Boundaries for Your Soul

Posted October 3, 2018 by thebeccafiles in / 3 Comments

Title: Boundaries for Your Soul: How to Turn Your Overwhelming Thoughts and Feelings into Your Greatest Allies
Author: Alison Cook, PhD & Kimberly Miller, MTh LMFT
Series: N/A
Genre: Christian Living/Personal Growth
Publishing Date: June 26, 2018

About the Book:

Do your emotions control you or do you control your emotions? Many people let guilt, anger, or self-criticism dominate their lives and negatively affect their relationships. Boundaries for Your Soul shows you how to calm the chaos within. This groundbreaking approach will help you:

know what to do when you feel overwhelmed,understand your guilt, anxiety, sadness, and fear,welcome God into the troubling parts of your soul,and move from doubt and conflict to confidence and peace.Boundaries for Your Soul includes relatable anecdotes, helpful exercises, an engaging quiz, and opportunities for personal reflection. Gathering the wisdom from the authors’ twenty-five years of combined advanced education, biblical studies, and clinical practice, this book will set you on a journey to become the loving, authentic, joyful person you were created to be.

My Review:

While I didn’t dislike this book, I am also unsure of how I really felt about it. One review I read stated “I am a little divided about this book. Some of it seemed strangely weird to me and some of it made sense. And some of those things were the same things. I think I could come across here as being very confused and there would be some truth there as well.” (You can see the full review HERE). That pretty much sums up my sentiments as well.

The most confusing aspect of the book for me was the concept of “befriending” the parts of your soul with a negative connotation to them (ex: anger, fear, sadness, etc). The authors tried to make clear that my interpretation of what that would mean is inaccurate, but I’m not sure I understand their own definitions either. I also feel like that confusion caused me to struggle in understanding other pieces of the book as well.

What I did like in this book however, was the concept that we should’t “bottle up” our pain throughout our lives. While it can be painful to experience and process our emotions, they can help us to be better functioning people in the world. I liked the concept of balance for handling the emotions. If we are too close to them, they can swallow us up, but if we are too far removed from them then we won’t be able to overcome them either. The authors propose that there is a reason for each of our emotions, and sometimes they aren’t even what we initially think they are. If we aren’t willing to think about and process our pain, it will continue to hold us in bondage.

My recommendation for this book would be for readers who have at least some level of understanding of psychology. I don’t think this book said anything really inaccurate, I simply struggled in understanding the full content. I think if I was able to grasp what the authors were trying to say more, I would have really liked this book a lot more.

*I received a complimentary copy of this book from BookLook Bloggers. I was not required to give a positive review. Thoughts and opinions expressed are mine alone.