Roseville Couples Counselling Reading List
Living at the Bottom of the Ocean by David Schnarch (Free PDF Download)
Living at the Bottom of the Ocean (Free PDF Download here) tackles a problem almost everyone has experienced: those overwhelming emotional meltdowns when we “lose it” or shut down completely. In everyday terms, it’s about how to stop drowning in our feelings. If you or your partner has ever had a blazing argument, a bout of rage or panic, or even long periods of feeling numb and stuck, this book offers hope. Written as a practical guide with a touch of humor (yes, you’ll even chuckle at some of your own human quirks), it shows how to climb out of the darkest emotional depths and come back to life – stronger, calmer, and more connected than before.
First, Schnarch reassures readers that these emotional “wipeouts,” which he calls regressions, are more common than you think. Feeling like you’re sinking in anxiety or exploding in anger doesn’t mean you’re crazy or broken – it means you’re human. In fact, almost everyone has moments when their brain gets overwhelmed and they can’t think straight. Knowing this alone is a relief. The book helps you drop the shame and understand what’s happening in your brain during these episodes.
Living at the Bottom of the Ocean is packed with practical strategies to handle intense emotions. It teaches you how to recognize the early warning signs that you’re about to “lose it,” and what to do in the moment to stop a full meltdown. Even if you find yourself already at rock bottom emotionally, Schnarch lays out a step-by-step process to get out of a regression even while you’re in it. These aren’t theoretical ideas – they are time-tested techniques drawn from decades of therapy work, presented in an easy-to-follow way.
Beyond just managing an emotional crisis, the book shows you how to reduce the likelihood of blow-ups and shutdowns going forward. You’ll learn how to strengthen your resilience (think of it as your emotional “muscles”) through exercises and mindset shifts. For those who live in a long-term fog of low mood or disconnection, Schnarch also addresses these steady-state regressions, offering guidance to gradually reclaim your clarity and vitality. In short, it’s not just about putting out fires – it’s about fireproofing your life emotionally.
Perhaps most importantly, gaining control over emotional meltdowns can dramatically improve your relationship. Schnarch shares eye-opening stories of couples on the brink of collapse due to uncontrolled anger, fear, or despair. By using the methods in this book, even individuals from very troubled backgrounds managed to revitalize their marriages and become more emotionally stable partners. The message is inspiring: no matter how deep a hole you’re in, you can always rise toward the light. And when you do, you not only feel “alive” again personally, but you also bring new positivity and stability into your family life.
Living at the Bottom of the Ocean is offered as a free PDF download, get it here.
Passionate Marriage by David Schnarch
Passionate Marriage is a groundbreaking guide to transforming a stale or struggling relationship into a vibrant, intimate partnership. Written in an engaging, honest style, the book shows that marriage itself is a crucible for personal growth – the challenges you face with your partner can actually bring you closer if you handle them the right way. Schnarch busts the myth that long-term relationships must succumb to boredom or disconnection. Instead, he offers practical techniques and candid case examples to help couples rekindle erotic passion and deepen their emotional bond.
Discover True Intimacy: The book reveals how love relationships really work, encouraging you and your partner to be authentic and emotionally present with each other. By developing a stronger sense of self (what Schnarch calls “differentiation”) while staying close to your partner, you can achieve a new level of connection.
Reignite Your Sex Life: If your sex life has become predictable, infrequent, or lackluster, Passionate Marriageprovides hope and tools to turn things around. From the famed “hugging till relaxed” exercise to keeping your eyes open during intimacy, the book offers step-by-step methods to build trust and excitement in the bedroom. Couples learn to communicate their desires and overcome inhibitions, leading to more playful, fulfilling sex.
Handle Conflict and Grow Together: Rather than avoid conflict, Schnarch shows that working through frustrations and differences can make your relationship stronger. He addresses common issues – constant arguments, power struggles, lack of intimacy – and illustrates how facing these challenges together helps both partners mature. Readers have credited this book with saving their marriages by giving them new ways to see problems and concrete strategies to fix them.
Inspiring and Hopeful: Filled with humor, personal stories (even from the author’s own marriage), and compassionate insight, Passionate Marriage is as readable as it is profound. It normalizes the fact that “normal people have difficulty with sex and intimacy” and reassures you that you’re not alone. Most importantly, it shows there is a path forward. Couples who apply its lessons often report feeling closer, more passionate, and more “alive” in their relationships than ever before.
Intimacy and Desire by David Schnarch
Intimacy & Desire zeroes in on one of the most common relationship struggles: mismatched sexual desire. In every couple there are times when one partner wants sex more often than the other, leading to frustration or distance. Rather than seeing this as a deal-breaker, Schnarch frames it as a normal occurrence – even an opportunity. This book offers a revolutionary approach to understanding and overcoming sexual desire problems, written in a warm and approachable tone. It promises not just to improve your sex life, but to change how you understand yourself and your partner on a fundamental level.
Why Desire Fades (and How to Revive It): Intimacy & Desire explains that it’s normal for couples to face sexual desire issues over time – in fact, two-thirds of people do. Instead of blaming yourself or your partner, you’ll learn why these lulls happen even in healthy relationships. Schnarch debunks the idea that hormones or aging alone kill passion. The good news? Desire can be reignited. This book shows how to create the kind of intimacy, love, and electric passion that makes you excited to stay together.
The “Low Desire” / “High Desire” Dynamic: Ever feel like one of you is always pursuing while the other backs off? Schnarch introduces the concept that the partner with less interest in sex actually controls the sexual relationship – a powerful insight that explains a lot of frustration. Understanding this dynamic is the first step to change. The book guides you to break the stalemate by addressing underlying emotions and power balances, so both partners feel safer and more open to intimacy.
