Claim Your Inner Grown-Up: 4 Essential Steps to Authentic Adulthood

by Ashley Davis Bush

A psychotherapist and author of Transcending Loss offers an innovative, four-step approach--Detach, Alert, Reorient, and Enact--designed to help readers enhance their lives by becoming more mature, loving, spiritual, and responsible. Original.

278 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2001

About the author

I'm so glad to be part of the Goodreads forum!

I am a licensed psychotherapist in private practice now living in Antigua, Guatemala. I am also the author of 10 self-help books.

In my clinical work I focus on helping individuals cope with loss, heal from trauma, find inner peace, navigate life's transitions and on helping couples improve their relationship.

My background: I hold a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology from Smith College and a Masters in Social Work degree from Columbia University. Early on, I worked in community mental health in New York City later wrote, lived and practiced in southern New Hampshire for 22 years.

I, with my husband Daniel, have 5 grown children who live around the globe.

I enjoy singing and perform with local choral groups and community theaters.

Reviews

[Sunshine Biskaps · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great book with lots of helpful, rather deep and thought-out exercises. The DARE method is useful. My biggest takeaway from this book is for us to not only write a letter to someone who has caused us hurt, but also to write a response from that same individual (really trying to put ourselves in their shoes). This is not for them, but more so for us to forgive them and move on. It’s a deep book and covers a lot, especially about how our troubled childhood affects our adult thoughts and fears.

[Celia Juliano · Rating 4 out of 5]

I almost gave this 3 stars, but like so many self-help books lately, I think it's more my state of mind than the book that makes me not enjoy it as much. This book is almost overwhelming in the amount of information and the complexity of what is presented...and it took me a few months to read it. Still, there is a lot that is or could be helpful in the book, such as the explanations of the 4 pillars of adulthood and the DARE method of approaching problems. It seems like this is a book that would need to be re-read and all the exercises done to get the most out of it.

[Therese Gilardi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Funny but sobering look at the ways in which current culture celebrates a childhood that stretches well into middle-age.