Description
Book SynopsisEvery therapist feels stuck at some point. Dr. Peebles offers ways of working with patients that clear openings for growth inside those stuck-places.
When Psychotherapy Feels Stuck integrates wisdom from multiple theoretical schools. It balances explicit, systematized frameworks for thinking with sensory-based metaphors. Chapters interweave empirical research with clinical vignettes to describe the power of language choices, tolerating not-knowing, risking relationship, and creating meaning.
Therapists from all theoretical backgrounds and experience levels will find something unexpected here that sparks hope and a fresh take when feeling stuck.
Trade Review"With admirable courage to address difficulties that therapists experience routinely but rarely talk about, Dr. Mary Jo Peebles has given a great gift to the mental health profession. Peebles is thoughtful, thought-provoking, and consistently clear about ways we can elevate treatment to higher levels of effectiveness. Her language is careful and even poetic at times making her clinical insights and case examples especially powerful. Take the time to read this important book!"
Michael D. Yapko, PhD, clinical psychologist and author of Depression is Contagious and The Discriminating Therapist
"Peebles has thrown a lifeline to all of us in the swamps of clinical impasse. Radically integrative, When Psychotherapy Feels Stuck embodies the author’s respect for different theoretical orientations, appreciation of neuroscientific discoveries, mastery of psychological assessment, and extensive knowledge of both clinical and research literatures. Her fluid, accessible writing is rich with clinical anecdotes, arresting metaphors, and the practical advice that comes only from decades of experience. I learned a lot and recommend this book to therapists of all backgrounds, levels of experience, clinical settings, and theoretical orientations."
Nancy McWilliams, PhD, ABPP; Rutgers Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology
"In this engaging new book, Mary Jo Peebles takes the reader on a journey to the heart of stuckness. She uses neuroscientific findings, psychoanalytic insight, and her own subjective experience to illuminate how we all get stuck and how we might find a way out. Her prose is poetic and jargon free, and the result is a deeply moving and intellectually creative overview of what psychotherapy is all about. I found her insights extremely useful in my work and you will too. I highly recommend it to both therapists and potential patients."
Glen O. Gabbard, MD, author of Love and Hate in the Analytic Setting
"A wealth of wisdom! Dr. Peebles has given us a gift that draws from years of experience and a reading of diverse literatures. Her book is paved with clinical insights and illustrations as she embraces and feels into the experience of stuckness along dimensions of communication and relationship, awareness and emotion, uncertainty and vulnerability, and ultimately meaning-making. Professionals of any experience level, from any theoretical orientation, and in any practice modality will appreciate what she has written."
J. Christopher Muran, PhD, Gordon F. Derner School of Psychology, Adelphi University; Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Table of Contents1. Change Takes Time; 2. How We Say It Matters; 3. The Value of Awareness; 4. Transforming the World Within; 5. Learning to Not-Know; 6. Relationship; 7. Creating Meaning
