Product Description

"If it's time for a change in your life and analyzing things to death has left you feeling defeated and hopeless, What's Right With You is a must read. It will debunk conventional myths about change, quickly restore your confidence and show you how to harness your hidden personal strengths to accomplish your life's goals."

—Michele Weiner-Davis
author of Divorce Busting and The Sex-Starved Marriage

"All is indeed right with Dr. Barry Duncan's What's Right With You: an engaging, compelling, and eminently practical book that will help you to capitalize on your strengths and cultivate your power. The do-able exercises will guide you in discovering the hero within and in marshaling interpersonal relationships and personal resources."

—John C. Norcross, Ph.D.
president, International Society of Clinical Psychology, co-author, Changing for Good

Tap into your inner resilience and change your life in six dynamic and easy-to-follow steps!

We live in a world pervaded by the unspoken attitude that we are all basically flawed, broken, incomplete, scarred or sick: we’re labeled as dysfunctional, codependent, depressed, you name it. Contrary to popular perception and drug company ad campaigns, fifty years of research shows that positive change does not primarily emerge from examining the disorders, diseases, or dysfunctions—all the stuff that’s wrong with us—that allegedly plague the masses.

Dr. Barry Duncan debunks the myth that only a therapist can help you change your life and shows how positive change really happens when you utilize your inherent strengths and resources and are supported by relationships that take your innate goodness as a given. What's Right with You gives you a research validated, six-step plan for a dynamic and refreshing approach to effecting change in your life—for good!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #220831 in Books
• Published on: 2005-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 250 pages

About the Author
Barry Duncan, Psy.D. is codirector of the Institute of the Study of Therapeutic Change in Coral Springs, Florida. Author of over twelve books, both professional and for the trade, he has appeared on Oprah, The View and other national television programs. He has been featured in Psychology Today, USA Today and Glamour magazine. Duncan conducts seminars internationally in client-directed, outcome-informed therapies in hopes of inciting insurrection against practices that diminish clients.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Identifying and Enlisting Change Partners

Take some time now and think about whom you have relied on in the past and whom you might depend upon now. Who is helpful in your day-to-day life? Whom have you sought out in the past who was useful? Was it a parent, partner, teacher, neighbor, colleague, friend, rabbi? Who are the candidates to be your change partner? Who is the best candidate?

When picking your change partner (or partners), please feel free to do it any way you feel would be best. You may already know whom you will ask and need no format to help your deliberations. Follow your instincts. You know whom you can trust. You may need to do nothing more than tell your chosen partner what you are up to and begin the work of changing your life. So if you feel ready, go ahead and enlist a change partner and proceed to the exercise at the end of this chapter. Take what follows as food for thought.

On the other hand, of you may want a little guidance or a more formal method to pick the best possible change partner. First, generate a list of candidates. Don’t be shy here; you are bestowing a great honor on anyone you consider. It is an honor because you are saying that this person is not only trustworthy, but is also of such high caliber that you are contemplating him or her as a companion in your very personal journey to a more satisfying life. It is better to be overinclusive at this point, so list as many potential partners as possible—a candidate need not be your closest friend or most trusted family member. Once you have identified your candidates, recall the last conversation you had with each person in which you discussed a personal concern. If you have not had such a discussion with a candidate, imagine how you think that exchange might go. Reflect upon that conversation with the following relational dimensions in mind, which have been shown to be invaluable to change in therapy.

Understood, Respected and Validated

Feeling understood, respected and validated is critical to any change endeavor. It is simply a priceless experience that sets us free to consider the possibilities of a better future. Feeling understood means that your change partner makes a sincere attempt to look at the world through your eyes. In addition, like Aretha says, we all want a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Respect, according to one of the founding parents of psychotherapy, Carl Rogers, means to value another individual as a person with worth and dignity.

In total, your change partner must assume that you can and will make a more satisfying life for yourself and that you have the inherent capacity to do so. He or she must believe that no one knows better than you—that you are the expert regarding your concerns. Part and parcel of this attitude is the belief that you are doing the best you can under stressful circumstances and that your actions are understandable given your context. In short, your change partner must have a validating attitude toward you.

Recall that validation is a process in which your struggle is respected as important, perhaps representing a critical juncture in your life, and your thoughts, feelings and behaviors are accepted, believed and considered completely understandable given trying circumstances. Change partners at their best legitimize your point of view, even if, in hindsight, you have not made the best choices. Change partners help you replace any invalidation that may be a part of the load you carry.

©2004. Barry Duncan, Psy.D. All rights reserved. Reprinted from What's Right With You: Debunking Dysfunction and Changing Your Life. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the written permission of the publisher. Publisher: Health Communications, Inc., 3201 SW 15th Street, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442.

Customer Reviews

A Gift From a Master!
In truth, I should probably not be reviewing "What's Right with You" because I am a counselor and a teacher,as well as a longtime admirer of Dr. Duncan and his philosophy that the client is the true hero in the therapeutic relationship.The beautiful aspect about "What's Right with You" is that if everyone who is looking to make a change in their lives read this book, not only would I be out of a job as a therapist, but Dr. Duncan would be restricted to classroom seminars and sporadic appearances on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Our clients would have no need of an outside counselor, because they would have learned to be their own counselor and new best friend !

