ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
CARLA DUDA, M. COUNS. PSYCH.
Existentialism is my philosophical base in my work and life because it speaks to what matters so vitally to me: seeking truth and living a life of meaning in our finite time on earth. Often my work is dedicated to the examination and action required to live more aligned with truth, authenticity, and choice in the freedom-responsibility continuum. While I like to explore philosophical and emotional terrain, I am a pragmatic person and hold that individual choices determine the quality of our lives and the society we create. We cannot at once sink into complacency or hide from what we fear, yet also live our most expansive lives.
About The Book:
The Art & Practice of Responsibility
From book back jacket: Therapist Carla Duda provides a refreshing view on turning toward rather than away from difficulty to become stronger and more capable, transform limitations into opportunities, and live with connection and purpose.
Early in her practice, Duda became disillusioned with popular therapeutic ideology taught in the academy. This ideology suggested therapists view clients as victims to culture, fragile, and in need of sheltering away from difficulties. Therapists were often taught to focus on feelings as unquestionable truths, thereby providing little of the exploration, curiosity. and challenge required for personal growth
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Explores anxiety and its relationship to existential angst and awareness of our finite nature. Ways to understand and work with anxiety, and to live more fully and open to life.
Explores the true meaning of responsibility. Discusses under- and over-responsibility and how to work with these states so we can author our lives toward our potential.
Explores the main obstacles to responsibility. Focuses on numerous thoughts, behaviours, and ideologies that are weakening, confusing, and limiting.
Explores how blame and denial are the antithesis of responsibility and can annihilate our power and agency and can leave us listless, victimized, nihilistic, and ineffectual. Differentiates between blame and appropriate responsibility that includes holding a wrongdoing party accountable for their actions.
Explores through the existential lens, the exits we take from responsibility, through both addictive substances and behaviors, and how to course correct.
Explores antidotes to responsibility-evading trajectories, with descriptive examples of how to use specific tools to become more responsible and contemplative existential thinkers.
Explores an essential element of well-being, grappling with, allowing, and improving from failure. And in-depth exploration on why and how we resist failure, what to do when we fail ,and how to move through it. Explores and offers support for regrettable decisions that alter our own and others’ lives in irreversible ways.
Explores an essential approach for anyone needing to work on their relational repair skills, including specific steps for repair and how to deliver a good apology instead of a bad one.
Explores our individual ability to choose for good or ill and how to know what we really want. Discusses commodification of the therapist-client relationship, being discerning when screening for a therapist, and practical support for your path to well-being.
Critiques the current state of radicalized education and the science-denying ethos permeating the academy, along with academic gatekeeping through canceling, shunning, and banning alternative narratives. Describes how therapy that subscribes to the postmodern and constructionist ethos and their outcrops can quickly fall into ethically fraught territory and what therapists can do to support their ethical duty of care in practice. Debunks common fallacies about therapy and explores controversial topics in therapy.