Loving Someone In Recovery

Beverly Berg, MFT, PhD, is a therapist and author whose work has been founded on cutting-edge therapies such as eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) and emotional freedom techniques (EFT). Stan Tatkin, PsyD, MFT, is the author of Wired for Love and Your Brain on Love, and coauthor of Love and War in Intimate Relationships. He has a clinical practice in Southern California.

“In a warm, comforting, and down-to-earth voice, Beverly Berg offers powerful, heartfelt help for couples and families grappling with addiction and recovery. Grounded in the latest neuroscience and illuminated by mindfulness, her book offers practical tools and advice for lasting love and happiness. Beverly writes with charm, humor, and the bone-deep understanding that comes from someone who has been there herself. This book is a remarkable achievement, at once compelling and profound, cheerful and wise.” – Rick Hanson, PhD, author of Buddha’s Brain and Hardwiring Happiness

“Loving Someone in Recovery is the real deal: insightful, comprehensive, funny, and beautifully written. It’s like having someone very wise walking beside you through rough terrain. And what a wonderful guide Beverly Berg is. Her knowledge comes through on every page. She speaks as a person who has been there, and as a clinician with years of experience helping real people put their lives back together. Anyone touched by a recovering person they care about needs this book. It has the power to change your life.” -Terrence Real, MSW, LCSW, author of The New Rules of Marriage: What You Need to Know to Make Marriage Work

“With a strong understanding of addiction recovery and many years of working with couples struggling in their intimate relationships, Beverly Berg masterfully addresses the codependency that undermines the potential for a happy coupleship. While she recognizes the complexity of the challenges, she also knows the hope that comes with the possibilities. With a delightful writing style, she offers her readers concrete, do-able tools, and gives them the skills needed to create a healthy and happy relationship. This is the seminal book for couples confronted with the recovery of addiction and the age-old issue of codependency that undermines the promises.” – Claudia Black, PhD, author of It Will Never Happen to Me: Changing Course and Deceived: Facing Sexual Betrayal, Lies and Secrets

“Using her experiences from working with her clients, Beverly Berg has written a moving and helpful book for all couples seeking an intimate and fulfilling relationship. Through her use of specific and clear tools, the reader has available the possibility of creating intimacy, as well as tools for addressing the conflicts that occur in relationships and moving toward a greater understanding of love and commitment. In my books, Coupleship and Understanding Codependency, these are tenants of a fulfilling relationship. Berg offers a whole new dimension for growing together, and separately, in a healthy relationship. I applaud her book, Loving Someone in Recovery.” – Sharon Wegscheider-Cruse, MA, author of Coupleship and Understanding Codependency

“Loving Someone in Recovery is a groundbreaking, practical, and brilliant guide. It will give heart and support to millions in recovery and help them to learn to love wisely at last.” – Jack Kornfield, PhD, best-selling author of A Path with Heart

“Beverly Berg touches upon some of the most sensitive and raw issues a human being can experience: the conflict, unpredictability, and `not-knowing’ of the recovery process. But she gives us a way home with kindness and counsel that help turn this into a redemptive and transformational experience. Enjoy the ride!” – Tim Ryan, United States congressman, co-chair of the House Caucus on Addiction and Recovery, and author of A Mindful Nation

“Beverly Berg writes with deep understanding and compassion. Filled with practical advice and exercises, this book is an invaluable resource for anyone in a relationship with someone in recovery.” -Sharon Salzberg, author of Real Happiness and Lovingkindness

“Loving Someone in Recovery is a pivotal book of our time for the recovering codependent. This book addresses the universal issues codependents and their addict partners struggle with after entering the world of recovery. With humor and straight-up talk, Beverly Berg, an expert in her field, provides answers to common questions and a clear path to follow. I strongly recommend this book!” – Gabrielle Bernstein, author of Spirit Junkie

“Beverly Berg outlines the framework of a recovering couple’s relationship in direct and clear ways that will bring a taste of reality to those struggling with codependence and recovery from addiction. Her descriptions of the entangled codependent relationship are clear and free from jargon; her guidance on moving into a more healthy, loving, and grounded connection are practical and to the point. A valuable guide for every couple facing the challenges of recovery.” – Kevin Griffin, author of One Breath at a Time: Buddhism and the Twelve Steps and A Burning Desire: Dharma God and the Path of Recovery

