Well, I may not be writing much lately, but I certainly have been reading. The latest on my recovery reading list was You Are Not Your Brain by Jeffrey Schwartz and Rebecca Gladding, a decent self-help book with the sadly unrealized potential to be superb.

Have you ever had the perfect picture of something in your mind? Maybe it's a job. Or a spouse. Or a home. Or a pair of pants. Or this thing that will keep your nose warm in the winter. And you spend a long time looking for it. Maybe you even consider, idly, learning a new trade, like knitting or robotics, just so you can create it. At last. The perfect robot spouse handing me a custom knitted nose cozy!

Then maybe, having created this perfect picture, you've even seen something that had the potential to be IT. That perfect thing you've been looking for. And then you find yourself disappointed because it doesn't live up to its potential. Because it turns out your perfect nose cozy almost sort of keeps your nose warm, but isn't really well organized enough to do its job. This book is that nose cozy.

As I started reading, I had high hopes. The first chapter, in a form that I believe is legally mandated for all self-help books, cheerfully chirped that the solution to my problems would be easy and that this book could tell me how to do it. Really. It will. It's coming. Keep reading. No. Not here in the store. We've put all these words in so that you can't just skip to that easy answer and read it without paying for the book. Whew. Got you to buy it.*

Ok, now we can tell you the truth. Which is that you're actually going to have to work at this quite a lot. Oh, but we will tell you how. Eventually. Well, sort of. You'll be about 150 pages in before you ever get to the meat of our method and even then, it will all be so poorly organized and muddled that you'll have a hard time wading through the morass of words to tease out the important bits. But it's in there!

Yes, I was quite excited by the idea of this book and so almost equally disappointed that poor organization got in the way of its excellent message. What I enjoyed most was that this was a book that avoided the kinds of labels that keep many spouses of addicts (and addicts themselves) from getting help with their pain. I've seen so many people stew in the pain of intrusive thoughts of an addict's acting out. Or get so angry they destroy property or hurt others or themselves. Or rage at their spouse in front of the kids. Or overeat or drink alcohol or overspend to deal with the stress. And not get help. Because they don't consider themselves alcoholics or overeaters or codependent and they don't have PTSD and they're not depressed and they really, really don't need a God that doesn't exist, so forget 12 Step thankyouverymuch. They're just hurt and frustrated by all this stuff other people keep doing.

Well, here it is. Here's a book that gives you all the great tools we learn in 12 Step. Tools like mindfulness and acceptance and taking care of yourself and not shoulding all over. Here's a book that can make a great supplement and accompaniment to 12 Step or a great introduction to some of the tools we learn in program. And it does it all with a basis in nice, safe brain science with no one forcing that pesky God thing on you. Here is a book that admits there are no quick fixes but lays out the practical steps and hard work it takes to work on healing.

Or rather here it could be.

Because while You Are Not Your Brain contains a lot of fantastic and helpful information, it is bogged down in organizational problems. Terms that are used repeatedly from the earliest pages of the book sometimes aren't fully defined until 200 pages later. Most of the first 140 pages are spent telling us (out of order) what we're going to read later in the book. I found myself wishing I had a dollar for every time the authors wrote things like "you will learn more in chapters 3 and 4" or "we will teach you more in Part II, but for now..." or "we will discuss this in chapter 11." Or better yet, wishing I had access to the text and could edit the book myself. (Note to the authors and editors: In a properly organized book, the information should build in a logical way. I'll be happy to help you with your next book.)

And while the authors tried to use simple language, they ended up creating a whole new set of jargon like "Self-Referencing Center" and "Refocus with Progressive Mindfulness." My almost-favorite was what they called the "Uh Oh Center" of the brain, because it was simple and descriptive, but after they mentioned that a colleague referred to it as the "Oh Shit Center" instead, "Uh Oh Center" seemed a pale second best.

Still, while You Are Not Your Brain may not be the perfect recovery book for which I've been longing; it's a good enough book. Even with its flaws, the excellent information, exercises and practical advice it presents make it worth a read and even a second read. Just go heavy on the skimming the first time around.

Leave a comment on this post between now and Sunday, June 26, 2011 for a chance to win a free copy. The winner will be announced on Monday, June 27, 2011.

