Create the Life You Need!

Making relationships function more successfully calls for skills that many of us find do not come easily. What these skills are, and the ways we can fit them into our daily lives, are lessons Dr. Charles Franklin has learned over many years of therapeutic interactions with a wide range of people and their problems.

Now, in Create the Life You Need! he shares the benefits of his lifetime of healing work and presents the results in a clear style and reader-friendly format that maximizes the impact of this vital information.

Over his career, Dr. Franklin has provided treatment for a broad spectrum of patients and clients in areas as varied as marriage and family counseling, helping veterans with severe PTSD, treating victims of early childhood trauma, and providing mental health services after major disasters. In addition, he enhances the valuable lessons of Create the Life You Need! with examples of situations and relationships in his own life that have yielded better ways to deal with the problems we all must face.

First, Dr. Franklin wisely tells us, we must learn to know ourselves: What are the inescapable realities built into our human existence, and what opportunities does life nevertheless give us to change and grow?

Then, once we realize and accept this distinction, the world outside awaits us! This is the world Sartre dreaded but one, as Dr. Franklin makes clear, that can offer unbounded potential for happiness, fulfillment, and joy. The sources are all around us: our friends, family and neighbors; those we date and dine with, work with and wed-and then our children, whom we raise to be the adults we hope we can be ourselves.

None of this is easy. Communication takes work; handling emotions takes work; relationships take work; life takes work. But through challenge-and sometimes through crisis-come change and achievement. Life is dynamic, not static; the universe is always evolving. If we learn, we will grow.

In this book, the culmination of his professional and personal experiences, Dr. Franklin does more than just lay down an outline to accomplish our goals. He spells out in step-by-step detail exactly how we can master the essential skills to blend our own lives successfully with the world around us.

The focus for Dr. Franklin has always been giving, and his many years as a therapist and teacher have made possible a career filled with lessons learned and shared.