The Ten Things to Do When Your Life Falls Apart: An Emotional and Spiritual Handbook

by Daphne Rose Kingma

Add layoffs, foreclosures, and skyrocketing health-care costs to the inevitable crises of every life, and you have today's landscape. Amid these challenges, even those who thought they had solid coping skills feel that their center cannot hold as things fall apart. In her first book in many years, bestselling author Daphne Rose Kingma takes us on a path of emotional and spiritual healing, with particular attention to the complex and frequently overwhelming circumstances of our lives right now. The perfect combination of empathic friend, sage counselor, savvy problem solver, and even gallows humorist, Kingma looks straight into the predicaments so many of us face. She then offers ten deceptively simple yet profoundly effective strategies for coping on practical, emotional, and spiritual levels.

The devastating events cannot be changed, but after reading this book, you will be, having recovered a sense of equanimity, spirit, and strength. Whether you're struggling with money issues, job loss, relationship problems, an unexpected health crisis, or all of the above, this book will light your path and heal your heart.

Genres: Self Help, Nonfiction, Spirituality, Psychology, Personal Development, How To, Inspirational

174 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 11, 2010

Reviews

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had this on my TBR for a long while, and because it was low pages, added it to a challenge and then landed on it. This was not necessarily thought through. I felt this challenge would be a good way to take things off my TBR that had languished there for a while, that I had always intended to read. But... is this the book to read when you are truly in the happiest of places? When life seems quite blessed? When you are nowhere near falling apart?

Well, I still got a lot out of it and I will tell you why. As a therapist/psychologist, we are always interested in the question, how do we get through when a life feels like its falling apart. As a spiritualist, a human, I wanted to hear what the ten things were. This was my dissertation after all. The question I have wondered most about long before and after. How do we become resilient from whatever life throws us? What is the best way to walk through this life and how do we do it, and help others get there?

Its not that the ten things are revolutionary or surprising, but the author does a really lovely lovely job of laying out the path. Because these ten things are journey and they blend slowly into one another. By the end of the book, really the beginning ~ the answers are spiritual in nature, and we see the authors' point in where she was heading all along. How do we find our authentic self and our divinity and blend that with the narration of what's happened. Including incomprehensible loss. But here is what you get when you read this from a good, even a great place. You get that this isn't just about dealing with loss and the rug being pulled out. These are precepts for life. For living your best life. For dealing with little T, every day trauma. For making life more alive, more meaningful. This is not just about how we cope, but how we live.

Turns out the author is a relational and spiritual coach. I like the work she is doing out there. I feel a kinship. I like knowing we are together fighting the good fight and living the best life we can. I thought the book was worthy at any stage.

[Jeff Maziarek · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book to be both very inspirational and highly practical. The author covers a lot of ground in this relatively short book, highlighting numerous examples of real-life people who have risen above various crises to live better lives in the end, combined with very practical suggestions for how to apply her recommendations. This title is a perfect tool for these challenging economic times, and for dealing with any other difficulties one may encounter in life. I highly recommend it as a spiritual and personal growth resource. Here's one of my favorite passages from it:

"Persistence is the journey of effectiveness that allows you to hope. It is the energy that wants to get things done, to assist you in moving from crisis to solution. Persistence can take you from debt to solvency, from heartbreak to love, from sickness to health, from foreclosure to having a home. Emotionally, it can take you from fear to joy; spiritually, it can deliver you from despair to peace. So persist, be steadfast in your undertaking, for only the path consistently traveled can deliver you to the outcome you long for. Whatever your battle, it’s never easy. The monsters never just slink back into the woods with their tails between their legs. They will fight you for every breath. There is a battle in this universe for every inch of light, and only those who persist will rise to behold the astonishing light of the sunrise."

[Bibliovoracious · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perfect for when your life is falling apart. 4.5 I didn´t expect much, and was happily pleased, because the premise fits my beliefs about life: the crisis (and feelings of helpless hopelessness) is inviting you to respond to it differently than you have in the past, as your spirit is constantly seeking growth. That is the "deeper meaning".

[kates · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started reading this because I was having panic attacks and I worried that I was returning to a dark place. I was scared that I would wind up back where I was at age 18: traumatized, adrift, and hurting. Over this last year, five people in my family received a cancer diagnosis. My job has been crushing me. ...It's been a struggle to keep my head up.

