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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Change can begin right now. Learn to bring about dynamic personal growth using five uniquely effective tools—from psychotherapist Barry Michels and psychiatrist Phil Stutz, subject of the Netflix documentary Stutz. “These tools are emotional game changers. They do nothing less than deliver you to your best and most powerful self.”—Kathy Freston, author of Quantum Wellness
The Tools offers a solution to the biggest complaint patients have about therapy: the interminable wait for change to begin. The traditional therapeutic model sets its sights on the past, but psychiatrist Phil Stutz and psychotherapist Barry Michels employ an arsenal of techniques—“the tools”—that allow patients to use their problems as levers that access the power of the unconscious and propel them into action. Suddenly, through this transformative approach, obstacles become new chances—to find courage, embrace discipline, develop self-expression, deepen creativity.
A dynamic, results-oriented practice, The Tools aims to deliver relief from persistent problems and restore control and hope right away. Every day presents challenges—big and small—that the tools transform into opportunities to bring about bold and dramatic change in your life. Stutz and Michels teach you how to:
• Get Unstuck:Master the things you are avoiding and live in forward motion. • Control Anger:Free yourself from out-of-control rage and never-ending grudges. • Express Yourself: Learn the secret of true confidence and find your authentic voice. • Combat Anxiety: Stop obsessive worrying and negative thinking. • Find Discipline: Activate willpower and make the most of every minute.
With The Tools, Stutz and Michels allow you to realize the full range of your potential. Their goal is nothing less than for your life to become exceptional—exceptional in its resiliency, in its experience of real happiness, and in its understanding of the human spirit.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Change can begin right now. Learn to bring about dynamic personal growth using five uniquely effective tools—from psychotherapist Barry Michels and psychiatrist Phil Stutz, subject of the Netflix documentary Stutz. “These tools are emotional game changers. They do nothing less than deliver you to your best and most powerful self.”—Kathy Freston, author of Quantum Wellness
The Tools offers a solution to the biggest complaint patients have about therapy: the interminable wait for change to begin. The traditional therapeutic model sets its sights on the past, but psychiatrist Phil Stutz and psychotherapist Barry Michels employ an arsenal of techniques—“the tools”—that allow patients to use their problems as levers that access the power of the unconscious and propel them into action. Suddenly, through this transformative approach, obstacles become new chances—to find courage, embrace discipline, develop self-expression, deepen creativity.
A dynamic, results-oriented practice, The Tools aims to deliver relief from persistent problems and restore control and hope right away. Every day presents challenges—big and small—that the tools transform into opportunities to bring about bold and dramatic change in your life. Stutz and Michels teach you how to:
• Get Unstuck:Master the things you are avoiding and live in forward motion. • Control Anger:Free yourself from out-of-control rage and never-ending grudges. • Express Yourself: Learn the secret of true confidence and find your authentic voice. • Combat Anxiety: Stop obsessive worrying and negative thinking. • Find Discipline: Activate willpower and make the most of every minute.
With The Tools, Stutz and Michels allow you to realize the full range of your potential. Their goal is nothing less than for your life to become exceptional—exceptional in its resiliency, in its experience of real happiness, and in its understanding of the human spirit.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Excerpts-
Chapter 1
CHAPTER 1
Revelation of a New Way
Roberta was a new psychotherapy patient who made me feel completely ineffective within fifteen minutes of meeting her. She had come to me with a very specific goal: she wanted to stop obsessing about the idea that her boyfriend was cheating on her. “I go through his messages, grill him with questions; sometimes I even drive by his place to spy on him. I never find anything but I can’t stop myself.” I thought her problem was easily explained by the fact that her father had abruptly deserted the family when she was a child. Even now, in her mid-twenties, she was still terrified of abandonment. But before we could delve into that issue more deeply, she looked me in the eye and demanded, “Tell me how I can stop obsessing. Don’t waste my time and money on why I’m insecure—I already know.”
If Roberta came to see me today, I’d be thrilled that she knew exactly what she wanted, and I’d know exactly how to help her. But my meeting with her took place twenty-five years ago when I was a new psychotherapist. I felt the directness of her request shoot through me like an arrow. I had no response.
I didn’t blame myself. I had just spent two years devouring every current theory of psychotherapeutic practice. But the more information I digested, the more unsatisfied I became. The theories felt removed from the actual experience someone would have when he or she was in trouble and needed help. I felt in my gut that I hadn’t been taught a way to respond directly to what a patient like Roberta was asking for.
I wondered, Maybe I can’t pick up this ability from a book; maybe it can be learned only in face-to-face consultation with someone who’d been in the trenches. I had developed close ties to two of my supervisors—not only did they know me well, but they had many decades of clinical experience. Surely, they must have developed some way to meet these requests.