As anyone who dealing with the mental health system has painfully learned, for the most part self-help books and counselors like to start with what's wrong with the client and explore previous "mistakes" or "errors in judgment", before demanding the acceptance of the latest and greatest new therapy. Not so with "What's Right with You"! In a manner reminiscent of a favorite uncle, adding to your wisdom through the recitation of personal experiences, Duncan debunks the myth of dysfunction, diagnosis,disorders and disease ("The Killer D's") and instead vibrantly validates the reader's personal experiences. He motivates the reader to discover his/her inner hero,placing special value on personal strengths and talents.Barry Duncan provides a detailed guide for the reader of how to both discover and purse his/her unique and individual theory of how change might come about.The book culminates the reader's personal journey of transformation, with insightful advice on how to implement a procedure for change, how to monitor that procedure for success and growth. "What's Right with You" also administers stellar advice on soliciting feedback regarding progress from significant others in the role of "change partners."

While "What's Right with You" is well founded in scientifically validated research, it reads instead like a novel, with the plot of personal alteration taking on a life of itself as the book progresses. "What's Right with You" is worth the price of admission just for the magnificent chapter reiterating the regaling story of Dorothy in the classic "Wizard of Oz" and relating it to each of us in our personal journey of transformation.

As I previously stated, I am a counselor and a teacher.The reason I give "What's Right with You" such a heartfelt endorsement is that I taught the book, chapter by chapter, to a group of folks recovering their mental health, having been diagnosed with schizophrenia. My clients enthusiastically embraced the teaching of Dr. Duncan, complemented my course as being crucial in their recovery, and have acquired the book for personal reading. It's nice that I enjoyed the book, but I consider it magnificent that my clients deemed the work to be essential. I cannot give a higher recommendation for "What's Right with You" than my clients'"professional" recommendation.

Thanks,
Dan Smith

Very exciting perspective
Dr. Duncan provides an extremely helpful toolkit for personal change in this book. I will recommend it to my coaching clients to help them make the personal changes that they want to make. He has the reader start with his/her own strengths, his/her own "heroic" self. This is a small but hugely significant difference from other self-help books which usually focus on what is "wrong" rather than what is right. This difference is much like the difference between reengineering and continuous improvement. Reengineering is like starting from stratch while continuous improvement is building on what is already there. Dr. Duncan takes more of the continous improvement paradigm. This seems a whole lot less overwhelming, but gets results that are sometimes even more significant.

One of the best tools that this book provides for accomplishing personal change is the Progress Rating Scale (PRS), which enables the reader to measure where he is now and to monitor progress toward his goal.

Personal change is hard--a recent study says that the odds are 9 to 1 against successful change. This is made obvious by all the by-pass patients who are back in the hospital again for a redo, by the growing obesity in this country. The stories of people who have used these techniques to accomplish personal change are not only illustrive of the techniques but also are quite motivating. If he/she can do it, so can I!

Brian DeSantis, Psy.D. ABPP
From the co-author of "The Heroic Client", Duncan masterfully translates the science of change from "what works in therapy" to self-change. However, unlike many popular self-help books which seem strong on opinion and weak on research, "What's Right With You" is written from a strong foundation of 50 years of clinical research on how people change.

In the first chapter, Duncan lays the empirical groundwork for the rest of the book by pointing to the fact that change is inevitable and primarily occurs through one's own resources. In chapter two, he uses this empirical fact to springboard the reader into discovering their "heroic self". Thus, Duncan validates the human condition and one's struggles to overcome life's certain challenges and problems - thereby countering the powerful messages in our culture which purport that we are basically "dysfunctional" or "sick". Most importantly, he also introduces the reader to a validated tool which measures baseline distress and tracks progress along the way. The third chapter takes what research tells us about the power of the therapist-client relationship and adopts it to helping the reader recruit a change partner. Again, Duncan gives the reader another practical tool to measure the value of that helping relationship. In chapter four, Duncan focuses the reader on finding their own unique path to change - adhering to the scientific literature that change is a highly individualized process. In chapters five and six, the author introduces two very flexible change strategies, that are not based in a traditional "skill-deficit paradigm" and which can be universally applied to just about any human problem or dilemma. Moreover, Duncan gives the reader an insiders view of therapy from the perspective of these non-traditional approaches. Duncan's final chapter concludes with the powerful message that it is critical to always evaluate one's efforts at change and make adjustments as needed using the feedback tool introduced in the beginning of the book. Finally the author offers an added bonus - a web site for continued self-empowerment and three wonderful appendices which the reader should find beneficial.

If you are tired with "business as usual" in mental health with it's emphasis on psychopathology, diagnoses, and "expert" therapists prescribing silver bullet cures and magic pills, this book offers a refreshing alternative to your journey towards change. "What's Right With You" is an empirically-based and strength-based approach to changing your life. Filled with powerful and practical ideas, coupled with Duncan's style of interspersing real case examples, this self-help book is indeed a testament to the author's unwavering belief in the power of the human spirit.