Common Sense Solutions To Everyday Problems!

You can tell immediately from the title "You're Not Nuts...You've Just Got Issues (Shrink-Rap Lite)," and the rebus on the front cover, that this is not your ordinary self-help book. As the title implies, this author assumes that you are "normal" and approaches his subject with humor. Think Dave Barry meets Albert Ellis. Or was it Albert Barry meets Dave Ellis? You'll find a combination of logic, common sense, humor and even mathematics inside, using an approach that is truly one-of-a-kind. Topics discussed include:

...What we can control in life and what is out of our control

...Making those tough decisions that drive us nuts!

...How to deal with selfishness, yours and others

...How to improve our self-image and accept who we are

...How both people in an argument can think they are right!

...How to promote teamship with your partner

...Why taking medicine and going for therapy sometimes makes sense

...How being average can be a worthwhile goal

...and learn what Elvis has been up to!

SHRINK-RAP LITE!

The aim of this book is to demystify and destigmatize the process of getting help for psychological “issues.” The contents reflect this, but so do the title and subtitle. “You’re Not Nuts, You’ve Just Got Issues” and “Shrink-Rap Lite” were chosen to make the reader feel “normal.” Why? Because you probably are. But if you’re alive, and I assume most of my readers are, you’ve got issues.

There are three major differences about the approach taken here, as compared to other self-help books. First, the target audience is different. I realized as I was writing that I was talking as much to guys as to women. Though women seem to have a genetic predisposition to buy, read and learn from self-help books, men do all they can to avoid them. Their enthusiasm for facing life’s problems falls somewhere in between going in for a root canal and having a colonoscopy. They have to be begged, cajoled and even threatened before they'll allow themselves to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to a shrink.

The time is right for an assault on the mental states of men. Newsweek’s cover article of February 26, 2007 addresses “Men and Depression.” “Depressed women often weep and talk about feeling bad; depressed men are more likely to get into bar fights, scream at their wives, have affairs or become enraged by small inconveniences like lousy service at a restaurant (p. 44).” We’ve got to get to these guys, especially before the next time they order food in a bar. So the first difference is that the intended audience include both women AND men which, as I figure it, includes almost all of the human race.

The second difference is in the use of humor, which helps with most clients. If you haven’t noticed mine yet, perhaps it’s best if you return this book to the store for a full refund before you smudge any more pages. Tongue-in-cheek comes closest to describing the style. After talking to a teenager alone at the beginning of therapy, I might invite the parent(s) back in at the end, and tell them, with a deadly serious face, that the child who they brought to me to help him take school more seriously so he can go Ivy, has decided to join the marines. The kid always cracks up and the parents, after coming out of cardiac arrest, tolerate me.

David Ansen, for Newsweek (November 13, 2006), wrote, “Comedy is there to break open the box that holds the untouchable and the unsayable. It’s about making you face the things you don’t want to face, and the easiest way to face it is through humor.” He happens to be commenting on the film “Borat,” but that’s irrelevant. And President George W. Bush, rallying a loyal audience before the November 2006 Congressional election, mock-chided the Democrats for “prematurely” measuring their Congressional offices for new drapes and hiring interior designers. President Bush got laughs with those comments, comments that remind one of the way guys hike on other guys in the locker room, local tavern or frat house. The inhabitants of all these venues should provide plenty of potential consumers of this book.

Women, while not requiring humor to appreciate the serious side of life, can still enjoy and understand it. They will know, instinctively, that the humor just panders to the fragile male ego, allowing them to connect. If they have to “enable” the man in their life by buying this book for them, they will do it. I can learn to live with that. Women need to be careful though. What if this attempt succeeds, and their guy becomes less dense, recognizes the importance of better communication, realizes that they (and you) have actual feelings and can appreciate you for the person you are? Don’t worry too much...it’s a long shot.

A third difference is that the advice offered herein involves common sense, logic and math. Which will, as humor, grease the tubes for the more tender gender (men). If men pride themselves on being logical, and psychology is, as espoused here, steeped in logic, one would think that men would see psychology as masculine. Feelings and emotions are feminine, logic is manly and virile. Men grow up with batting averages, numbers of points scored, and the odds of winning at poker. Math and logic are concrete, tangible, unarguable and for them, comfortable. The math thing may be the most important way that I can offer a different perspective on behavior. I think in terms of numbers, ratios, probabilities, degrees. I’m not offering details yet, the book is rife with examples. And by the way, do you remember wondering why you would ever need to know algebra when you were out of school? Well, finally you will get the answer...to understand psychology! (I bet you are slapping your forehead with your palm right now and saying “If only I would have known that!”)

The kind of person I am has obviously shaped the way I see the world. (Duh!) These views are offered in this book. (Re-duh!) I’m pragmatic more than idealistic, and prefer simplicity and parsimony of explanation. I see lots of grays rather than blacks and whites. I don’t reject psychoanalytic or other “deep” approaches, but think that more superficial (in the good sense of that word, if there is a good sense) approaches are more efficient. So that the discussion of dreams is an interesting sample of someone’s motivators, bugaboos and behaviors, but these characteristics can be more easily arrived at in a short conversation with the patient. I see myself as a teacher-therapist, trying to give the listener cognitive tools to look at their lives differently. These ideas might be seen as reframing, or starting from different premises, or attacking someone’s self-destructive beliefs, but the goal is always to help the patient think of their problem, issue, or life, differently.

The chapters that follow form a series of essays. As they unfold, they will relate and refer to one another. I’ve noticed that the target population of these essays is proportional to the client population I serve, some of them to individual adults and some to couples. If the second edition of this book contains a few chapters on pet psychology, be wary of me. And if a lot of what is presented here just seems like every day common sense, so be it.