Secrets from the Sofa: A Psychologist's Guide to Achieving Personal Peace

Dr. Kenneth Herman
iUniverse (2007)
ISBN 9780595414321
Reviewed by Paige Lovitt for Reader Views (11/07)


“Secrets from the Sofa” is a step-by-step guide that provides you with the tools for achieving peace.  Dr. Herman, a clinical psychologist, uses the cognitive-behavioral approach because he sees it as being effective for making long-term changes.  This approach teaches you to overcome negative self-talk.  In his book, he provides you with the steps to develop a plan to help you overcome your difficulties and obstacles at achieving happiness.  He helps you to identify the connection between past issues and current problems. 

Often we become dissatisfied with our lives because we are too busy focusing on the future and what we don’t know, and we are stuck in the conditioning of our past.  Unhappy people tend to repeatedly put themselves in the same negative environments that they had as children.  These people suffer from repetition compulsion.   Dr. Herman writes, “We can never change what happened to us in the past.  However, we can change how our past affects us today.”  Throughout the book he offers a variety of exercises to help us.  These include thought-provoking questions.  He also offers interesting case histories as examples to illustrate his points. 

“Secrets from the Sofa” is concisely written and easy-to-follow. The difficulties that will arise are more likely to come from resistance and fear to confronting the issues that we have been allowing ourselves to hold us back from really being happy.  Dr. Herman tells us, “Don’t let anger and frustration rule your life.  Do not let an unhealthy situation go on and on, day after day…”  This is so true.  When doing the exercises I did discover how a great deal of my thoughts, actions and self-perceptions were based upon incidents from my childhood.  I really don’t want to continue to be stuck back there.  Addressing my need to overcome my fear of change, allowed me to fill the void left behind with hope for a great, healthy future.  Dr. Herman writes, “As you make the changes you desire, you will undoubtedly also experience joy, relief, laughter, excitement, elation, satisfaction, contentment, and, finally peace.” So what are you waiting for? 

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