It's nearly impossible to be the friend or family member of an addict and not have heard Melody Beattie's name. Her books on codependency are widely read and recommended. My own 12 Step home group regularly uses Codependent No More, Codependents' Guide to the Twelve Steps and The Language of Letting Go as part of our meetings and Step work.

Beattie's latest book, Codependent No More Workbook, is something of a companion piece to Codependent No More, intended to move the description and understanding of codependency into the action of recovery. In the first chapter, Beattie compares the work of recovery to mountain climbing, and these are no idle words. Many of the activities in the Workbook are intense and demanding and require a firm commitment to doing the hard work of recovery.

Still, while the overall quality of the activities didn't disappoint me, I was surprised by how few there were. Beattie seemed to have chosen to focus on a few intense activities interspersed with what sometimes seemed like an unnecessary amount of expository text, especially given that each chapter starts with a suggestion for readings from Codependent No More. In particular, the first chapter contains quite a bit of background information on codependency, which seemed unlikely to either convince any skeptics or enhance recovery work. Despite these flaws, the activities and text are helpful and inspirational enough overall that I consider the Workbook a useful addition to my recovery library.

The Workbook is based strongly on the 12 Step model, so in working through the exercises, you will be working the Steps. As such, it will not be a method that everyone is comfortable with or that will work for everyone.

I believe this book will work best for people who:

• are already part of a 12 Step fellowship.
• already accept both the concept of codependency generally as well as their own codependency OR feel they will benefit from working a program like this and can do so without feeling threatened by the label.
• conceive of their Higher Power as a male deity with the power to directly intervene in their lives OR are comfortable enough with their own different conception of a Higher Power to be able to take what they can use and leave the rest.
• are ready to make a commitment to devote the time and energy necessary to work through the activities in the book over the course of many months.

The Workbook also pays special attention to "double winners," people who struggle with both addiction (particularly to drugs and alcohol) and codependency.

This book may not work well for people who:

• are not part of a 12 Step program, particularly those who have negative or hostile feelings about 12 Step.
• do not accept codependency, especially if they feel negative toward or threatened by the concept, either in general or for themselves.
• have negative, hostile or unresolved feelings about an all powerful male deity.
• aren't ready to commit to the necessary work.

Having read the book through over the course of the past few weeks, I've come away with a renewed commitment and inspiration to continue my own daily work on the 12 Steps, and I'm eager to try some of the more involved activities in the book.

And good news! I have an extra copy of the book to give away, so you can get an opportunity to work through it too.

Leave a comment on this post between now and Sunday, May 8, 2011 for a chance to win a free copy. The winner will be announced on Monday, May 9, 2011.

A quick post to let you all know that next week (Monday, May 2) I'll be posting a review of Melody Beattie's latest book Codependent No More Workbook, and I will have one free copy of the book to give away to some lucky reader, so be sure to stop by.

Hand Wash Cold

Slip transported me
to a time when my son was
newly diagnosed.

Karen and Tanya,
thank you for sharing yourselves,
for sharing your truths.

I wavered a little over whether it was more morally wrong to skim the book in the store without buying it (is that the literary equivalent of downloading music without paying?) or to actually buy the book, in essence rewarding the author for his cheesy charlatanism (however entertaining).  After a quick look at the first chapter, I decided it would definitely be more wrong to buy the book.

Like many books of the self-help genre, the first few chapters contain don't actually contain any helpful information, but are instead dedicated to telling you (aaaatttt gggrrreeeaaattt lllleeennngggttthhhh) how much helpful information you will find later in this book if you just keep reading.

This is to discourage people like me from doing what I was doing.  Most people just break down buy the book after skimming the introductory marketing material.  Only the persistent skimmer will stick through those self-promotional first few chapters about how Al-Anon is wrong and you are not powerless and you totally can change people if only you follow the four easy steps laid out in this book, which, trust me, are coming, right after a few more of these chapters about how this book is right on the money.  (And speaking of money...  But I bravely pressed on, both because I was eager to see where I had gone wrong on the whole fixing-my-husband's-sex-addiction thing and because knew this was totally blog fodder.

