Review: Already Free by Bruce Tift

Already Free by Bruce Tift was recommended by a good friend of mine mid-last year (I’m a little behind with my reviews). Bruce Tift is a psychotherapist who practices Buddhism and brilliantly portrays how two complement each other.
It bounces between the approaches psychotherapy would take toward challenges and the Buddhist perspective, covering all manner of topics including our thought patterns around relationships and decision-making. Bruce uses fascinating anecdotes to help portray his ideas. I think an aspect I found most fascinating was “embodied awareness”, sitting in the sensations of a thought or emotion.

All in all, it’s really jolly good, so I’m just going to leave you with a bunch of quotes.

“Its actually when we try to avoid our feelings that we tend to “solidify” them and make them appear significant” – Bruce Tift

“Although we look like adults, and have the adult capacities in other parts of our lives, in the arena of intimacy, we’re like a child trying to have a relationship with another child”- Bruce Tift

“As we cooperate with ourselves, we cooperate with life, and strangely enough, we begin to experience that life is cooperating with us”- Bruce Tift

“If I stay, I’ll be disturbed. If I move on, I’ll be disturbed” Once we are clear that any choice we make will never represent all of our very real and valid feelings, we can make decisions based on criteria other than the avoidance of disturbance”- Bruce Tift

“We approach neurosis not as “wrong” but as our best out-of-date effort to take care of ourselves”- Bruce Tift

“We may discover that the most satisfying life is one that is fully lived, rather than one in which we’ve accumulated the most positive experiences”- Bruce Tift