I think this phase was made more challenging by the fact that life up until this most recent chapter had been SO GOOD. Like OVER THE MOON AWESOME. It made the fall that much further. :(

So I picked up this book thinking: lord, that's a silly title. Thinking: oh man, what will people think if they see me reading it? They'll think that I think that I've fallen apart just from this silly little stuff. Thinking: nothing bad enough has happened for me to claim my life is 'falling apart.' It's not that bad. It's just kind of a hard time.

This book served as a level-headed and loving companion for my emotional health as I've gotten my shit together. By that I mean: it wasn't judgmental. It didn't make assumptions. It didn't validate or invalidate anything. It just simply was there, with information, and clear recommendations. It's full of questions and answers -- some of which I journaled and some of which I skipped over.

If I am physically sick or injured, I'll do something about it. I adjust my expectations for myself, and I don't have guilt about it. Is what it is, y'know?

Emotional sickness? Panic attacks, generalized low-level apathy? I slip into martyrdom. I wonder if I'm depressed. I worry I'm backsliding 15 years in my coping mechanisms. A part of me is afraid that I will regress to where I was before and never come back out.

If you're reading this, you should know that I'm feeling better. There's an infinite constellation of things that have helped me return (somewhat) to my normal. This book is just one of those things.

A quote I loved most from the final chapter:
“Crisis is the crucible of expanded awareness because it gets us to respond to life in ways that are not patterned or familiar. It changes our energy, pushes our emotions around, taxes our bodies, gives us sleepless nights and heartache, so that our very physical structures and our psyches are vulnerable to information and perceptions that ordinarily elude us. When we are taken apart at the seams, we are vulnerable and permeable; our structures are out of sync enough, revised enough, flimsy enough to entertain some new information. We are open. We can be changed. And we do change.”

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

My life is not currently falling apart, but I am not so naive to think that it never will. This book was very good. I definatley think it is applicable to pretty much any hardship of life. This is good stuff for the spiritual bank.

[Hemi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a heartwarming, therapeutic book that can be read in a day. Each chapter ends with a few thought-provoking questions. The language is general enough to apply to any type of personal loss or crisis, with recurring examples of death, divorce, financial ruin, major illness, job loss, foreclosure, etc. I was delighted to find in the last chapter on spirituality, Kingma's insights on how the internet has changed how people interact with each other:

"We don't have a choice about all this interconnectedness.... Our task now is simply to respond.... Intuition, forgiveness, presence - these are the hallmarks of this new consciousness in our midst. Instead of selfishness, narcissism and greed, we are in the mood for sharing. Instead of analyzing, thinking, figuring things out, we are operating from intuition. Instead of conflict and domination, we are seeking an experience of presence. And instead of being motivated by judgment, grudges and revenge, we are looking for the doorway to forgiveness."

The internet as a unifying force for us to embrace - this is a refreshing counterweight to my tendency to read news items linking online social media to privacy violations, self promotion and polarized thinking.

[Christy ofthewoods · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. This author can f*ck all the way off.

[Tami · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite what we may be led to believe, crisis happens to us all. Life seems fine. Then, you lose your job, your spouse wants a divorce, you are diagnosed with cancer, or a friend dies suddenly. Sometimes, several of these things happen all at once and it feels like the world is coming apart at the seams.

Our first reaction is deny, deny, deny. It’s not happening. I can fix this. I can be strong. Then, reality starts to set in. It’s at this point that we need to know ten things that will not only get us through the crisis but help us understand how to make a better life because of what we have learned and experienced.

The Ten Things to Do When Your Life Falls Apart takes the reader through the steps of grief, self understanding, and letting go. In the process, we come to learn about our default mechanisms that can cause us to become stuck or endlessly repeat the same unhealthy patterns over again. We also learn to embrace the new and all that we have learnt because of these difficult transitions.

[Petya Cholakova · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read it. I liked it. I started following the steps.
I will read it again.

I am now writing an annotation for the Publishing house, in which I am working.
With advice: publish it.
This is the first book of the author I am reading, but I already promised myself not to be the last.

The style of the author is unique. The book is one of those, which does not let you to leave it. And even if you do it, she is still with you - in your mind and heart. She touches the big little things in such a gentle way; gives you real stories with happy-ending, but not the easy one.
If you are in crisis - you have to read the book immediately.
If you are happy - you have to read it, because life could be even better, when you OPEN your eyes and heart.

[Katie Kothenbeutel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book to be somewhat comforting in letting me know that I am not alone in the struggle. Reading this book helped me to process what was happening and to start the process of letting go of anger and disappointment. I found it especially helpful in addition to some of the other books I've read recently, like When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times by Pema Chodron. I felt kind of like I was sitting and talking with a counselor who was guiding me through my emotions and helping to work through things.

