How We Heal and Grow ― The Power of Facing Your Feelings

A definitive guide to personal change in therapy and in life. Why is it so hard to change? Not only does psychiatrist and teacher, Dr. Smith's crystal clear prose give the answer, but he shows how to outsmart our own mind's many ways of keeping us the same. Each person's problems and dysfunctional patterns are different but they start out as ways to shield us from painful and uncomfortable feelings. The good news is that facing just those feelings is the path to freedom, and it is not as hard as it seems. Dr. Smith shows how to get to know your feelings, understand why and how they have been hidden from you and how to face them so that you, too, can heal and grow into the person you want to be.

Dr. Jeffery Smith is a native Californian and graduate of Stanford University. He went to medical school at UCLA and interned in Syr- acuse, N.Y. in internal medicine. He completed psychiatric residency at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.In 1976, he began private practice in Scarsdale, N.Y. Dr. Smith was Chief Physician in the outpatient clinic of Bronx Lebanon Hospital until 1980. It was there in 1977 that he became interested in the area of dissociation and what is now called dissociative identity dis- order. He cofounded a professional study group on dissociation in the 1990s.In 1980, he joined the faculty at New York Medical College. There he was appointed Director of Alcoholism Services and in 1989 left to establish Cortland Medical, the first evening intensive outpatient program for alcoholism in Westchester County.A Distinguished Fellow in the American Psychiatric Association, Dr. Smith was twice president of the Psychiatric Society of West- chester and served as Public Affairs Chair in the New York State Psychiatric Association.He continues to serve on the clinical faculty at New York Medical College and teaches courses on psychotherapy technique and com- bined psychodynamic and behavioral treatment in the residency. He has written and lectured on psychotherapy, dissociative identity dis- order, and addiction. His primary area of interest continues to be the process of change in psychotherapy. He authors a website, www. Psytx.com, which offers course material for psychotherapy teach- ing, as well as a blog on psychotherapy. He remains in full time pri- vate practice in Scarsdale, N.Y.While an undergraduate at Stanford's campus in Tours, France, he met his wife Claude Smith, who is a partner at Just North, an inte- rior design firm in Scarsdale. They have three children.