Part of my professional expertise is I’m certified as a hypnotherapist and coach, so I regularly work with and help people, but treating Bipolar Disorder is outside of my professional purview. However, I wanted to read The Bipolar Workbook to continue to offer my clients the best and most helpful resources out there. I regularly have clients who come to me for their own issues, but once we delve into things, they reveal other, perhaps extended family members, who grapple with other issues which they know are outside of my expertise. But as a trusted advisor, they’re hoping I can point them in a helpful direction.
The Bipolar Workbook, indeed, is a most helpful and practical resource for people diagnosed as Bipolar II and their loved ones. The exercises are useful and approachable. While based in science and clinical arenas, they are not pedagogical or boring for layperson readers.
Secondarily, my late father suffered from both Alcoholism and Bipolar Disorder. What a Godsend it would have been to us as his family members to have had such a wonderfully practical resource workbook as is The Bipolar Disorder Workbook. I am delighted to say it is written by healthcare professionals actively treating and working with folks with Bipolar II and Cyclothymia. However, while they marvelous cite a wealth of research in the In REFERENCES and the RESOURCES section (well worth every health care worker to own a copy of this workbook as a great reference book), the whole workbook is written in prose very accessible to non-clinician “average” (I put that in quotations because folks with Bipolar II are not “average” average.) readers.
One of the ways this wonderful workbook and the authors’ approach stands out is they seek to help Bipolar IIs with BOTH the Highs and the Lows. Often BP2, it’s more obvious that there is a problem during the soul sucking depression. (Please, please, go to the ER and get immediate help in person. Your precious life is precious and you have people to whom you matter more than you know. Really.) That is often more PRESENTING as The Problem. Often the Mania is quite enjoyable to the BP2 but can leave a family financially devastated from the high risk taking done with its affects of debt or crashed stock markets. When I cite that in one sentence, unless you are personally or professionally familiar with the true havoc and devastation that can impact a family for years, you may not grasp the usefulness of clinicians actively helping in The Mania periods. They help readers to manage and kindah reasonably leverage the mania for bouts of creativity and productivity with boundaries and parameters that don’t leave people in financial straits as the seasons start to change. Nor does that leave the BP2 person feeling like all of their creativity has been completely dampened and muffled by some of the pharmaceutical-only approaches of only the distance past treatments.
Here it is the very start to December. This is often one of the season shift times into a Depression Cycle. If you or a loved one are in therapy for BP2 or considering it, this workbook offers a practical tool to use in conjunction with therapy and medications, weaving together a number of tools to live life better. And you truly can. There is no magic pill, but you can live a life transformed.
If you’re a healthcare worker or center, please do purchase this workbook to use in your Resource Centers and groups therapies as practical aids to healthcare workers and for the folks and families living with BP2.
The Publisher sent me a review copy for an honest review. I highly recommend this practical workbook.
Cheers and blessings,
April Braswell
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