The book is not all "life is roses if you just believe it" but has practical advice.

[Evelyn Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great book. Equally good for caregivers or those going through difficult times. It's filled with compassion, wisdom and good practical ideas. It helps dissipate the fear and resistance that keeps us from being in the process and absorbing what pain or loss can teach us. The world or well-meaning meaning friends want to move us along and cheer us up...but sometimes we need to just catch our breath while we're in the dark before we make our next considered move.

[Seawitch · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a second read for me. I had forgotten I’d read it. I raised it up a star just because it seemed better the second time around. I don’t think it really will “help” anyone in the eye of the storm, but it’s a very positive voice about personal crisis and rising from the ashes and taking a spiritual view of difficult times.

[Gillian · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book, and it had a lot of promise. The ten steps themselves, if you just read the titles, I think could actually be quite helpful for getting through a crisis. I even wrote down a few quotes from the intro of the book that resonated with me. However, this book turned out to be a perfect example of why people who are not mental health professionals should not be writing about or counseling people on how to get through crises. Life coaches certainly have a place and can be very helpful to people with things like goal setting or changing their mindset, but when people are in crisis they need to be speaking to a professional who is trained in dealing with these matters. People who are not mental health professionals tend to lean on what got them through their own difficult experiences, which can be helpful in a peer support format, but is not helpful when doling out this advice in a universal manner and from a position of apparent authority and knowledge on the subject. Since people who are not mental health professionals tend to not know what to say beyond gleaning from their own experiences, they tend to fall back on telling people to “give your pain to God” and on judgment since they don’t really know what else to tell people, and that’s exactly what happened in this book. I was only able to get through the first two chapters before I had to put it down because the writer is extremely judgmental. There is one particular page where she even writes “I’m not judging, but,” and then proceeds to write a whole page of fat shaming statements. If you have to write “I’m not judging, but,” then that usually means you definitely are judging, lol. Also within the first few chapters she shames women receiving welfare and describes fearing in the past that her own experiences of crying during periods of loss were “some sort of hysterical emotional excess.” I do not think that the word “hysterical” should be used under any circumstances, but certainly not to describe women’s emotional responses, due to the extremely sexist history of the word. The writer also makes claims about mental health conditions without backing them up with citations to research studies. Some of the things she’s saying might be true, but since there is no citation then it is just coming from her opinion. I hate to say it, because I think this book had the potential to be so much more, but it just turns out to be the pontifications of an entitled white lady who unfortunately has a platform to judge and tell people what to do during the most difficult times in their lives, and to profit off their suffering. I guess this demonstrates why it’s important to look up the authors of self-help books before taking anything they say too seriously....I would recommend sticking to the books by mental health professionals on how to get through life’s crises.

[Rochelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love books, and many of the books I read I rate highly, and that rating is usually in line with the "average." However, this book was a genuine delight. I had read Kingma's book Coming Apart: Why Relationships End and how to Live Through the Ending after going through the ending of a marriage of more than three and a half decades. It was enormously helpful. I purchased this book to give to a friend whose life seemed to be blowing up in her face. However, before gifting, I decided to read it! What a wonderful surprise. In her Introduction, Kingma gives her reasons for writing this small gem. However, since reading it, I came to the conclusion that whether you believe that your life is falling apart or that it's all just coming together, it's worth every minute of your time and attention. It really reads like a love letter from the author's soul to whoever chances to find this treatise on living life "creatively and soulfully." I can only say that without spoiling it. Her loving surrender to the circumstances that engendered the idea, the message that she renders to anyone with ears and heart to listen are a real gift! Don't wait until you feel your life is falling apart. Buy a copy, read it often, and fall in love over and over again to its timeless wisdom within the grace of your days.

[Ł e X I E · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars*

I bought this books years ago while I was going through something and in true Lexie fashion, I never read it. I decided to pick this up a few weeks ago and began reading it. I immediately got engulfed in it. This book made me think and has definitely inspired me to handle crises a little differently. I didn’t agree 100% with everything that was being said, but that was only because I finding the exceptions to the “rules”. I really enjoyed this book and am glad I finally decided to read it!

[Shelby Czirban Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book helped me work through my grief of a recent trauma. The questions at the end of each chapter really made me think and work through things as I wrote my answers down in a journal. The only reason I gave it four stars instead of five was because her political bias is quite obvious in the book and I felt like she began to rant a few times. Those portions didn’t feel very relevant to the information in the book, in my opinion.