It turns out that the right thing to do is to gather together people who love the addict and stage an intervention.  You are all, unlike what those suckers in 12 Step tell you, to use lots of "I" language to communicate your message.  (Oh, "I" language is a fundamental part of 12 Step? Well, ok, moving on...) The message you are supposed to communicate is that you really love and are concerned about the addict, so much so that you want this person to enter recovery, which includes 12 Step meetings (in spite of the fact that powerlessness is for suckers).

At this point, by the way, your loved one is supposed say yes, you're supposed to set some very non-12 Step boundaries (damn, that's 12 Step too?), your loved one is supposed to enter rehab and — with continued loving detachment (oh, wait, loving detachment is a 12 Step concept too?) — is fixed forever.  Ta da!  You've effected change!  See how awesome you are!

Of course, there's this little, tiny section, buried somewhere deep in the book about what to do in the (really, very highly unlikely event) that the addict refuses to admit to having a problem and says "no" to recovery or storms out or tells you you're crazy.  (But really, don't worry too much about that, because addicts almost never do that kind of thing.  That's why this section is one 200th of the entire book.  The chances are that small.  But you know, just in case.)  The answer?  Keep trying.  Eventually, one day, if you keep at it, your addict will enter recovery.  Because you are powerful, and you can change people.  Don't give up!  If it's not working, you're probably just not doing it right and should study the book harder.

It's as simple as that.

Or is it? It's probably not entirely fair for me to mock this book for repackaging powerlessness as powerfulness and selling it. After all, it does trick people into reading about some concepts that they might not otherwise be willing to explore. Maybe it's the codependent version of putting a free beer sign on the door of an AA meeting. It's false advertising, but it still gets them through the door.

Spiritual inspiration can come from the oddest bits of serendipity.  I was at a talk a few months ago by a Zen Buddhist who talked about making each moment sacred, about how we could light incense before doing the dishes and make the washing of each dish a meditation and a part of our practice.  That's a nice goal.  I like that image.  Instead, every day I engage in the totally unspiritual practice of washing dishes while playing yesterday's episode of the Colbert Report on my laptop: sometimes watching, sometimes listening, sometimes popping over to my e-mail.  And it turns out, that led me, well, maybe to the same place anyway.

A few months ago, Colbert's guest was AJ Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible.  The premise of the book sounded like a take on the humorous e-mail that circulates periodically mocking Biblical literalists for calling homosexuality an abomination while ignoring passages that condone things like slavery and animal sacrifice.  It sounded interesting, but because my hands were wet and covered with dish soap, I didn't jump right over to Amazon to buy it.  And then, I'll admit, I forgot about it.  Until a few weeks later, when my husband and I were out on a date night and decided to use our last few minutes of babysitter coverage to browse in a bookstore, where I noticed the book and decided to buy it after page one made me laugh out loud.

I loved it. It was much more than a take on a joke e-mail. It was spiritual and funny, reverent and irreverent.  It reminded me in many ways of my own spiritual journey.  (And what's not to love there?)  It even (unknowingly) contained some commentary on what recovering sex addicts face in our culture (but more on that tomorrow).  The bit that inspired me was the author's relationship to the Sabbath.  At first, leaving work aside for a day and resting is an anxiety producing chore for Jacobs, who can't make it through the first evening without checking his e-mail.  But it gradually becomes his favorite day, the one around which the rest of the week revolves.

I thought about my own tendency toward constant work: how hard I push myself, how difficult it is for me to make time for rest and how overwhelmed with guilt and fear I become whenever I am not being "productive."  I thought about how freeing it had been when my computer was in for repairs recently, and I couldn't do some of my work.  And I thought the idea of a Sabbath, a day of rest devoted to spirituality, might be good for me.

I don't formally belong to any organized religion, so I can choose any day for my Sabbath and honor it in any way that works for me.  So I've been thinking about what it would look like to spend one day a week dedicated to my spiritual life and wondering how I can make it happen.  I don't have it all figured out yet, and I don't need to, but what I do know is that I've decided I'd like to make it part of my spiritual journey to find out.  And I suspect that will mean that, at least one day a week, I will turn off the Colbert Report and light some incense when I do the dishes.

