INSPIRATION FOR RECOVERY
Welcome to my website, I am so happy you have been guided to visit. This site has been developed for you to visit, relax a few minutes, and learn about my ideas and thoughts about healing and recovery issues. You can read a few articles, view my articles and books, and hopefully receive a bit of inner peace.
The Inspiration for Recovery page is where to go to receive words of spiritual support and positive affirmation as we journey together; to go to this page Click on the link to the left. Each of my books have their own page with reviews and excerpts, as well as, how to place an order. Click on each book cover on the navigation bar to view more information for each individual book, as well as, the Inspiration for Recovery page.
Writing and Counseling came easy to me in this lifetime. These two methods of touching people’s lives have brought me many loving and compassionate friends. I have been a Psychospiritual Therapist for over twenty-five years. Through this inspiring work, I have grown on all levels--body, mind, emotions and spirit. My patients have taught me amazing lessons. It has been said "we teach best what we most need to learn." This has been the case within my life. It has truly been an honor to share in the lives of so many in such an intimate fashion. Some of what I have learned through my work has been put into articles and books--some stays close in my heart to guide me personally.
This website brings to you information regarding my life's work in areas of Healing, Recovery, and Self-Empowerment.
If you would like to contact me directly, you may join me on my:
Introducing Dr. Sinor's newest book!
Coauthor Deborah McCloskey, CDAC
“ADDICTION: What’s Really Going On? is a red hot page-turner, it is like reading about trench warfare. The authors lift the veil and bring light to our nation’s underbelly. It is gritty and gripping as you enter into the lives of those who are like crabs trying to get out of a barrel. This is the horrifying tale of what happens when you go down the river of substance abuse and you don’t have a paddle. Hope comes when you realize that there are people in this world committed to unselfish service and who have unconditional love for others. All of the people who work in this field deserve a national service medal. Thank you Deborah and Barbara for showing us your humanity and for which we all can aspire.”
~~Anusha Amen-Ra, CNC, CEO,
Sacred Space Healing and Retreat Centers International, Inc.
"ADDICTION: What's Really Going On? is a truthful look into the world of Methadone Treatment with a mix of compassion and humor. It is a great read for those in the field of recovery and provides insight for those who do not understand the life of addiction and recovery. Much applause to Dr. Sinor for bringing her friend’s poignant story to life; a great tribute to Deborah McCloskey.”
~~Lori Carter-Runyon, Executive Director Hilltop Recovery Services
To Preorder in my Amazon Astore, Click Book
Cover
Book store Release date July 2009
A few Book Reviews from other books to pique your interest:
Click on the cover in the navigation bar for a recent Interview and more information about
Gifts From the Child Within or use this link to Reader Views Interviews:
"I ordered three of Dr. Sinor's books. Gifts From the Child Within seems right on target with the type of work I am working on. I am also writing a traumatic event journal that documents my age at the time, year, etc. Next, I will come up with the "messages" I internalized from each event, expand them into generalized viewpoints and, finally, rework my perceptions and create new affirmations. I guess the part that relates to your books are the messages I am still living with which are from the viewpoint of, for example, the seven year old me whose parents got divorced."
~~Cheryl Wittenberg
"I have finished reading Gifts From the Child Within and it worked wonders for me. I now know that I am kind, good, strong, smart and my spirituality means a lot to me. I have been able to reach inside of me and find myself and I am taking care of that little girl inside. I am now out of my depression and don’t allow my husband’s anger and control determine how I feel each day when I awaken. I awake happy and I welcome anything that comes my way. Your book changed my life... from the very beginning of your book, my life was being transformed. Finding the child within myself started me on the right path. I read everyday and it enlightens my life. I now awake happy to be alive... I smell the air, I feel light like a cloud…."
~~Jeri LaPatra
~~Cover Quote
*A brief note regarding my book, An Inspirational Guide for the Recovering Soul. This book was written to address all areas of recovery: post-traumatic stress from any origin, childhood abuse or trauma, chemical/alcohol addiction, recovery from current world affairs, or just as an inspirational boost for the soul. I am very pleased to bring these words to the public at this time when we all need inner direction and guidance on our path, especially those survivors and family members of both 911 and hurricane Katrina. If you know of someone who would benefit from receiving healing guidance and insight, please direct them toward this inspirational book.
Reviewed by Paige Lovitt for Reader Views
“Gifts From the Child Within is a recovery workbook written for both survivors of childhood abuse and the counselors that work with them. It helps readers discover how childhood trauma has caused emotional suffering in their lives today. For me, personally, it gave me a better understanding of how past events from my childhood had a tremendous impact upon my personal relationships today. The author Barbara Sinor, Ph.D. has had extensive professional experience in dealing in this area. She also has her own personal history of having been abused as a child. She uses self-disclosure to present some very powerful examples about her own healing. Both her personal and professional experiences validate her knowledge in this area.
Sinor offers a paradigm for empowering yourself or a client to resolve their problems by working with body, mind, emotions, and spirit. Sinor states, “Today there are signs that after a long and tumultuous courtship, spirituality and psychology may be finding common ground.” Connecting all of these aspects of oneself leads to a holistic approach to healing. She encourages the person in recovery to proceed at their own pace for healing. She does not believe that it should be forced upon anyone. She says, “Each individual must proceed through his\her life discoveries, or in therapeutic intervention at one’s own rate with one’s own sense of how things are and with one’s own resolutions.”