Tools to Rekindle Passion: Intimacy & Desire is packed with practical exercises and solutions. You’ll explore the Four Points of Balance core life skills that help you stand on your own two feet emotionally. By strengthening these points, you become more confident and less anxious, which naturally boosts desire. The later chapters even offer specific sensual techniques and bedroom activities (some that don’t even involve taking your clothes off!) to gradually rebuild sexual connection and excitement.
Personal Growth Through Desire: What makes this book truly engaging is how it links sexual desire to personal growth. As you and your partner work through issues of wanting (or not wanting), you’ll find yourselves growing individually. Intimacy & Desire shows that tackling your differences in the bedroom can lead to deeper emotional intimacy, better communication, and a stronger bond everywhere else. By the end, you’ll view desire not as a source of tension, but as a journey you’re on together – one that can bring you closer.
Brain Talk by David Schnarch
We all engage in mind mapping – imagining what’s in someone else’s head – whether we realize it or not. This is the “driving wheel of relationships,” as Schnarch calls it. Brain Talk helps you become aware of this process so you can stop the guesswork and communicate better. You’ll see why sometimes you misjudge your partner’s intentions or they misread yours. With vivid examples, the book shows how tuning into this hidden dance can clear up confusion and build empathy.
The book also uncovers how past traumas or bad experiences (what Schnarch terms “traumatic mind mapping”) can distort the way you relate to others. If you or your partner have ever been hurt before, you might be unknowingly projecting fears or assumptions that create conflict. Brain Talk offers new, brain-based techniques to recognize these triggers and heal from them. The result? Fewer fights based on misunderstandings, and more patience for each other’s feelings.
When you get better at seeing what’s really going on in each other’s minds, trust and intimacy flourish. Schnarch provides tools to strengthen your empathy “muscle” – for example, learning to notice subtle cues in your partner’s voice or expression. These skills can transform your marriage or partnership. Even couples who were deeply troubled learned to see themselves and each other in a completely new light, revitalizing their marriages and families as a result. Readers often report “aha!” moments where a long-standing problem suddenly makes sense from this new perspective.
Despite being rooted in neuroscience, Brain Talk is down-to-earth and practical. You don’t need any science background – the insights “speak your brain’s language,” making them easy to absorb and apply. In fact, many people find that just learning these concepts opens up a whole new reality in how they view their past and present relationships. The changes can happen surprisingly fast, too. By applying the mind-mapping ideas, you’ll likely find yourself calmer, more understanding, and better equipped to handle conflicts. You may even notice your partner responding differently – in a good way – as you break the old reactive patterns.
Already Free by Bruce Tift
Click here for an extended, chapter-by-chapter summary of Already Free by Bruce Tift.
Bruce Tift’s book Already Free changed the way I think about life, love, and therapy. Bruce describes two paths to learning how to feel free in life: the path of Western therapy, and the path of Buddhist philosophy. Bruce talks about how he has used ideas from both of those paths to help thousands of clients during his many decades of working as a therapist. I use Tift’s ideas in every therapy session and recommend the book to all of my clients.
Emotional intensity is a leftover from childhood.
My first operational assignment as an Air Force helicopter pilot was to a nuclear missile base in Montana. Within a few months of arriving at that base I had developed an unhealthy relationship with Captain Bradford (not his real name), one of the senior pilots in the squadron. He would find opportunities to degrade and belittle me, and I lived in constant fear of him. I would feel intense pain in my chest every time I saw his car in the parking lot. My anxiety interfered with my performance as a pilot, leading me to fall behind my peers.
The emotional distress I experienced was not proportional to the situation I was living in. Captain Bradford’s bullying was actually quite mild, but I experienced it as a very real threat to my survival. The intense physical distress I experienced was a leftover from my childhood, when I depended on my parents for physical and emotional survival. In childhood, emotional intensity reflects how vulnerable and dependent we actually are. I felt just as vulnerable as a 27-year-old military officer because my brain had not learned to let go of the past.
Emotional intensity happens in the body
I remember feeling intense pain in my chest when I saw my antagonist’s car in the parking lot, but I immediately interpreted that pain into a story about how he was probably waiting to belittle me in some way. I felt similar pain in my chest if my wife was angry at me, or in any number of situations that involved someone who mattered a lot to me or had authority over me.
Bruce Tift helped me understand how anxiety and other unpleasant emotions are basically a physical experience. “I have a physical pain in my chest” is the most accurate way to describe what happened to me when I saw Captain Bradford’s car. My instinctive response was to try to get rid of that uncomfortable feeling by distracting myself, dissociating from my physical experience, or indulging in the idea that my physical distress was someone else’s fault.
Tift recommends the opposite approach: can you make room for your body to feel what it needs to feel? Can you extend kindness and sweet love to the distress in your body? This practice has transformed the way I interact with anxiety. I often think of my own children, and how I would care for them if they were experiencing similar physical pain. Instead of turning away from them, I would offer them physical and emotional comfort. I try to do the same for the (very young) part of me that experiences physical/emotional pain.
Distress is a normal part of life
My physical indications of anxiety decreased significantly after I did EMDR and ART trauma therapy last year. I still feel distress, but it is a tiny fraction of what I used to feel. With Tift’s help, I’ve learned to embrace the emotional intensity that is just a part of who I am. I realize that when I start a new job, argue with my wife, or experience any kind of loss or failure in my life, my body is going to respond in the same way it always does. I will feel some kind of tightness and pain in my chest. In extreme cases I might start to shake physically for a few minutes. I’ve learned to greet these experiences like an old friend, knowing they don’t actually pose any threat to my wellbeing. My emotional intensity comes and goes, and life goes on. It’s part of what makes life a rich, interesting experience. I don’t feel the need to dissociate, distract, or remove myself from those feelings anymore.