You may be thinking: “that’s a bold claim in the subtitle; does the book deliver?”

And yes, yes it does.

The “resets” themselves are divided into categories:

1. Mind resets, which are mostly CBT,
2. Body resets, which include assorted somatic therapies such as vagus nerve resets, the judicious use of ice-water, what 1-minute sprints of exercise can do for your mental state, and why not to use the wrong somatic therapy for the wrong situation!
3. Behavior resets, which are more about the big picture, and not falling into common traps.

What common traps, you ask? This is about how we often have maladaptive responses to stress, e.g. we’re short of money so we overspend, we have an important deadline so we over-research and procrastinate, we’re anxious so we hyperfixate on the problem, we’re grieving so we look to substances to try to cope, we’re exhausted so we stay up late to try to claw back some lost time. Things where our attempt to cope actually makes things worse for us.

Instead, Dr. Taitz advises us of how to get ourselves from “knowing we shouldn’t do that” to actually not doing that, and how to respond more healthily to stress, how to turn general stress into eustress, or as she puts it, how to “turn your knots into bows”.

The style is… “Academic light”, perhaps we could say. It’s a step above pop-science, but a step below pure academic literature, which does make it a very pleasant read as well as informative. There are often footnotes at the bottom of each page to bridge any knowledge-gap, and for those who want to know the evidence of these evidence-based approaches, she does provide 35 pages of hard science sources to back up her claims.

Bottom line: if you’d like to learn how better to manage stress from an evidence-based perspective that’s not just “do minfdulness meditation”, then this book gives a lot of ways.

Click here to check out Stress Resets, and indeed soothe your body and mind in minutes!

This is a book review, not a book summary, but first let’s quickly cover a common misconception, because the word “codependent” gets misused a lot in popular parlance:

• What codependence isn’t: “we depend on each other and must do everything together”
• What codependence is:“person 1 has a dependency on a substance (or perhaps a behavior, such as gambling); person 2 is trying to look after person 1, and so has developed a secondary relationship with the substance/behavior. Person 2 is now said to be codependent, because it becomes all-consuming for them too, even if they’re not using the substance/behavior directly”

Funny how often it happens that the reality is more complex than the perception, isn’t it?

Melody Beattie unravels all this for us. We get a compassionate and insightful look at how we can look after ourselves, while looking after another. Perhaps most importantly: how and where to draw a line of what we can and cannot do/change for them.

Because when we love someone, of course we want to fight their battles with them, if not for them. But if we want to be their rock of strength, we can’t get lost in it too, and of course that hurts.

Beatty takes us through these ideas and more, for example:

• How to examine our own feelings even when it’s scary
• How to practice self-love and regain self-worth, while still caring for them
• How to stop being reactionary, step back, and act with purpose

If the book has any weak point, it’s that it repeatedly recommends 12-step programs, when in reality that’s just one option. But for those who wish to take another approach, this book does not require involvement in a 12-step program, so it’s not a barrier to usefulness.

Click here to check out Codependent No More and take care of yourself, too