cover image Clarity: Ten Proven Strategies to Transform Your Life

Clarity: Ten Proven Strategies to Transform Your Life

Diane Altomare. SelectBooks, $16.95 trade paper (224p) ISBN 978-1-59079-358-9

Altomare, a life coach, provides a 10-week timetable for a system of self-empowerment centered around processing repressed emotions or traumas. She explains the importance of psychological transference, emotional triggers, and "unconditional love and acceptance" for one's inner child. She encourages forgiving past wrongs in order to get over resentment and abandoning false or outdated beliefs that limit growth and potential. Meditation exercises guide readers to deeply explore their emotions by listening to these feelings' distinct "voices" and taking action to "honor" and "acknowledge" them. This section culminates with instructions on using "positive transference" to harness valuable inner resources. Many lessons are presented through retellings of Altomare's cases, which have included a mother directing misplaced frustrations on her child, a woman plagued by abandonment issues from an absentee father, and another feeling trapped in a toxic marriage to a cheating husband. Altomare also shares her own experience of growing up with an alcoholic family member and being consumed by feelings of inadequacy, fear, and hyper-vigilance, and later of developing a new, positive view of the world. The mission may seem simple%E2%80%94learn to appropriately feel your feelings%E2%80%94but as Altomare shows in her many examples, doing so could be critical for those who feel road-blocked by the past. (Mar.)