1. It was a free book.
2. The title had both Momma and Zen in it, which sounded good.
3. I liked Shawn and Shawn liked the book.
4. Did I mention it was free? I could win it! Yay, free books!

So, I threw my name in and... I won!

I was immediately sorry I had. What was I going to do now? For the most part, I guard my anonymity jealously -- even more so then than now -- but the book had to be sent somewhere.  And I wasn't about to just throw my real name and address out there to a total stranger. Sure, she said she was a mother and Zen priest, which all sounds very peaceful and safe, but how did I know she wasn't a serial killer? See, you get burned by the person you trust most in life -- you find out one day your husband has been living a double life -- and you fear to trust anyone.  I was playing then the same "what if" game I still play today, but it hadn't yet become a useful tool for me; it kept me mired at the point where fear and suspicion turn to paranoia and paralysis, rather than gently guiding me to appropriate leaps of faith.

Yet I still did want a free book. (If a serial killer were going to lure me, it would be with free books.) So, I sent Shawn the name and address of a friend of mine who knows about my blog and had agreed to forward the book on to me. Then I crossed my fingers and hoped Karen wasn't the second coming of the Unibomber, and that I wouldn't spend the rest of my days kicking myself when my friend died because the explosive device meant for me was delivered to her home. As a result of my (ahem) "extreme caution," I have a very nice note from Karen and a lovely autographed copy of Momma Zen, both with my friend's name inscribed on them.

But the story doesn't end there.  After I received the book, it sat on my shelf for a year and a half, because I was afraid to read it. As a writer, I know that each book is a piece of someone's soul.  But as a reader, I've always been a harsh critic: viewing them with the detached eye of a connoisseur and focusing on what's lacking rather than what's there.  By the time I received Momma Zen I'd started reading Karen's blog and she was reading mine.  So, here I was, holding a piece of the soul of this person I was just getting to know, and knowing that I might hate it.  What was I going to say: "Thanks for graciously sending me the work of your heart. I regret to inform you that I find your heart sucky."?

But for a number of reasons, I finally decided to pick up the book this weekend.  I read just two chapters before I put it down and walked away.  Then I went straight to my computer and ordered a copy for a pregnant friend.  Sometimes leaps of faith pay off, and sometimes dragging yourself through a year and a half of dread just to find the edge of the cliff does.

The majority of the book covers Walls' life from the age of three through the time she left home, at the age of seventeen. Then it's as if, once her parents aren't part of the daily workings of her world anymore and the drama of living with an active and spectacularly dysfunctional addict is gone, she has nothing left to say of herself but "I'm fine now. Nothing to see here. I have a degree and a job and a nice house and a 'normal' life. I'm going to go live happily ever after. The end." And that focus on the addict as the source of all that is interesting and worth telling reminded me of my own story as much as any of the details in the book did.

I remember when I first started going to 12 Step meetings and reaching out to other people who were affected by someone else's sexual addiction. I was so frustrated that the shares were supposed to focus on us, on the partners. The stories I wanted to hear were about what the addicts had done. "Here's how my addict hurt me," I wanted to say, "How did your addict hurt you?" After all, they were the ones out contracting diseases and getting arrested and blowing all of our money; we were just trailing along in the wake of their storm. I had to slowly build the story of my own storm, long unnoticed by me because I was riding in the eye of it. And as I began to heal from the damage done, I started to see that the story of rebuilding and repair needed to be told as much (or more than) the story of how things were ripped apart in the first place.

The Glass Castle tells the story of how mental and emotional scars are formed, but from where I sit now, it leaves out the most interesting part: the work of self-discovery and healing.

While the marketing material (always a reliable source of information) implied that this book was different, what really led me to not judge a book by its title and give it a go was the fact that I had heard of the author, Shannon Ethridge, through the Every Woman's Battle series, which some other women in my S-Anon group found helpful.

The Sexually Confident Wife has the broad purpose of helping women (regardless of their issues) gain (or regain) sexual confidence within their marriage. Because the scope is broad, I believe this book will be more helpful to some than others, particularly women who come from more repressive backgrounds or women who have had issues with their own sexual acting out. However, I am coming at this review solely from the perspective of whether or not the book was helpful me, as a generally sex loving, body confident woman who is in a continuous process of healing in my marriage to a recovering sex addict.

