Life Worth Living, how the principles of DBT really work--and how, using her life skills and techniques, people can build lives worth living.

Linehan, PhD, ABPP, is the creator of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), as well as a professor of psychology and psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington and the director of the Behavioral Research and Treatment Clinics. Her primary research focus is on the creation and evaluation of evidence-based treatments for people who are at high risk of suicide and have a number of serious mental illnesses. Dr. Linehan's contributions to suicide research and clinical psychology research have been acknowledged with multiple accolades, including the American Psychological Foundation's Gold Medal Prize for Life Achievement in the Application of Psychology and the Society for Psychological Science's James McKeen Cattell Award. The Marsha Linehan Prize for Distinguished Research in the Management of Suicidal Behavior was established in her honor by the American Society of Suicidology. She is a Zen master who teaches mindfulness and contemplative practices to health care practitioners through workshops and retreats.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780812984996
ISBN 10	0812984994
Title	Building a Life Worth Living
Author	Marsha M Linehan
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	2021-01-05
Number of pages	384
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.