“If you are part of a recovering couple and looking for a handbook on how to transform the quality of relationship from dysfunction to healing and connection, you’ve found it. Grounded in deep personal and professional experience, combined with a warm and witty sense of humor, Beverly Berg lights the path for a better future for yourself and your relationship. Stop, listen, and soak up these powerful lessons!” – Elisha Goldstein, PhD, author of The Now Effect: How this Moment Can Change the Rest of Your Life and coauthor of A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook

“Beverly Berg writes about secure attachment and self-care with extraordinary intelligence, warmth, wit, and compassion in a book that will absolutely change your life. On every page of this profound and deeply meaningful book, she expertly guides her readers to an essential understanding about one of the most important tenets of any relationship: how to stay separate yet connected. Her brilliant insight and understanding of couple dynamics, along with the fascinating mindfulness exercises she provides, gives readers the tools to chip away at old, negative patterns and build a new way of interacting with their partners. Whether you are in recovery or are simply seeking to incorporate healthier responses to those you love, this book will impact all of your important relationships-including those with your parents, your children, and your co-workers-in the most positive ways. If this book had been available when my mother was still alive, I’m confident that it singlehandedly would have had the power to put our relationship back on track.” – Kathryn Stern, novelist and author of Another Song about the King

“If I had been able to read Loving Someone in Recovery thirty-three years ago, my wife would not have had to practice her serial forgiveness quite so much, and our marriage would have been saved from a lot of pain. Beverly Berg’s book is one that should be mandated for anyone who has issues of codependency and is in a committed partnership with a recovering addict. It will not only save you from unnecessary pain in your relationship, it will show you how to bring a new happiness and joy to it as well.” – Ted Klontz, PhD, author of The Financial Wisdom of Ebenezer Scrooge: 5 Principles to Transform Your Relationship with Money

“Loving Someone in Recovery is an excellent road map for couples to find their way back to the healthy and passionate relationship that they first envisioned. Berg’s book fills an enormous void in the current addiction literature by focusing on the often neglected codependent partner, and is fast becoming an essential resource in my practice. From heroin to Hagen-Dazs, this book addresses what has truncated so many of my patients’ therapeutic progress, and provides clear guidance in order to restore both their emotional and physical well-being.” – Louisa L. Williams, MS, DC, ND, naturopathic doctor and author of Radical Medicine

“Beverly Berg’s creative work with couples recovering from addiction is laced with strength, humor, compassion. Most significantly, reveals her lifelong dedication to this essential and compelling calling. Her comprehensive book, Loving Someone in Recovery, is a treasure chest of discoveries and insights; she shows us all how to be more true to who we really are, and in being so, to each other.” – Trudy Goodman, founding teacher at InsightLA and contributing author of Compassion and Wisdom in Psychotherapy, The Clinical Handbook of Mindfulness, and Mindfulness and Psychotherapy

“Personal, relevant, and important.  At Onsite we work daily with codependency and emotional trauma and see first-hand the dramatic effect these conditions have on relationships when untreated. Unfortunately far too many couples are torn apart by not having the tools Beverly provides in this must-read for the recovering couple. This book is an awakening to the behavioral health and addiction professional community, as this vital piece of the recovery process is often overlooked. Couples looking for more than another self-help surface guide on love and intimacy should take the time to invest in this fun, easy, and impactful resource.” -Miles Adcox, CEO of Onsite Workshops

“Recovery from addiction entails a multifaceted approach that often combines the twelve-step program and individual, family, and group therapies, as well as assessment and treatment of medical and psychiatric disorders. Beverly Berg’s treatment approach to helping couples in recovery from addiction fills an important gap and is the product of her extensive clinical and personal experience. Loving Someone in Recovery provides practical direction in helping recovering couples and should be incorporated as a standard component of addiction treatment. Our mutual patients have significantly accrued benefit from her insights and innovations, and I recommend this book to all couples dealing with the recovery process.” – Harvey Sternbach, MD, adult psychiatrist, addiction medicine specialist, clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA, and distinguished fellow at the American Psychiatric Association

“Beverly Berg is a truly talented and gifted psychotherapist. Loving Someone in Recovery is gifted with a combination of compassion, an immense fund of knowledge, and extensive clinical experience. Berg is an innovator and leader in the fields of couples therapy and chemical dependency. Berg’s passion for her clinical work has lead to creative breakthroughs and novel treatment approaches for improving intimacy, relationships, and quality of life for clients.” – Phillip J. Bowman, MD, MPH, diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and medical director at Bowman Medical Group

