True to You: A Therapist's Guide to Stop Pleasing Others and Start Being Yourself

A Therapist's Guide to The Theory and Practice of Creating Authentic Relationships

When's the last time you felt as composed as you portray to your boss, family and friends? If there's a discord between the two, you're not alone. Humans are master pretenders--we often seem stronger, calmer and more mature than we really are, while the truth is we're full of doubts and self-criticism that pushes us to borrow reassurance from friends, beliefs from strangers on the internet, or attention that, in the moment, makes us feel successful, but leaves us totally hollow and burnt out.

True to You is a relatable self-help guide for readers who are affected by burnout and want to learn to live less focused on others' reactions and more confidently by their own principles. Like Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski meets Set Boundaries, Find Peace by Nedra Glover Tawwab, Dr. Smith uses examples from her own life and the lives of her therapy patients to explain how we borrow confidence, calmness, and beliefs from our relationships and offers solutions and steps for building a life with our own best-thinking.

Working with research rooted in Bowen family systems theory, Dr. Smith unpacks the science of our social nature, explaining why we're so focused on others and teaching readers how to interrupt anxious relationship patterns. If a reader has borrowed their parents' dreams in choosing their career path, Dr. Smith will show them how to redefine what a successful career means to them. If they only feel steady when they're overfunctioning for others, she'll help them learn how to let others be responsible for themselves. By the end of the book, readers will learn to build a new set of principles, more authentic relationships, and a solid sense of self in our very turbulent world.