Finding Sexual Realness - An Inner Journey of Exploration
By Helen Ruddle and Tony Humphreys with Owen Madden
Finding Sexual Realness - An Inner Journey of Exploration is not about “getting it right”, not about fitting with “norms”, not about conforming to expectations, not about “measuring up”, not about information giving - even though gaining information may emerge as an important element in uncovering authenticity for some people.
The aim is to guide you in finding your realness, your aliveness, your spontaneity in your sexual presence; to guide you in reclaiming your sense of joy, innocent, pleasure and delight in your sexuality; to guide you in resting into your own sense of sexuality so that you may be present to yourself in your sexual expression, and if your expression involves another person that you may be present also to that person.
This book has arisen from their experience as therapists over many years with individuals and with groups in which it has become clear that sexuality and sexual self-expression are fraught with threat for us; this applying to both men and women alike, and to people from all age groups, and applying whether one’s sexual orientation is opposite gender or same gender. In this book, they seek to disentangle the identification of sexuality with a particular form of sexual expression - with sex.
When surrounded by threat, it can be difficult to find your realness this book is intended to assist you in facing challenges involved.
“The important issue is who’s present, is it my real self or my screen self? The search for realness is not about struggling with the threats that exist, but instead turning your attention to your own responses, becoming consciously aware of where you are yourself in regard to your sexuality.”
Understanding Teenagers - Sometimes Wild, Always Wise
By Tony Humphreys and Helen Ruddle
The teenage years can be a rollercoaster of emotional highs and lows leading to behaviour that many adults find difficult and disturbing. This book seeks to help parents, teachers and other adults who are significant in the lives of teenagers to understand this troubled and troublesome behaviour.
Helping young people towards maturity, demands of adults that they be mature themselves. Without such maturity it is difficult to relate fully to the challenging behaviour of some adolescents. A relationship that is genuine, non-judgemental, compassionate, empathic and unconditionally loving is necessary in order to resolve conflicts that so often arise between parents, other adults and teenagers.
The authors emphasise that no matter how problematic a young person’s behaviour may be, there is a cause or explanation; appreciation of this goes a long way towards helping young people to resolve that which is troubling them.
The book is structured so that each chapter stands on its own, allowing the reader to focus on specific issues that may arise in their own and their teenagers' lives.
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“Adolescence is about starting the process of becoming independent and self-reliant and, depending on the young person’s experiences in infancy and childhood, the teenage years can be a rollercoaster of emotional highs and lows or a relatively smooth ride into maturity. ”
Leadership with Consciousness
By Tony Humphreys
In Leadership With Consciousness Tony Humphreys posits that economic factors alone are not sufficient to explain the worldwide recession that started in 2008; indeed, he graphically points out that those economic processes are always enmeshed with powerful, often unconscious defensive emotional processes. These undetected emotional processes, particularly in leaders, pose great threat to economic, social and emotional prosperity. The book sets out to facilitate leaders in this mature process by showing why and how unconscious defences are created, how they can be identified and how conscious resolutions can be found. When leaders lead with consciousness – when they are mature – everybody in society benefits.
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“The genius of our unconscious - how it powerfully and creatively protects us from emotional pain - when released into consciousness becomes an immense driving force for good in the world”
Relationship, Relationship, Relationship, The Heart of a Mature Society
By Tony Humphreys and Helen Ruddle
No matter where you are, what you are doing, whether you are alone or with others, you are always in relationship. Whatever the relationship, it is always a couple- relationship, whether this, for example, is a parent with a child, a lover with a lover, a manager with an employee, a student with a teacher, a neighbour with a neighbour. This book is concerned with the much neglected area of relationships as dyads involving two unique individuals, in all settings in which human beings live, work, pray and play.
The book highlights the responsibility that each and every one of us has to reflect on how we are within ourselves and how, out of that place, we relate to others. The book is especially aimed at those adults in our society who have leadership, managerial and parental responsibilities. While aimed at both men and women, the book seeks in particular to draw in men who traditionally have not seen relationship as belonging to their sphere of business; the book emphasises that for the sake of mature society this is an area that men can no longer afford to avoid.
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“No matter where you are or what you are doing, if you are alone or with others, you are always in relationship”
The Compassionate Intentions of Illness
By Tony Humphreys and Helen Ruddle
Illness, death and dying are part and parcel of human life. Despite amazing advances in medical science there is never going to be a time when we can prevent against ever having the experience of illness. This book seeks to add to the alleviation of the suffering of illness by finding greater understanding of the psychological meaning and purpose of that experience.
The book provides guidance to enable care professionals to be mindful of their own relationship with self and to see how, out of that central relationship, they then relate to the person presenting with illness.
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“Illness, while it manifests physically, also involves deep psychological and social processes on the part of the person suffering the illness”
Self-Esteem, The Key To Your Child's Future
By Tony Humphreys
Tony Humphreys contends that how children see themselves strongly influences their academic progress. Parents act as the mirror for their children and their responses to them will determine the image their children will form of themselves. This book aims to help parents create a family environment that promotes their own and their children’s self-esteem.