The book starts with a variety of questions designed to help pinpoint the areas that may have caused women to lose their sexual confidence. Not surprisingly, my areas of concern centered around trusting my husband, believing that I was entirely safe with him and carrying memories of past hurt into the bedroom with me. Unfortunately, the book didn't deal a lot with these specific issues. Shannon Ethridge infuses the book with much of her own personal experience, which is in many ways the opposite of mine: she was the one acting out in her marriage, so it took some mental gymnastics to make some of her experiences apply to me.

In addition, she addresses the stereotypical imbalance in the bedroom quite a bit: men want lots of sex, women don't. She gives a number of suggestions on how women can deal with this imbalance of desire. However, the problem for me, and for partners of sexual anorexics is quite the opposite. The women will often have a stronger desire than the men and will experience hurt and rejection that that their advances are not accepted. The book doesn't deal with this reverse scenario much at all. What do we women do to maintain our confidence when our husband's are withdrawing due to their own issues and traumas?

Some of the best chapters in the book focus on getting to the root of our sexual insecurities by healing the scars of childhood sexual abuse, looking at the messages we received about sex in childhood, improving our body images and cutting painful ties to the past. The most interesting to me was Chapter 5, "Cutting Soul Ties That Bind," which contains an exercise on looking for the common thread between your favorite movies, books and songs and seeing how that reflects upon the (potentially hurtful) ways you view relationships and the ghosts you carry into your sexual present.

If you all care to psychoanalyze me: my favorite movie is It's a Wonderful Life, my favorite books include Wuthering Heights, A Tale of Two Cities and Peter Pan, and my favorite songs... Well, you've probably got the idea already, but to take a line from one of my favorites by James Taylor, "they were true love, written in stone..." If it's got true love in it, especially with an edge of tragedy or bittersweetness or loss or sacrifice, I'm all over it. And I'm still chewing on that knowledge, which has been quite enjoyable (ok, yes, I enjoy those kinds of things) and helpful.

What I found most disappointing was that, while the book tried to go about things differently (for example, showing drawings of real, imperfect, women's bodies) and did discuss boundaries, there was still plenty of material that tended toward the Cosmo pop culture perspective that I feared: that pleasing men (through anything from shaving and vaginal deodorants to pole dancing) is something that creates sexual confidence. What I found most problematic from the perspective of sexual codependency was the emphasis on the woman's power to keep the man faithful. For example, from Chapter 10 (Tantalizing Sexual Techniques):

"while it is never a wife's fault that her husband turns to pornography rather than to her for sexual gratification, we do possess the power to lessen his desire for it."

And from Chapter 17 (Whipped Cream and a Cherry), which talks about a woman who created a personal Playboy magazine for her husband while he was away in the military:

"When a man knows he has a woman like that at home, why would he wast his time looking at or even thinking about any other woman? A well-fed man doesn't feel the need to go looking elsewhere for scraps. he knows where his satisfaction can be found -- in you!"

This is the very lesson that has to be unlearned by those of us who are married to sex addicts (and have, in many cases, including mine, tried a variety of sexually uninhibited and adventurous techniques in a misguided attempt to control our husbands' addictions and get his interest to stay on us). We sexual codependents have had to learn that no matter what we do -- no matter what techniques we use or how exhibitionist we become or how comfortable we are with our bodies or how much we show our husbands love and respect or how sexually confident we become -- our husbands will continue to act out until they love and are confident in themselves. Maybe The Sexually Confident Husband is next?

Just one last quick funny story about the book. In Chapter 7 (Befriending the Body Image Bear), Shannon Ethridge discusses how men have "their own body image hang-ups," among other things that "they fear they are too short and too pale." My husband, whose skin is a beautiful dark chocolate color, giggled when I read that part to him!

* In the interest of full disclosure, I was not paid for this review, but did receive a free copy of the book. And that's no small incentive to someone like me. I'd be happy to stand on a street corner with a sign that reads, "Will work for books." (Back to top)