[Robyn Obermeyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book sure got me to thinking! It read like the author was truly talking to me giving insight into hard times. I probably should read it again but for now I got a little out of it and hope to stay strong in the present day.

[Tristy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book to companion you on the journey of chaos and grief. None of us are immune from the hardships of life and it is great to have helpful books like this along the way.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading Kingma's book, Coming Apart, which helped me understand why my marriage was ending; this book helped me with moving forward.

[Amandine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully and simply written. Full of practical and real life examples.

[Julie Barnard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a well-written and undoubtedly a useful book.

[Mary]

Helpful

[Jen b b · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spoiler alert: “Drink like a fish” not in the 1-10.

[The Angry Lawn Gnome · Rating 1 out of 5]

Quite possibly the worst written self-help type book ever written, and that certainly covers some ground. This is not to say that I think the author is wrong on every point, simply that the new age twaddle of "going where the love is" and "living in the spirit" overwhelms the bits that do make sense. Her points two and three are hardly news to anyone, but at least they have a tangential relationship to reality. The chapter on "letting go," while doubtless sensible advice as a statement is turned into complete muck.

How bad was this book? It was so bad that I actually felt I had to finish it, to see if the author could rise any higher in her cloud-cuckoo land. And I was not disappointed. The last two chapters are the sort of thing I used to spout after an evening of bong hits, though alas those efforts never got me a book contract. But if you've avoided both the wacky weed and those who use it, here's a chance for you to see what you've been missing. Without getting your clothes smelly or facing demands to drive others to a convenience store for more ring dings.

[Birdie · Rating 4 out of 5]

With an easy to read and friendly style of writing, the author offers practical advice for getting through the crises that come with life. The book inspires the reader to seek the deeper meaning in any circumstance, to reach beyond the situation to find new opportunities for growth and spiritual development. The author tries to be inclusive of all faiths, with her talk of cosmic energy, etc. but her principles translate well into most religious views.

I found the chapter on Letting Go to be particularly helpful in my situation.

"We need to let go because whatever we're holding onto is keeping us attached to the problem. Hanging on is fear; letting go is hope. Holding on is believing that there's only a past; letting go is knowing that there's a future...."

[Maggie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I want to give this helpful book 3 and a half stars. This author has written a number of self-help-ful books although I haven't read any of her others.

The author explains that this book came about after a friend asked her what would be the ten most helpful things a person could do to help themselves if they were going through a rough patch. Each chapter addresses a way of dealing with things, and include such suggestions as Live Simply, Let Go, Do Something Different, Integrate Your Loss and so on. Its a book to read in patches, bit at a time (which I what I have done), or I guess you could plow right through the entire thing. Her writing style is straightforward and very easy to read, and often quite helpful.

[Douglas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up this book only because a friend of mine posted a few notable sections of it on Facebook. My life wasn't falling apart when I read it nor do I usually like books that smack so blatantly of self-help. It was well written and an easy read - I cruised through it in a couple of days while commuting on the train. While it wasn't a 'life-changing' book for me, it successfully reminded me to keep things in perspective and was comforting about life in general, without asking me to be overly-introspective. If you're looking to lightly explore some emotions and be reminded of those things that are important in life, this is a good way to get a quick dose of that.

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book coming out of a rough period. While there were some items on the author's 10 things list that were fairly common sense, there were some chapters that made me stop and think. It was an easy read, nothing too deep which is nice if you're already feeling a bit overwhelmed. I think one of the most beneficial aspects of this book is it gives you space to step back from your crisis and realize that "this too shall pass." But also, that it need not just end, that you can grow from the experience and even make a positive out of a negative.

Though there wasn't anything earth shattering about this book, I would recommend it to others.

[Jouraine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was much better than I expected. The title grabbed me in the beginning and I hoped to just leaf through it and maybe collect little bits, but I was pleasantly surprised. It was very readable. Once I started, I just had to continue. Of course, I am at that place where I needed the wisdom that it is offering so it all turned out very well. I will definitely read it again (even thought that I not something I do often), and this time I will actually journal through the process. There are questions at the end of each chapter, and I didn't make use of them the first time around.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ms. Kingma does a great job of walking you through your crisis. Her empathy comes across in her writing and is comforting to the reader. The Ten Things are ones I think people know intrinsically, but she organizes it in a way that makes it easily understood and remembered. The writing style can come across as New-Agey and some of the concepts can be fairly abstract. She challenges you to have an open mind while reading it. If you find yourself in a crisis, this book is a great companion to guide you along the path to a more loving life.