Recommended Reading

Billy E. Pennal, Ph.D.

The following books are some I feel will be helpful to people seeking ways to understand themselves better and to find ways to help themselves with different problems. At various times I have recommended one or more of them to my patients.

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Raising Children, A Common-Sense Psychological Guide to Behavior Modification, by Billy E. Pennal, Ph.D. Not yet published in book form-I am still looking for a publisher. The complete book is available from the above item on the web page. This book gives simple rules for understanding and changing the behavior in others-particularly the behavior of children.

The Dictionary of Magic Words: an Assertiveness Manual, by Billy E. Pennal, Ph.D. Published by Aardvark Publishers. Currently out of print. Copies are available from the author at $12.95 including book-rate shipping. If priority mail is desired for faster delivery, add $3.00 to the cost. Address requests for copies to Billy E. Pennal, Ph.D.; 3914 Laramie Drive; Granbury, TX 76049-7221.

If you are ruled by guilt-afraid to stand up for yourself... If you feel pressed, stressed, and put-upon-If you feel used by salesmen, coworkers, friends, your spouse, your mother-in-law... If you have a chronic case of the "shoulds"--You need to learn how to say "NO"... and lots more besides. This book of Magic Words will show you how.

This is a book on assertiveness. It tells you about three kinds of Magic Words:

  1. The Good Words--Use these to put YOU in control of your life.
  2. The Bad Words--Avoid these to stop being used and manipulated by other people.
  3. The Philosophical Words--Believe these to form the basis of good feelings about yourself and your relations with others.

Tough Love, by Phyllis and David York, and Ted Wachtel. Published by Doubleday, New York, Oct, 1982; Bantam Books edition Published Oct, 1983. Thousands of parents are finding new hope in dealing with rebellious teenagers through tough love, a self-help program that has grown to over 800 groups throughout the United States and Canada in less than 6 years. Now, for the first time in book form, the founders tell how tough love works.

I have recommended this book, and the concept of tough love, to many of my patients who were having problems in dealing with their children. Actually, although the book is aimed primarily at dealing with teens, the concepts apply to dealing with others regardless of their age.

"Tough love teaches you to face the crisis, take a stand, demand cooperation, and meet challenges. Tough love will help you develop new strengths so you can give your young person a sense of direction and support. You need tough love if you feel helpless and unable to cope with your teenagers' behavior or if you feel victimized by them, disappointed in yourself as a parent, guilty because you think you have done a rotten job and are frightened by the potential for violence in yourself and your children. (Remember, you have the right to a night's sleep without worrying where your kid is--or being awakened by a phone call from the police or a hospital or a drunk teenager who's stranded somewhere.)" Ann Landers.

"An effective way of uniting parents to square off against the youngsters' own powerful peer group that endorses drug-taking and rebelliousness." Time Magazine.

Pain Erasure the Bonnie Prudden Way, by Bonnie Prudden. Published by Ballantine Books, New York. Bonnie Prudden's revolutionary breakthrough in pain relief involves trigger points-tender areas where muscles have been damaged from falls, childhood ailments, poor posture, and the stresses of daily life. Requiring no special training or equipment, myotherapy is a natural, simple technique that can be performed in the home. Bonnie Prudden's step-by-step method has been hailed by doctors and patients across America for its extraordinary 95 percent success rate.

A lot of the chronic pain patients I used to see had trigger points in their muscles which were causing the pain. This includes many severe, chronic headaches as well as pain in other parts of the body. Pain caused by trigger points is usually referred to a different location than the actual trigger point itself. This pain can usually be improved or eliminated by simple pressure and massage of the trigger points. This book is a good one for the layman to use to learn just how to do it.

Myofascial Pain and Dysfunction: The Trigger Point Manual, by Janet G. Travell, M.D. and David G. Simons, M.D. Published by Williams & Wilkins, Baltimore. This book is the authoritative source for understanding and treatment of pain caused by trigger points. This book is intended for physicians and health-care providers involved in diagnosing and treating chronic pain. Although it is highly technical, it has a lot of understandable information about chronic pain and its treatment.

This book gave me my first "Ah Ha! understanding of the causes for much of the pain problems I was seeing in my patients and which I could not understand. A significant number of those patients were having referred pain from trigger points in their muscles and it was going undiagnosed by their physician. Since that time I have had considerable success in helping those patients by teaching them about trigger points and how to remove them.

Acute and Chronic Headaches: A Guide for the Primary Physician and the Headache Specialist, by James H. Francis, M.D. Published by Aardvark Publishers. Currently out of print. Copies are available from the author. Address requests for copies to James H. Francis, M.D.; P.O. Box 1030, Dora, AL 35062. Although this book is intended for the diagnosis and treatment of headaches by physicians, it also provides much helpful information, which is understandable by laymen, about the cause and treatment of headaches which are resistant to treatment,