Xxx received a 4+ star review, making it an IndieReader Approved title.
Following find an interview with author David Ellis.
What is the name of the book and when was it published?
‘The Power of EFFECTIVENESS Therapy,’ published 8/1/2017 as a Kindle book, available at the Amazon Kindle Store. You can find it by entering the entire title into the search box
What’s the book’s first line?
I am including the first few sentences as they convey foundational elements of what my approach addresses.
I am going to take some time to discuss various fundamentals which will later be considered in aggregate. These will include the specific elements and unique contextual influences which have combined to produce the hurting people who represent the ‘normal’ portion of our culture. Effective growth will be more obvious when we are able to produce enough accurate pieces of the puzzle in order to develop a clearer idea of what the whole picture is going to look like. Some of these things can explain feelings, impulses, wants, needs, and behaviors you have seen in yourself and others. As Karl Wertheimer pointed out, “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.”
What’s the book about? Give us the “pitch”.
This book is about recognizing that, as Thoreau said, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.” You are not alone, you are exactly where your past has propelled you. This book teaches a few skills that are brief and effective, relatively unintrusive for adding and practicing in your daily routine, quick to master, and, when used all together, will improve the quality of one’s life immensely. This is where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Then, so armed with these new tools, you may challenge and resolve issues from your past that still affect your today, for which you had no effective tools to resolve at the time. They will be far less intimidating, and no longer overwhelming for your skill set.
What inspired you to write the book? A particular person? An event?
About five years ago I suddenly realized that I had finally put together the last piece of a puzzle I had been developing for over 40 years. It had taken education, individualized training, group workshops, books, articles, years of my own personal therapy, exposure to effective concepts from other industries, and, most importantly, 40 years of doing therapy with people. Though we don’t like to acknowledge it, to ourselves or others, there is a reason it’s called a ‘practice!’ I was sad that it took so long to reach such a high success level at providing quick tools for dealing with today, and realized that I would soon retire, taking all of that unique and effective information with me. The book started out as a workshop for other professionals, but I then decided that I could help far more people if I wrote this self-help book. After all, the title isn’t about improving the effectiveness of therapists, it’s about improving the effectiveness of those who desire to resolve their pain and confusion.
What’s the main reason someone should really read this book?
This book is for anyone who seeks a better life for themselves. To become more effective in dealing with the daily challenges of adult life, to be free of the bondage of hurtful experiences from your past, see that you deserve better, and be encouraged to find your place in the world.
When did you first decide to become an author?
I first decided to write this book about three years ago.
Is this the first book you’ve written?
Yes.
What do you do for work when you’re not writing?
I am a psychotherapist with a private practice in Golden, Colorado.
How much time do you generally spend on your writing?
I usually spent ten to twenty hours a week writing this book, and then forever doing all of the things necessary to get it published!! If I do another it will probably be a paperback, revised edition of ‘The POWER of Effectiveness Therapy,’ published through Amazon.
What’s the best and the hardest part of being an indie?
The best is that I don’t have to spend months sending out proposals and manuscripts to potential publishers. The requested information was loaded with questions about marketing information they wanted from me which I had hoped THEY would provide for me. The hardest is that I still have to find answers to those marketing questions. It serves no purpose to publish a book to help people in such a powerful way that no one knows about.
What’s a great piece of advice that you can share with fellow indie authors?
After this experience, and it is in the epilogue of the book, I think everyone should write a book about something they love. You will learn so much that enhances the validity of your approach to it and improves it at the same time. While doing the research for this book, which contains 150 citations, I found out that many of the ‘original,’ foundational elements of my work had also been considered and researched by others, verifying that these elements were indeed accurate and effective. Aside from my unique combination of coping methods, which mostly contains the 2.0 version of skills developed by others, the unique part for me was seeing how the perspectives of others could further enhance my model. When you write about something, put it down in words, seeing the black on the white, reality becomes more clear for everything. We see things that allow us to go from surviving to thriving, from beginner to intermediate, or intermediate to master. It’s exhausting and exhilarating at the same time.
Would you go traditional if a publisher came calling? If so, why?
Perhaps. I have been told that a paperback version of this book could reach more readers and that these publishers do tend to get into book stores that would not otherwise even look at it. I could self publish a hard copy with Amazon, but they would have exclusive selling rights, so I don’t know if that is how I would go either.
Is there something in particular that motivates you (fame? fortune? more sex?)
Yeah, I’m 67 and happily married, so more sex is what I’m really looking for! I want the content of this book to become famous, well known and of service to as many people as possible. I’m really just another guy doing his best to cope with life effectively, so I don’t think there is anything about me to make famous. It would be nice to make money off of this, but that would only be a secondary benefit and far from my primary purpose, to help hurting and stagnant people feel better about themselves and their quality of life. As Dostoevsky said, “The gift of life is not to just stay alive, but to create a life for ourselves.”
Which writer, living or dead, do you most admire?
John Bradshaw. He did so much, on TV, in workshops, and in his books, that reached and touched the lives of hurting people like the one’s I want to help today, with, perhaps, an enhanced and more comprehensive package, improving their understanding of what happened, and providing new answers to their chronically unanswered questions. In 1988 I attended one of his workshops in Denver, with a thousand of my closest friends, where his genuineness and passion were undeniable.
Which book do you wish you could have written?
“Bradshaw: On the Family” as I do admire his message and humility. I also have to mention “I’m OK; You’re OK,” written by Thomas Harris, the psychiatrist, not the guy who wrote the Hannibal Lector books;). This book was not something I could have written as it contained information known only to a few that was originally developed by Eric Berne, author of “Games People Play.” That book was turned into a movie, mostly about games used in single’s bars! Harris, his understudy, introduced a style of understanding and treating people that was comprehensive, simple, and to the point. This book has a great influence on the healing elements to my style. There were over 4,000,000 copies sold and much of what it had to say became part of the language of the culture of that time. In the late 70’s I worked for a woman who had a jar of M and M’s on her desk that was labeled, ‘Warm Fuzzies,’ and the concept of ‘I’m OK an so are you’ was quite popular. Today, most people feel isolated from society, Not OK, and deal with conflict with their most cherished relationships by giving out ‘Cold Pricklies’ to these people. This is the way they treat themselves and it doesn’t work very well in either case.