Becoming Real: Defeating the Stories We Tell Ourselves That Hold Us Back By Gail Saltz, MD From the shows Cheating Husbands Confess, Memoirs of an Unfit Mother, You're Not the Person I Married, When You're the Fat One in the Family and When Your Mother Drives You Crazy From The Publisher: You are only a fraction of what you could be. You've been living half a life, repeating behaviors you try not to repeat, having difficulty at work, in love, in life. All because there's a story you're not even aware you're telling yourself, a story you made up as a kid to explain the behavior of your parents, the lack of control over your circumstances. This story is keeping you from Authenticity, Personal Freedom, True Strength, Self-Acceptance and Intimacy, the five qualities of Becoming Real. Gail Saltz shows a simple method for recognizing the signs that a story has taken control, making sense of the contents of the story and rewriting the story so that you can live life with more freedom and control. "Turmoil is a good sign. It's the place to begin," writes Saltz. Turmoil shows you that the story you've been telling yourself about how things should be, as opposed to how things actually are, isn't working anymore, and it's the clue you can use to discover the truth. Once you identify the symptoms, you'll be able to discover the story you've been telling yourself that has been holding you back. Questionnaires help us find the story, defeat the defenses that keep us from recognizing it and rewrite our story so that we don't get caught in the same traps—the same difficult relationships, the same problems at work, the same issues with family and friends—over and over again.		E-mail to a friend