Book Review: Bounce: Living the Resilient Life...

I'm currently reading Robert J Wicks' new book, Bounce: Living the Resilient Life and am delighted to recommend it to you. (It is so new that the copyright by Oxford University Press is 2010!).

This book, like The Resilient Clinician (2008) and Overcoming Stress in Medical and Nursing Practice (2006), focuses upon transforming stressful situations into opportunities to live a more meaningful, self-aware and compassionate life. It offers principles and techniques of self awareness, stillness, mindfulness, daily debriefing and self care to everyone, not just the professional caregivers for whom Dr Wicks has written for over 30 years.

The table of contents looks like this:

Have a Life!: An Introduction

Navigating Life's Rough Waters: Riding the Crest of Chronic and Acute Stress

Personal Renewal: Creating and Tailoring Your Own Self-Care Protocol

A Powerful Healing Combination: Friendship, Resilience & Compassion

The First Steps Toward Self-Knowledge: Debriefing Yourself

Solitude, Silence & Mindfulness: Centering Yourself In a Driven World

The Simple Care of a Hopeful Heart: An Epilogue

And if that's not enough inducement to find a copy, it is short, well written, easy-to-read and, more than anything, useful, practical and profoundly compassionate. As the friend who recommended Bounce to me said, one reads this book and feels known and understood.

Currently a professor at Loyola University in Maryland, Dr Wicks is a recognized expert in preventing secondary traumatic stress and has been involved in debriefing relief workers from the Rwandan civil war and health care professionals caring for multiple trauma survivors from the war in Iraq.

Enjoy!