What kind of supreme arrogance allows someone to call their book “The Last Self Help Book: that you will ever need.” It is a catchy title, isn’t it? Maybe it will grab people’s attention. And, what if, it happened to be true? Or at least some part of it turned out to be true? The whole book, in one way or another, is working on the same premise: Control physiological arousal levels so we can be relatively free of most mental illnesses, anxiety, depression and be happy. Dr. Miller’s experience and multiple studies quoted in the book find that depression almost always precedes periods of high tension and anxiety.
Chapter One defines stress and provides multiple ways to reduce tension/stress to be happy. A chapter on parenting that repeatedly shows how anger and harshness drastically compromises the potential for success in children; how to be nice to your kids and still get them to do whatever you want. Want to solve America’s drug problems? See chapter “Teen Rescue.” The Anger Management chapter tells you step-by-step how to turn yourself and other people in your world into nice guys (and girls or ladies). There are two chapters on how to use fantasy in therapy, harking back to millennia-old story-telling techniques.
In the chapter on “Pain” is tension reduction that will reduce pain levels. Ahhh, sleep. The many dangers of not getting enough sleep, are discussed in the Insomnia chapter, along with ways of adding to restful snooze times. Then there is the formula for stopping procrastination. Finally, a chapter on love and some secret reasons (yes, pheromones) why it happens. Dr. Miller wants to apologize in advance for the repetitions. You may read different variations of what the devices in lie detectors do, what we can learn from the measure of tension. Please look at these repetitions here and there, as a way to review some of the important lessons of tension control. It will often be the same advice in different words. Hopefully, repetition will help some concepts stick in your brain better. You may get tired of the “apologize” recommendation for so many different situations, especially anger management. But it turns out this is a very powerful defusing technique and allows you to spend zero time with obnoxious people.
This book includes and ties together information from multiple disciplines including anthropology, neuro-anatomy, various facets of Eastern religion including Zen, biology, physiology, biophysics, chemistry, social science, geology, archeology, meteorology, zoology, human biology, cell biology, psychology, astronomy and a few others. It is hoped that multiple perspectives from multiple disciplines will give a broad, and as inclusive as possible, perspective on humanity. $2.99 on Kindle.
