You Don't Have to Suffer: A Handbook for Moving Beyond Life's Crises

by Judy Tatelbaum

Challenging the firmly held belief that we must brave our circumstances and endure life’s crises, You Don’t Have to Suffer emphasizes that while hurt is inevitable in life, suffering is not. The author explains that we can consciously choose how and how much we suffer over our own experiences and tragedies. We can experience our losses, hardships, and disappointments and let go of them. We learn to apply these insights to our separation from others, recovery from grief, relationships with our parents and children, and our own bodies.

Rather than “pour salt in our wounds”—by dramatizing, personalizing, and romanticizing events, living in the past, going it alone, and denying our needs—Judy Tatelbaum shows us how to free ourselves and see life not as a “predicament” but as a challenge and a gift. You Don’t Have to Suffer takes readers through the various trials and tribulations of how we suffer, why we choose to continue to suffer, and ultimately, how we can raise ourselves above life’s challenges.

Genres: Self Help

256 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2012

Reviews

[Sylph · Rating 5 out of 5]

An INCREDIBLE grief & healing resource unlike anything I've ever read or heard!

Quick backstory:
My mom died when I was 5 years old. I lost my two-year-old daughter when I was 33. I have been grieving these losses for all my life and have read countless books on grieving.

THIS BOOK CHANGED EVERYTHING.
It helped me see that I have a choice in how I grieve and for how long. It helped me to forgive myself and others. It showed me I totally have a right to be more than just OK, but to be HAPPY again and most importantly, it gave me tangible steps to show me HOW to achieve that happiness in my life.

If every other book on grieving has not worked for you, PLEASE TRY THIS ONE. It is like none of the other books advising you to constantly "feel your feelings" and keeping you stuck and miserable. It will set you free from self-damaging thoughts like thinking the amount of your suffering is related to how much & how deeply your loved. It is just not true.

This book dispels so many toxic beliefs that so many other books perpetuate. So please give this book the chance to teach you how to heal, grow and BE HAPPY AGAIN!

[Christy Martine · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a terrible book for trauma survivors.

On page 41 the author writes "Here is where our imagination can serve as a powerful tool, for we can use it to picture ourselves any way we wish to be. Why not then remember the past as happy? Most of us seem to remember more of the unpleasant aspects than the happier times gone by. What we remember is likely to be fiction anyway. Knowing this, we might consider that it is never too late to have a happy childhood, which we can do by consciously remembering and reminding ourselves of happy days past. We may want to repeat these imaginings over and over to combat our negativity and to make them more real.

"If we cannot remember good times, we can make them or rewrite out story by changing how we remember past times."

The author essentially advises victims to gaslight themselves. Not only is this advice unhelpful it is also harmful. It can be helpful to imagine a wonderful future ahead of you, but you should not rewrite your history and pretend you have never suffered. You must learn how to heal while living in reality.

This is the worst book on the subject of healing that I've ever read.