Recovery Road

In his book The Spiritual Self: Reflections on Recovery and God, rabbi and psychiatrist Abraham Twerski speaks with a unique perspective on the ways spirituality can affect emotional health and successful sobriety. In this excerpt, Dr. Twerski offers insights about the role of ego in Twelve Step recovery, and how a healthy spirituality can help us right-size the way we think of ourselves.

Improve Sleep by Dr. Katrin Schubert offers significant strategies for a good night's sleep. This excerpt shares techniques that can improve your sleep habits. Having a stable night routine is essential in our paths to recovery. Following these tips can reduce sleepless nights and prepare you to take on the next day.

Passages Through Recovery by Terence T. Gorski provides readers with an action plan to stay on the course of recovery. In this excerpt, Gorski discusses the power of using good judgment, and provides advice on how we can learn to control our behavioral impulses.

In Unwelcome Inheritance, Lisa Woititz, with material from her mother, Dr. Janet Woititz, discusses and analyzes Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA). In this excerpt, we are reminded that, although addiction can be inherited, we can break the cycle. We learn the importance of knowing our relatives' health histories and how making these connections can be beneficial in our own recovery.

In the book Rein in Your Brain, Cynthia Moreno Tuohy gives insightful guidance for how we can be more thoughtful in our daily lives. In this excerpt, she visits the topic of relationships and gives us examples of how to effectively determine the health of our personal relationships.

As Meredith Gould reminds us in her book Staying Sober: Tips for Working a Twelve Step Program of Recovery, regular attendance at meetings is a key feature of Twelve Step recovery, and the place where much of the isolation-busting magic of real recovery starts. In this excerpt, Dr. Gould offers an overview of what a newcomer to meetings might encounter, as well as some tips for making the most of Twelve Step meetings.

In her book An Invitation to Self-Care, bestselling author Tracey Cleantis identifies some of the unhealthy habits and behaviors in our daily lives, and demonstrates how learning to nurture ourselves is a central part of living the lives we want. In this excerpt, Cleantis describes what self-care is by illustrating some of its opposites, and shows how these actions can hinder our journey to recovery and our better selves.

In this excerpt from her book Take Good Care: Finding Your Joy in Compassionate Caregiving, author Cynthia Orange invites us to regularly exercise our "empathy muscles." As we do, each of our interactions and relationships will benefit from more compassion, patience, understanding, and kindness.

In her book When Reality Bites: How Denial Helps and What to Do When It Hurts, lecturer and author Holly Parker demonstrates how denial helps people cope in times of crisis or tragedy. She also teaches us how to recognize when denial becomes counterproductive or detrimental - for ourselves as well as our neighbors and the planet. In this excerpt, Dr. Parker describes the ways we often "tune out" uncomfortable realities and offers a method for turning up the volume on compassion.

In her book The Recovering Heart: Emotional Sobriety for Women, Beverly Conyers gives readers of all genders wisdom for the journey of recovery. In this excerpt, she underscores the links between reflection and action in the process of healing. Action is the antidote to habitual helplessness and poor self-image. The path to reclaiming the power we lost to trauma and addiction is through those positive things big and small that we do to build self-worth.