Try Softer

November 11, 2019
Therapist Kolber (Relevant) targets the “overextended, overburdened, and overwrought” in this persuasive take on adopting a happy (and easy) lifestyle. “Trying softer,” she writes, “is the path that leads to true connection and joy,” and asks readers who feel they are “white-knuckling” their way through life to look back upon their own personal histories with more compassion. Explaining that the brain and nervous system become adjusted to certain behaviors in others over time, she asks readers to examine past and present relationships in order to distinguish between safe and unhealthy attachments and to discover one’s “window of tolerance.” For example, she explains different types of attachment styles people have to their parents, and delivers role playing examples to help readers determine their own attachment type. Kolber offers practices that enable a life of “trying softer,” among them scripts for better communication, exercises for getting in tune with emotions, and tips for reasoning with one’s “internal critic”—such as concentrating on “mindfulness, self-kindfulness, and common humanity”—to allay self-judgment. Kolber provides steady, helpful guidance for “the parts of your soul screaming to be loved in extravagant ways.” Mental health professionals and general readers dealing with anxiety will find many serviceable exercises in Kolber’s useful guide. Agent: Don Gates, the Gates Group.