This self-help guide,The Bounce Back Book by Karen Salmansohn, is aimed at people who are overcoming adversity or trauma in their life. The author found herself at the end of a year of multiple setbacks in severe depression, confining herself to her home and comfort eating. She refers to this period as her Vortex and the book is her attempt to share the tools she used to drag herself back from that into normal functioning and enjoyment of her life.
The Bounce Back Book consists of 75 "Bounce Back Tips", with matching "Bounce Back Assignments". The tips and assignments are strategies to help lift the mood, and heal the hurt. Throughout, the emphasis is on overcoming difficulties in such a way that they can be springboards for learning and personal growth.
The tips range from short and simple ("Sing your heartache out" or "View yet as yet") to longer projects, such as Tip 56, "What you’re going through is not only human – it’s reptilian". The assignment for this one involves six steps to see your problem, and its solutions, in a rational light, rather then with a primitive "flight, fight or fright" type response.
I found The Bounce Back Book easy to read and the advice was straightforward and sensible. The use of humour sprinkled in with the tips certainly made it digestible and approachable to me. Although, as Karen Salmansohn points out, all of the tips are not going to be the right thing for everyone, there are so many strategies here that something is almost bound to help. The tips are drawn from a wide variety of sources – from Buddhist to common sense to psychological research.
This is a very good book to have so that you can dip into it, even when you do not have a particular trauma to cope with. I think everyone could find a helpful idea to try and/or a positive change to make in their life. I would recommend this book.
Published by Workman Publishing, The Bounce Back Book is available from Amazon. To order a copy, click the link below:
