Overwhelmed: Coping With Life's Ups and Downs

by Nancy K. Schlossberg

Overview

Overwhelmed is a helpful, positive guide to dealing with the challenges-both expected and unexpected-that accompany change. More than a discussion of turning points and transitions, it offers real-life examples and specific guidelines for responding constructively to all kinds of changes, welcome and unwelcome. Nancy K. Schlossberg shows readers how to evaluate each change and determine its affects, how to assess personal strengths and the support systems brought to the change, and how to pinpoint the best coping strategies for the situation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780739100318
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	05/01/1999
Edition description:	Revised
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Nancy K. Schlossberg, author of seven books, is president of TransitionWorks, a consulting firm; Professor Emerita at the University of Maryland, College Park; and served as president of the National Career Development Association. She has been honored for her work by the American Psychological Association.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Acknowledgments
Chapter 2 Introduction
Part 3 Part I: APPROACHING CHANGE
Chapter 4 The Transition Process
Chapter 5 Transitions: Their Infinite Variety
Part 6 Part II: TAKING STOCK
Chapter 7 TAKING STOCK of Your Situation
Chapter 8 TAKING STOCK of Your Self and Supports
Chapter 9 TAKING STOCK of Your Strategies
Part 10 Part III: TAKING CHARGE
Chapter 11 Your Action Plan for Mastering Change
Chapter 12 TAKING CHARGE of Your Work Transitions
Chapter 13 Profiting from Change

What People are Saying About This

Ann McLaughlin

"For the overwhelmed woman, time given to reading Overwhelmed will be well spent. The author has a rare gift: insight combined with clear, crisp writing. Her prescription for coping is mature, sympathetic, and-best of all-realistic."
— Ann McLaughlin

Carol Tavris

"Schlossberg's work represents an important and enormously helpful alternative to old-fashioned 'stage theories.' When you think you are having an 'age-thirty (or whatever) crisis,' there's nothing much you can do. When you realize that it isn't being thirty, or forty, or sixty that matters, but what is happening in your life, you can learn to cope with inevitable changes-and even thrive on them. This warm, wise book shows how."
— Carol Tavris

Gerard I. Nierenberg

"Schlossberg comes to the subject with great professional competence and experience and presents readers with much-needed solutions."
— Gerard I. Nierenberg

George G. Higgins

"For better or worse, Americans are among the most mobile people in recorded history. Almost willy-nilly, they change their places of residence, occupations, schools, life styles, etc., at a dizzying pace. For those of us-and our name is legion-who at times feel overwhelmed by these unexpected and, more often than not, extremely painful disruptions in our hectic lives, Schlossberg's study of people in transition is just what the doctor ordered. She is a scholar in the best sense of the word, but wears her scholarship lightly, and her study is suffused with an appealing note of personal warmth and empathy too often lacking in works of this kind. I found her book instructive and personally very helpful, and I am pleased to recommend it enthusiatically."
— Rev. Msgr. George G. Higgins

Editorial Reviews

Schlossberg comes to the subject with great professional competence and experience and presents readers with much-needed solutions.

Gerard I. Nierenberg

For better or worse, Americans are among the most mobile people in recorded history. Almost willy-nilly, they change their places of residence, occupations, schools, life styles, etc., at a dizzying pace. For those of us-and our name is legion-who at times feel overwhelmed by these unexpected and, more often than not, extremely painful disruptions in our hectic lives, Schlossberg's study of people in transition is just what the doctor ordered. She is a scholar in the best sense of the word, but wears her scholarship lightly, and her study is suffused with an appealing note of personal warmth and empathy too often lacking in works of this kind. I found her book instructive and personally very helpful, and I am pleased to recommend it enthusiatically.

Rev. Msgr. George G. Higgins

For the overwhelmed woman, time given to reading Overwhelmed will be well spent. The author has a rare gift: insight combined with clear, crisp writing. Her prescription for coping is mature, sympathetic, and-best of all-realistic.

Ann McLaughlin

Schlossberg's work represents an important and enormously helpful alternative to old-fashioned 'stage theories.' When you think you are having an 'age-thirty (or whatever) crisis,' there's nothing much you can do. When you realize that it isn't being thirty, or forty, or sixty that matters, but what is happening in your life, you can learn to cope with inevitable changes-and even thrive on them. This warm, wise book shows how.

Carol Tavris

Schlossberg's work represents an important and enormously helpful alternative to old-fashioned 'stage theories.' When you think you are having an 'age-thirty (or whatever) crisis, ' there's nothing much you can do. When you realize that it isn't being thirty, or forty, or sixty that matters, but what is happening in your life, you can learn to cope with inevitable changes-and even thrive on them. This warm, wise book shows how.--Carol Tavris, Ph.D., author of Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion

For the overwhelmed woman, time given to reading Overwhelmed will be well spent. The author has a rare gift: insight combined with clear, crisp writing. Her prescription for coping is mature, sympathetic, and-best of all-realistic.--Ann McLaughlin, former Secretary of Labor

For better or worse, Americans are among the most mobile people in recorded history. Almost willy-nilly, they change their places of residence, occupations, schools, life styles, etc., at a dizzying pace. For those of us-and our name is legion-who at times feel overwhelmed by these unexpected and, more often than not, extremely painful disruptions in our hectic lives, Schlossberg's study of people in transition is just what the doctor ordered. She is a scholar in the best sense of the word, but wears her scholarship lightly, and her study is suffused with an appealing note of personal warmth and empathy too often lacking in works of this kind. I found her book instructive and personally very helpful, and I am pleased to recommend it enthusiatically.--Rev. Msgr. George G. Higgins, adjunct lecturer, Department of Theology, Catholic University of America

From the Publisher

Veteran true-crime/entertainment scribe Schwarz (Hollywood Confidential: How the Studios Beat the Mob at Their Own Game, 2007, etc.) charts the lurid life and times of a stripper. The burlesque star notorious for her association with Jack Ruby and mob boss Mickey Cohen was born Juanita Slusher to impoverished parents in a small Texas town. A precociously attractive child, she was regularly abused and molested by a string of neighbors and family members. (In a particularly horrific passage, Schwarz describes eight-year-old Juanita being put up as the jackpot in a pedophile poker game.) She ran away from home in her early teens, settling in Dallas. There she immediately fell prey to "the Capture," a tradition in which, Schwarz informs us, young girls were kidnapped, systematically raped and forced into prostitution, catering to the hypocritical Dallas establishment. After suffering in this role for a period, Juanita somehow managed to carve out a career as "Candy Barr," a burlesque dancer whose act was so transporting that she became the toast of Las Vegas and attracted Cohen's attention. Schwarz clearly presents this sensational material, but the book is one-dimensional. The endless litany of kidnappings, murder attempts, conspiracies, drug arrests, prison and rape after rape is hard to stomach and, after a while, hard to completely believe. Readers may raise eyebrows over the author's unquestioning acceptance of Barr's muddled, often half-remembered saga; they surely will wonder about his characterization of her as a brilliant artist. Quoted at length, she comes across as a rough-edged survivor and a self-mythologizer. Schwarz has written a compelling, upsetting screed against society'sdepraved exploitation of an innocent, but it lacks the rigor necessary for full-scale biography and social history. A punishing read, filled with righteous anger and fuzzy on details.

Kirkus Reviews

Nancy Schlossberg's Overwhelmed: Coping with Life's Ups and Downs is a combination self-help book and personal improvement tool-kit. Professor Schlossberg tells great stories—stories that teach and guide us to move from "overwhelmed" to "in control" as we face life's vicissitudes. What more could one ask for?

Bernard S. Arons