I described Roberta’s demand to them. Their response confirmed my worst fears. They had no solution. Worse, what seemed to me like a reasonable request, they saw as part of her problem. They used a lot of clinical terms: Roberta was “impulsive,” “resistant,” and “craved immediate gratification.” If I tried to meet her immediate needs, they warned me, she would actually become more demanding.
Unanimously, they advised me to guide her back to her childhood—there we would find what caused the obsession in the first place. I told them she already knew why she was obsessed. Their answer was that her father’s abandonment couldn’t be the real reason. “You have to go even deeper into her childhood.” I was fed up with this runaround: I’d heard it before—every time a patient made a direct request, the therapist would turn it back on the patient and tell him or her to “go deeper.” It was a shell game they used to hide the truth: when it came to immediate help, these therapists had very little to give to their patients. Not only was I disappointed, I had the sinking feeling that my supervisors were speaking for the entire psychotherapeutic profession—certainly I’d never heard anyone say anything else. I didn’t know where to turn.
Then I got lucky. A friend told me he’d met a psychiatrist who didn’t accept the system any more than I did. “This guy actually answers your questions—and I guarantee you’ve never heard these answers before.” He was giving a series of seminars, and I decided to go to the next one. That was where I met...
About the Author-
Phil Stutz graduated from City College in New York and received his MD from New York University. He worked as a prison psychiatrist on Rikers Island and then in private practice in New York before moving his practice to Los Angeles in 1982. He is the subject of the Netflix documentary Stutz.
Barry Michels has a BA from Harvard, a law degree from University of California, Berkeley, and an MSW from the University of Southern California. He has been in private practice as a psychotherapist in Los Angeles since 1986.
Reviews-
Starred review from April 9, 2012 With deceptively potent visualization exercises, psychiatrist Stutz and psychotherapist Michels promote a rapid and streamlined method of self-improvement. Michels, known for his work with prominent entertainment industry clients, teaches readers to end procrastination and negativity by tapping into higher forces. Stutz, who originally developed the Tools, backtracks to explain how and why they originated. Though simple, the authors’ techniques are designed to access intense intrapersonal areas. The “Inner Authority” tool, for example, involves imagining the Jungian Shadow to reach greater self-expression. Though many of the tools are explained by addressing a creative problem, readers in any field are likely to feel empowered because of their ease of use. Easy but not shallow, the work of Michels and Stutz also has a transcendent component. The authors foresee a time when “psychotherapy... will become a spiritual endeavor”; exercises are said to work thanks to the generosity of the universe. The clear, user-friendly approach plus a belief that “the power of higher forces is absolutely real” is a winning combination. Here is the rare self-help book that doesn’t end with the self.
May 15, 2012 In their debut, Stutz and Michels provide a blueprint to actively change your life. Their tools are focused on solving problems rather than obsessing over their causes. Told mostly through Michels' voice, the book outlines a process developed by Stutz in his psychotherapy practice. He found that while therapy elicits valuable memories, emotions and insights, people needed tools powerful enough to bring immediate relief and to connect to life-changing forces. The authors offer five tools to begin change. The first, the Reversal of Desire, helps you break out of your comfort zone, embrace pain and move past it. The second, Active Love, is used when your anger traps you in a maze of negativity. It involves creating and sending out love. The third tool, Inner Authority, asks you to embrace and celebrate your inner shadow, freeing your natural self rather than cloistering it in insecurity. When filled with worry, anxiety and negativity, Grateful Flow, the fourth tool, grounds you in the present and connects you with the ultimate positive force in the universe. The final tool, Jeopardy, provides the willpower to stay on track. These prescriptive tools ultimately invoke higher forces and give rise to spiritual evolution. In the final chapter, the authors help readers integrate the five tools to bring higher forces to bear on a personal problem and, by extension, society as a whole. Illustrated with stick figures and diagrams, the tools are adapted from Jungian psychology but go a step further. Stutz and Michels see problems as opportunities to enter a world of untapped spiritual potential. A thought-provoking book with a strong prescription to turn your life around--not for armchair self-help enthusiasts.
COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
January 1, 2012
Frustrated with how long standard therapy takes--the complaint of plenty of patients, too--psychotherapist Michels turned to Stutz, a psychiatrist who had devised a set of tools aimed at bringing about quick, decisive change. The results have been good enough to bring the authors a New Yorker profile, and because their Los Angeles-based practices bring celebrity patients, testimonials are promised that will surely drive readership. With a 100,000-copy first printing.
Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Transcendent . . . a rapid and streamlined method of self-improvement."
Stephen Gaghan, Academy Award–winning writer of Traffic and writer/director of Syriana
"Every single thing I've written of any power or merit came through using the tools Barry taught me. Usually counterintuitive, sometimes dangerous, they only changed my life."
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