“I have worked with Beverly Berg for many years, and the breadth and depth of her theoretical knowledge is truly astounding. With this knowledge, Loving Someone in Recovery is able to skillfully work with clients utilizing a variety of techniques. Her work with couples in recovery, in particular, is masterful.” -Jeffrey Gandin, MD, diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and assistant clinical professor at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA

“I have trained, consulted, and collaborated with Beverly Berg for a number of years. I entrust clients to Beverly’s capable hands frequently and without the slightest hesitation. Loving Someone in Recovery is a book that offers the reader a rare combination of bright, innovative, and courageous thinking, combined with empathy, humor, and practical skills for recovering couples.” – Ralph Bruneau, PhD, MFT, director of Larchmont Associates and faculty professor at Antioch University, and board member of AAMFT-CALIFORNIA

“Berg provides a perfect blueprint for newly recovering couples to navigate uncharted territory. Not only will couples learn what to expect with every stage of recovery, but mindfulness meditation tools for coping with every stage. Berg even helps couples bring mindfulness to their sex lives! So often in therapy, we come to understand the whys? and how’s? of our behaviors, but to actually learn skills to cope and self-soothe is the real gold. In Berg’s book, each member of the recovering couple will learn more about him or herself and will also come to understand the partner more fully. This understanding, both for the self and the partner, has the potential to bring a new kind of compassion to a once strife-ridden relationship, moving a couple from hopelessness to renewed love. I am so excited to share Berg’s book with my clients!” – Elizabeth Hill, MFT, addiction professional Praise from Readers

“Growing up as a child in a family that coped with alcoholism and addiction, I became an expert in masterful, almost tyrannical control of my exterior world, coupled with a complete lack of any ability to create lasting and deeply experienced relationships, even with myself. It worked for almost forty years until I woke up one morning, literally, and felt that I was living my life as if going from scene to scene with no connection, no consciousness, and absolutely no joy. It was a dreadful recognition, but it led, very fortuitously, to Dr. Berg’s book.” – Jonathan H.

“Dr. Berg’s gift is showing you a clear and navigable road map to wherever it is you want to go in your life-even through what seem like insurmountable brambles of anger and resentment and weeds of loneliness and disillusionment. It is hard work and it can be emotionally exhausting, but it is a constant progression forward. I have implemented each of her steps and I have firmly moved from a place of profound sadness and resentment to one of conscious understanding of myself, my intentions, and the role I want to play in my own life. And I am happy. I recognize that I am on a lifelong path of understanding, but I am light-years from where I started-solely because of Dr. Berg. I simply lack the words to express the positive impact Dr. Berg’s book, Loving Someone in Recovery, has had upon my life.” – Carol E.

“Dr. Berg tells it like it is, that’s for sure. The recovering couple contains two addicts: the recovering partner and the one addicted to their drama! The point I really got from her book, Loving Someone in Recovery, was that to heal, it takes both of us to adapt to a new way of being. Thank you for the guide to a new life with my husband!” -Michelle H.

“With Loving Someone in Recovery, Beverly Berg has created a guidebook for couples moving past addiction, in a style that is both user-friendly and uniquely palpable. Here is a book that helps us identify with who we are, who our partner is, and who we are in our relationship with our partner. What makes Beverly’s method is so effective is that it combines mindful meditation with practical tools to help us cope with the day-to-day challenges of loving your recovering partner. The word `addict’ and the word `relationship’ apply to a broad spectrum-this book is applicable to anyone dealing with those realities.” – Rob B.

“Beverly Berg’s book, Loving Someone in Recovery is like having a secret weapon stashed in your bedside table. Just knowing it’s there when you need it can provide the comfort and confidence of having an owner’s manual to traverse the inevitable, disorienting, and dizzying terrain of healing from codependency and addiction issues as they arise in a committed recovering relationship. Dr. Berg has a fresh, insightful, tell-it-like-it-is approach in her book. She gives the person recovering from codependency, along with their recovering addict partner, the practical tools to make possible the formerly impossible: the capacity to love and connect in a completely new way.” – Jennifer G.

“As a fifty-six-year-old gay man who’s been in a relationship for thirty-something years, I’m grateful for the insight, humor, and practical advice Dr. Berg provides in her indispensable and immensely entertaining Loving Someone in Recovery. Thanks to Dr. Berg’s remarkably empowering book, I have been able to make significant strides in recovering from what I had considered insurmountable codependency issues. Highly recommended!” – Jeffrey S.