Dr. Humphreys makes it clear that, without attention to children’s self-esteem and inner conflicts, it is unlikely that attempts to increase children’s educational efforts will be successful. He sets out the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of fostering children’s love of learning. His core message is that the emotional welfare of children is the cornerstone of their educational development.
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“The self-esteem of children is central to their educational development”
Leaving the Nest
By Tony Humphreys
Each of us belongs to a family and that belonging has different stages – we live with our parents, we move out on our own, we may form a partnership with another and we may start a new family where we become parents ourselves.
The family has the potential for being the most fertile ground for self-development and self-fulfillment. This book provides valuable insights and practical guidelines to enable people to get the most out of family relationships while at the same time finding one’s separateness, individuality and independence.
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“We don’t all come from happy families. The reality is that families provide both positive and hurtful experiences”
The Mature Manager - Managing From Inside Out
By Tony Humphreys
The effective manager today is not only technically skilled, but also emotionally and socially mature. Self-knowledge is a prerequisite of the good manager; so too are the qualities of leadership such as self-management, social awareness and empathy. The good manager leads with both head and heart.
In this book Tony Humphreys shows how a manager who possesses a deep understanding of human behaviour is in a powerful position to enhance relationships with employees, and increase their motivation and commitment to work. He writes about those managers who can relate openly with their people and those who use defensive styles. He considers also the various types of communication between managers and employees, and looks at the kinds of organisations that can encourage open, healthy relationships that in turn lead to enhanced results.
He goes on to point out that few organisations are free of conflict; however, the way it is managed is crucial to the ongoing wellbeing of all those within the organisation, and of the organisation itself. Managers who understand their own inner and outer responses are better able to understand and respond maturely to the challenging behaviours of some employees.
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“Matters are rarely as they appear; in the case of conflict, when it is unexpressed or manifested in defensive or deeply masked ways, the task becomes one of uncovering what lies unsaid beneath the presenting behaviour”
All About Children, Questions Parents Ask
By Tony Humphreys
Being a parent today is more challenging than ever. At times the task seems overwhelming. At others it provides great fulfilment and joy. It is always unpredictable; the challenges are forever changing and much of what we might have learned from our own parents seems quite irrelevant.
Parenting is not learned by instinct; it requires many complex skills. Parents have responsibility for the physical, emotional, social, sexual, behavioural, educational, creative and spiritual development of their children, and at the same time they must love them unconditionally. In a helpful question and answer format, All About Children not only provides today’s parents with the vital information they require but also points out the skills they need to carry out effectively their demanding task.
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“ The wonder, uniqueness, goodness, individuality and genius of each child and adult needs to be affirmed in all of the social systems they inhabit.”
Whose Life are you Living?
By Tony Humphreys
We are not born bad, ugly, stupid, average, superior or inferior, yet these and other labels plague our adult lives. Why do we pigeon-hole ourselves and put limits on our abilities? Our desire to be accepted by friends, family and the world at large forces us to bow to society’s demands, and shackles our true selves.
Today’s world worships at the altar of success. Magazines and television constantly offer us the chance to be somebody, anybody, but who we really are. We follow someone else’s ideal until we end up with no idea of the person we were before we started.
Whose life are we living? By giving up our freedom, we no longer belong to ourselves. We belong to those who have influenced and altered us. Dr. Tony Humphreys questions the way we approach our lives and shows us how to emerge from the darkness that has hidden us.
In the style of his bestseller, The Power of ‘Negative’ Thinking, this is an important book from one of our most important writers in the area of psychology.
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“ No matter where you are, what you are feeling, how you are behaving, whether you are rich or poor, educated or poorly educated, employed or unemployed, married or single, atheist or theist, well or sick, young or old, living or dying, you have a self that is sacred, unique and ingenious.”
Work and Worth: Take Back Your Life
By Tony Humphreys
Well known for his incisiveness, consultant clinical psychologist, Dr. Tony Humphreys has turned his attention to our world of work. What is our experience of work? How do we fit in? Do we control our working lives or does it control us? Is our sense of worth tangled too closely to our work? Are we becoming addicted to work at the expense of our personal lives? Can we find balance?
In Work and Worth Tony Humphreys examines all these areas. He is thorough and sympathetic and shows how work can get out of control and dominate our lives. The book is divided into four parts: The Experience of Work and Worth; Self, Work and Worth, Work Organisations and Worth, Startpoint.
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“Work is an important aspect of your life and needs to be worthy of you; it needs also to be deserving of your knowledge, skills, time, energy, and dignity. ”
A Different Kind of Discipline
By Tony Humphreys
Discipline is a topical issue. It is fundamental to all our lives and our relationships. Discipline is about safeguarding our rights both as individuals and as a society.
A common misconception is that discipline applies only to children, but it is as much an issue for adults as it is for young people. It is not about controlling others, Dr Humphreys points out, instead it is about helping others to learn to control themselves. Discipline demands creativity, commitment and time. It is about parents, teachers, carers and communities working as partners. True discipline is not abusive, aggressive, cynical or manipulative. It is about clear communication, consistent application, adaptability, support and co-operation. Most of all it is about respect, acceptance and love.