She teaches you how to get in touch with your inner child to release negative emotions and recreate childhood beliefs and experiences. To learn to live in the moment, you must learn to let go of the past. “You can learn to live in the present by releasing the retained hurt and not allowing it to direct your life. You can accomplish this by using self-empowerment, by acknowledging your personal power.”
There are seven key steps to the process: Acknowledgement; Self-Awareness; Meeting Your Child Within; Emotional Release Exercises; The Re-Creation Process; For-Giving; and Letting Go. Each step is fully explained in its own chapters. For deeper exploration, at the end of each chapter are thought-provoking child within exercises, affirmations, directions for autohypnosis and blank pages for journaling. By using these tools to re-create your past, you will be able to change your present reality and alter your future.
Gifts From the Child Within is an incredibly powerful healing tool. By using the exercises, I gained some incredible insight into how my past has tremendously affected me today. I learned things about myself that I had never realized before. I am truly grateful to Dr. Sinor for writing this incredible book. I also appreciate that she shared her own personal experiences. By doing so, I knew that she really could relate to what she was writing about."
Click on the book cover to read exciting details!
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MY NEXT WRITING PROJECT As many of you know, I put a “Call for Stories” out to the public to submit their personal addiction story. For two years, I received stories from those who wished to share their own experiences with drug and/or alcohol addiction. Many of the stories were submitted by friends or family of loved ones whose lives affected their own due to drug or alcohol addiction. I am now writing a book which will contain many of the stories I received. The title of the book is Tales of Addiction: Stories from the Soul. The stories in this book are not from the well known. They are not from celebrities you find in books like Moments of Clarity written by another celebrity. You will not find names like Richard Dreyfuss, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin or other such people whose faces we see but lives we know little. The stories shared in my book are true grit bleeding tales told by people you will never meet but whose words will haunt you for months, years maybe. The following article is about our nation’s growing crisis surrounding drug and alcohol addiction. Perhaps, these words will spark a Light within you to challenge your own addictions or challenge your loved ones. |
Addiction: Searching for Answers
Barbara Sinor, Ph.D.
We need to do more than just tell our troubles to God. God already knows. What we do need to learn to do is sit down with God and look for solutions: What actions to take, choices to make, directions to turn. In our conversation with God, we need to hear both the joyful and painful aspects of the situations in our lives. This is what I believe is 'turning it over.' Far from sitting and waiting for God to magically run our lives, turning it over involves turning in a different direction. Sometimes, that different direction is what allows us to discover and appreciate God in ways we never thought possible.
Father Leo Booth, Unity Newsletter July 3, 2003
If you are not familiar with our national addiction to drugs, statistics from SAMHSA’s (Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration) National Survey on Drug Use & Health (2007) show that there is an estimated 22.3 million persons with substance dependence or abuse within the past year. Whereas, only approximately, 2.4 million people received treatment at a specialty facility in 2007 and millions of others addicted to drugs and/or alcohol reported they needed treatment but did not receive help for their problem.
My motivation for writing Tales of Addiction: Stories from the Soul came when I completed ADDICTION: What’s Really Going On? Inside a Heroin Treatment Program which is coauthored with my friend and colleague Deborah McCloskey. It also comes from my personal experience of living with an alcoholic father and again in my adulthood while coping with an alcoholic son. While researching the field of drug and alcohol addiction, it has become clear that more effort is needed to fully understand the plight of our addiction population, as well as, how this population can help guide younger generations toward the freedom of sobriety through the sharing of their own personal stories.
In the case of alcohol, most alcoholics are men but the incidence of alcoholism in women has been increasing over the past thirty years as has adolescent drug and alcohol abuse. Women tend to become addicted to alcohol later in life than men and it is estimated that 1.8 million older women suffer from alcohol addiction. Scientific advances over the last quarter century have established that drug addiction is a chronic brain disease. Alcohol has widespread effects on the brain and can affect neurons (nerve cells), brain chemistry, and blood flow within the frontal lobes of the brain. Researchers are particularly interested in systems of neurotransmitters (chemical messengers) in the brain that are affected by alcohol. Some research is focusing on the way these neurotransmitters are employed in the brain after long-term alcohol use in order to adapt to the cravings and pain of withdrawal.
Key evidence for the view that drug addiction is a chronic brain disease consists of images of people’s brains taken during or following drug exposures. Brain imaging studies have provided information on individual drugs’ neurobiological effects; helped explain the causes and mechanisms of vulnerability to drug abuse; and yielded important insights into abusers’ subjective experiences and behaviors, including their struggles in recovery. (“NCE & Practice Perspectives,” April 2007)
A passionate advocate for addicts of all kinds is the director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) Dr. Nora Volkow. Volkow states that brain science is proving that we all have the potential to become addicted to something: drugs, alcohol, tobacco, sex, gambling, even food.
…researchers are learning that all addictions are more alike than was previously thought. Becoming an addict is more a matter of chance than we ever realized; mix the right combination of genetics and life experience, and anyone could find him or herself addicted to something. (“Newsweek” Dec/Jan 2006 Issue)
Dr. Volkow adds, “I have never met anyone who thought they would become addicted. They always say that this is the last thing they thought would happen to them… But this disease robs you of freewill. The challenge is to find a cure.”
Until a cure is discovered, let us proudly share our pain, struggles, failures and successes with one another in hopes that our children will not follow the addiction path. Whether sober, using, straight or in the process of recovery, everyone’s personal story can be a valuable insight for our younger generations, as well as, an awakening call to ourselves as adults.
**Tales of Addiction: Stories from the Soul expected publication 2010.
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Dr. Barbara Sinor
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