Customer Reviews

The Emotional Toolkit: Seven Power-Skills to Nail Your Bad Feelings

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Book Review: The Emotional Toolkit - Seven Power-Skills to Nail Your Bad Feelings, by Darlene Mininni, Ph.D., St. Martin's Press.

Managing emotion has never been a part of school curriculum, nor has it been a regular part of parenting. Parents learn about managing emotion from their parents in a disorganized anecdotal fashion teased out by trial and error. A particularly adverturous child may have many opportunities for learning, while a child that is shy and/or particularly compliant has relatively few. The family style of emotion management is based on a coping method passed on informally from generation to generation by word of mouth. Our modern culture lacks the traditional rites of passage that help ensure we learn the skills of adulthood. Yet emotion management is the single most important skill that determines our social and economic success and ability to maintain our mental health. As a psychotherapist over the past 28 years, I have found that a major part of what I do is educating people on what their emotions mean and how to cope with them.

I recently had the good fortune of obtaining a copy of Dr. Darlene Mininni's book, The Emotional Tookit. This book is well organized and chock full of most every tool I can think of that will prepare the average person for managing the emotional rollercoaster of adulthood in a complicated world. Although written particularly for women using many real life examples from the author's clinical experience, the skills are just as applicable to men and simple enough to be incorporated in a pre-teen training curriculum. The skills are described in an easy to understand way with many examples of how they can be applied in situations we are all familar with. I greatly appreciate this book and will recommend it to my clients.

This is the best self-help book I ever read. It helped me understand my feelings in a completely new way. When I'm in a bad mood, I know how to get rid of it quickly. It's amazing. Reading her book is like listening to an incredibly smart and helpful girlfriend. I saw Dr. Mininni speak last week, and was mesmerized. She's brilliant, but knows how to talk to everyday women, because she is one. I just ordered copies of the book as gifts for my friends and family. Get this book, and you won't be disappointed.

This is the book so many women have been waiting for! It's a readable, engaging, engrossing, and incredibly helpful look at how we can better manage our emotions. Anyone who has ever felt helpless in the grip of sadness, anger, depression, or a host of other negative feelings can benefit from Dr. Mininni's smart strategies.

On a personal level, this book empowered me to both acknowledge the validity of my emotions and to find ways to actively manage them rather than letting them run my life. Dr. Mininni offers techniques that can work with every personality type, including some that I now incorporate into my daily routines. I found her sections on how to analyze your feelings by paying attention to your body signals to be especially helpful, since we often mask painful feelings beneath other emotions.

In short, The Emotional Toolkit is an outstanding choice for anyone looking to understand and manage feelings and emotions. I can't recommend it highly enough.

For years I have bottled up my emotions, afraid to feel them or been told I wasn't supposed to feel a certain way. As a result, I often experienced physical ailments. After reading Dr. Mininni's toolkit, I realized that I am better able to read my body's reaction and understand the feelings. By bringing them to the surface I now know what tools are needed to handle them. The Emotional Toolkit is a must read for all women, particularly young adults who can hold on to this toolkit as they emerge into well rounded young women.

The Emotional Toolkit is a gift you should give yourself. You won't be the same after you have read it. As a therapist I have recommended many books to my clients and friends. This is one of the very best because woman feel heard by it and use it.

The examples, stories and guides are easy to relate to. You'll have a new understanding of yourself which is reassuringly validating and a perspective of your emotions which is surprisingly kind. If you have ever struggled with moods that last too long, or find yourself confused about how arelationship turned out, you will be clearer about yourself by the time you have finished one chapter. Of all the books I have ever read on understanding your feelings, this is the only one I felt was talking directly to me. I plan to buy several copies as gifts for my best girlfriends.

What a great book! As a medical doctor, I am aware of the many issues that all women face. This is a book that I have been looking for and I recommend it to friends, family and patients. Dr. Mininni's book gives women the tools and skills to solve the common issues we face. She provides real-life cases which she has backed up with excellent research and tools. She is an excellent writer and she clearly understands women (and men). Her practical approach has something that will work for everyone. I give this book and her approach my highest recommendation!

I wish I had this book in my 20's! Dr. Mininni explains so many things that women feel in plain english, and suddenly, all the wrenching and confusing emotional states that women experience make sense. I feel more empowered to control my own emotions now, instead of letting them control me. I highly recommend this book to any woman.......we have all wondered what on earth was going on with us at some time or another!

Very helpful and practical - provides useable and useful actions and concrete things to do! Very worthwhile

I wish I would have had this book when my children were growing up. I have already put into practice some of the strategies and shared them with my third grade girls. It's amazing how effective they are when dealing with the challenges little girls deal with when entering the first stages of puberty. My hat is off to Dr, Mininni.

Mininni's new book is a breath of fresh air in the self-help world. A book of action that offers women a way to self-empower themselves in dealing with their emotions.

The tools in the toolkit are what tools should be: simple to use and useful. You won't ever have to worry about needing a Bandaid again.