Back to Life: Getting Past Your Past with Resilience, Strength, and Optimism - Hardcover

Back to Life is a feel-good approach to overcoming that lets you try on the skills of the heroes you most admire. From icons of survival like Rosa Parks and Nelson Mandela to contemporary heroes like Michael J. Fox and Elizabeth Edwards, this book allows you to see what resilient survivors actually do when they feel lousy.

This is a revolutionary approach to feeling better, rooted in the science of positive psychology and resilience theory, and would help anyone get a dose of soul food into their emotional diet; but these techniques are specially tailored to those trying to overcome traumas big and small—from Big-T Traumas, such as combat, abuse, and bereavement, to challenges one might think of as little-t traumas, like breakups, betrayals, job loss, health problems, and financial hardships.

After years of working in the trenches of psychiatry, it became clear to Dr. Alicia Salzer that we needed some new methods to help people overcome, since the old methods often proved too painful for many to bear. It's all about being in the present and focusing on the future—no retelling and revisiting the past, no opening Pandora's box, no picking at old scabs.

Back to Life is a creative and empowering way to learn the habits of resilient survivors while getting to know what you stand for, what makes you happy, and what emotions you need in your diet in order to thrive. In this book you will create a "holistic pillbox" of ten stones—each symbolizing a healthy new way of coping—that you can utilize when your past rears its head.

The truth is, there have always been people in our midst who remain positive and passionate despite enormous challenges while others just get stuck. This is the secret playbook of those people, and it's full of accessible and fun exercises to help you try on the rose-colored glasses of those survivors we so admire.

Alicia Salzer, M.D., completed her B.A. at the University of Pennsylvania and obtained her M.D. from Cornell University. She has held posts at UCLA, Columbia University, and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. An advocate for victims of psychological trauma, she has served on the Speaker's Bureau of the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) and has volunteered for Disaster Psychiatry Outreach, an organization that provides free mental health staffing and treatment following disasters such as 9/11. After volunteering at Ground Zero and at the family assistance center after the 9/11 attacks, Dr. Salzer worked for three years at a clinic that exclusively served Ground Zero rescue workers and volunteers.