Читать книгу Your Best Life: Pathways to Happiness - Judith PhD Coche PhD - Страница 3

How much do you want to live your best life day after day, decade after decade? Yes, it is easy to thrive when the universe provides easy choices. And no, life does not always cooperate: health falters, pets die, careers take dives, storms damage our best lives.

Positive Psychology has packaged age old wisdom to provide us with winning ways to approach life. The concepts mirror my own professional judgments, gleaned in 35 years of study and clinical practice in human development and existential psychology. Finally, we have guidelines to help each of us weather, and become stronger from, catastrophe, illness, aging and loss. Good stuff, this.

My own life acts as example of the need for a positive life stance. Without warning, my first husband died of a suddenly discovered metastatic melanoma at age 49. This brilliant and handsome man was also my career partner, leaving me to run The Coche Center and parent my daughter single handedly. I found myself emotionally stranded, needing to cover all bases on two home, and two practice locations filled with clients. Left a widow and single parent of a gifted, blossoming teen-age girl, I choose to apply my knowledge of optimal living to push through cataclysmic disaster. This tragedy taught me foundation skills for my future.

These personal lessons, borne out of the grit that comes from necessity, inform the thinking behind the stories in this book. Using vignettes from my practice and my life, I published my newspaper column for The Cape May County Herald. I fictionalized names for privacy but kept the dynamics intact because stories teach us through example.

I began The Coche Center, LLC as a tiny practice in Clinical Psychology in 1978. We had no capital, no loans, and no clients. Insurance reimbursements did not exist for psychologists so survival was highly unlikely. Clients often felt ashamed of “needing” therapy. And yet we thrived. I think it is because feeling understood is necessary for all of us. Therapy provides us access to what is going on inside and allows us to make the unconscious our friend. It tames the wildness of loving another.

Each 800 word story started as a newspaper column between 2007 and today. Each is a metaphor for life. In the dedication of a cat owner who gives his water shy pet hydrotherapy, for example, we remember how powerful positive relationships are in our lives. My hope is that the stories take residence in your heart .

2013 marks the 35th anniversary of The Coche Center, LLC. As our 35th anniversary gift you, I hope these little stories contribute to the quiet sparkle of living your best life.

Judith Coche, Ph.D., A.B.P.P.

June 2013

Rittenhouse Square and Stone Harbor