In this book Dr. Humphreys guides us through steps to create a positive environment in homes, schools and communities where mutual respect and thus discipline all have their place.
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“Discipline is about safeguarding the rights of people who are exposed to uncooperative, aggressive or other blocking responses on the part of others”
A Different Kind of Teacher
By Tony Humphreys
Recognising many of the difficulties facing teachers today, Dr. Humphreys provides innovative and practical ways to bring about a more positive climate within staffrooms and classrooms.
A key theme is that the self-esteem of teachers and students is a major determining factor of the relationships between teacher and teacher, teacher and student, and student and student. The resolution of problems within the staffroom and classroom needs to be based on the nature of relationships between the members of these two school systems.
This is a challenging book confronting many of the traditional approaches to teaching and discipline within classrooms.
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“Each child has a story ”
Myself, My Partner
By Tony Humphreys
Individuals form a relationship in the hope of having their own needs met – physical, psychological, social and spiritual. The couple relationship, Tony Humphreys believes, is the most wonderful and enriching. However, in order to have a contented and fulfilling relationship, each partner must first look honestly at themselves, learn to love themselves and from that, love and respond to their partner.
With his usual clarity, and in a witty and accessible style, the author explores the whole area of self, of choosing a partner and the issues of togetherness. He provides guidance and groundwork for personal healing, growth, development and resolving conflict within relationships. This book makes it clear that there is real wisdom in the power of opposites attracting. It also abounds with sound advice and suggestions on what to do when conflict occurs.
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“Differences between a couple can be challenging and exciting and provide opportunities to learn from each other.”
The Power of ‘Negative’ Thinking
By Tony Humphreys
In this unique book Dr. Tony Humphreys breaks new ground, successfully challenging many of the current ideas in psychology today by making some surprising but convincing claims.
He maintains that just as we all need food and shelter, everyone needs to be loved. Yet that need is constantly under threat in the unsafe emotional and social world in which we live. So to protect ourselves from threats such as rejection and humiliation we often resort to ‘negative’ thoughts, actions and feelings, and to illness and stress. While these chosen behaviours are frequently seen as negative, Tony Humphreys believes that it is more accurate and healing to see them as creative and protective weapons against emotional perils. They must not be removed until emotional safety is created. Only then can the hidden wounds of rejection be healed; only then can we move on to a greater level of maturity and happiness.
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“It is not changing your thinking that is the basis for emotional and social transformation but changing directly how you feel about yourself, about others and about the world”
Audiobooks
Raising Your Child's Self-esteem
By Tony Humphreys
A comprehensive insight into how a parent might help to bolster a child's confidence and overall contentment.
Bestselling author Tony Humphreys explains in a positive way that a child's personal and academic progress is influenced strongly by how that child sees him or herself. This tape is a must for parents concerned about their children's happiness and contentment with life.
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Self-esteem for Adults
By Tony Humphreys
Dr Tony Humphreys discusses the nature and importance of self-esteem, examining the problems that can be caused by low self-esteem.
Addressing the listener directly, bestselling author Tony Humphreys discusses self-esteem and how it influences the quality and happiness of our lives. He is full of perceptive observations and practical advice, as he helps us to recognise low self-esteem and shows how to build up a more positive image of ourselves. This CD contains practical observations and helpful advice on how adults can help themselves to build good self-esteem.
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Work and Self
By Tony Humphreys
Bestselling author Tony Humphreys challenges and questions how we identify ourselves inside and outside the workplace and demonstrates what we need to take control and restore balance to our lives.
Does our work control us, or do we control our work? Is our sense of worth too closely tied to our work? Are we becoming addicted to work at the expense of our personal lives? How responsible are we, the people we work with and the people we work for?
In this CD Tony Humphreys challenges and questions how we identify ourselves inside and outside of the workplace and demonstrates clearly just what we need to be aware of in order to take control and restore balance to our lives.
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Radio Series 1 - The Family Meeting
By Tony Humphreys
In this six-part series the importance of the weekly family meeting is explored with two different families. Following each family’s meeting the parents discuss with Tony what arose for themselves and for the other family members and for the family as a whole.
How parents can create the emotional safety for children to express their needs, grievances, dreams, wishes, fears and upsets is examined. The active engagement and modelling by parents of uninterrupted listening and direct and clear communication are also encouraged.
Ways of deepening relationships between family members, the art of encouragement and resolving conflict are seen as primary goals for the family meeting.
Radio Series 2 - Relationship Relationship Relationship
By Tony Humphreys
In this six-part series Tony focuses on the adult couple relationship in which couples who are experiencing conflict in their relationship talk to Tony about their difficulties. What emerges for each partner is a realisation that it is each partner’s own relationship with self that determines the level of wellbeing of the relationship and for that relationship to flourish it is necessary for each individual to work on his or her own level of maturity.