



The Gift
12 Lessons to Save Your Life
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4.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
This practical and inspirational guide to healing from the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of The Choice shows us how to stop destructive patterns and imprisoning thoughts to find freedom and enjoy life.
Edith Eger’s powerful first book The Choice told the story of her survival in the concentration camps, her escape, healing, and journey to freedom. Oprah Winfrey says, “I will be forever changed by Dr. Eger’s story.” Thousands of people around the world have written to Eger to tell her how The Choice moved them and inspired them to confront their own past and try to heal their pain; and to ask her to write another, more “how-to” book. Now, in The Gift, Eger expands on her message of healing and provides a hands-on guide that gently encourages us to change the thoughts and behaviors that may be keeping us imprisoned in the past.
Eger explains that the worst prison she experienced is not the prison that Nazis put her in but the one she created for herself, the prison within her own mind. She describes the twelve most pervasive imprisoning beliefs she has known—including fear, grief, anger, secrets, stress, guilt, shame, and avoidance—and the tools she has discovered to deal with these universal challenges. Accompanied by stories from Eger’s own life and the lives of her patients each chapter includes thought-provoking questions and takeaways, such as:
-Would you like to be married to you?
-Are you evolving or revolving?
-You can’t heal what you can’t feel.
Filled with empathy, insight, and humor, The Gift captures the vulnerability and common challenges we all face and provides encouragement and advice for breaking out of our personal prisons to find healing and enjoy life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Holocaust survivor and therapist Eger (The Choice) encourages readers to break free from self-imposed mental prisons in this engaging work. Eger, drawing on a variety of therapeutic concepts, developed a technique she calls "choice therapy," which aims to promise freedom from the deleterious effects of personal trauma by choosing each day to recognize that suffering is temporary, to find lessons to be learned in the worst experiences, and to remain curious about the future. She covers 12 common "mental prisons," including avoidance, rigidity, and the "chronic anger and irritation" of resentment, fear, and hopelessness. For each "prison," she shares stories from her own life and those of clients to show how focusing on the future and reframing and reconsidering actions can have a powerful impact on one's happiness and mental health. Some of the examples are so extreme as to seem inapplicable her own experiences in Auschwitz, a woman surviving two gunshots to the head, a singer developing a vocal tremor and back injury on the cusp of a world tour but her nonclinical, conversational tone and genuine optimism make her suggestions seem entirely achievable. The range of topics Eger's methods address and her accomplished writing distinguish this useful guide for improving one's life.