Boundaries For Your Soul: How to Turn Your Overwhelming Thoughts and Feelings into Your Greatest Allies, by Alison Cook and Kimberly Miller is an excellent resource for those who seek to help others and for those who struggle with negative feelings and thoughts.

One of our biggest problems is boundary setting and allowing others to invade our hidden boundaries. This book is written from a Christian perspective on mental and emotional well being and they use what is called an IFS Model (Internal Family Systems).

I found the book to be an excellent resource. The authors main objective is to help the readers use their emotions / feelings / thoughts in ways which are positive, rather than reject and repress what they are feeling.

They give stories, quizzes, and move through the 5 Steps to help the reader move forward. There are many practical suggestions in this book. There are 3 sections, an introduction, an analysis of the 5 steps, and a more specific way to help those who are struggling with more specific issues, such as, anger, fear and anxiety, sadness, envy and desire, guilt and shame.

Overall, Im not big on self help books, but I found this to be an excellent resource, easy to read and not overly technical.

I received this book from booklookbloggers in exchange for an honest review.

Boundaries For Your Soul is a helpful read on setting healthy boundaries on emotions. The authors point focus: instead of denying your emotions or letting them run your life, deal with them in constructive ways. The authors suggest a 5-part strategy for dealing with the issue:

1. Focus: Acknowledge the wayward emotion you are struggling with dont deny or be controlled by it. Instead, admit and deal with it.

2. Befriend: Admit you have something within you that you dont like. Then experience cognitive, spiritual, and emotional transformation. The authors, like in other chapters of the book, offer practical suggestions for doing so.

3. Invite: Surrender yourself to Jesus Christ and let Him take charge and heal you. Self-effort in our flesh wont work!

4. Unburden: Unload the belief/feeling/physical burden onto Jesus and people who care for you.

5. Integrate: Dealing with the conflicting parts of your personality appropriately.

The authors also address how to work with emotions you may struggle with: guilt, anger, fear, envy, etc. Throughout the book are several practical suggestions for addressing these issues. The title is very readable and smoothly transitions from topic to topic. Will be a very helpful future reference for constructively dealing with emotions. Good read. I was given a review copy by BookLook Bloggers in exchange for a fair review.

I have read many books on external boundaries and found them very beneficial. I was intrigued by the idea of establishing internal boundaries. It might offer help for runaway thoughts and feelings.

The authors present a Christian approach to the Internal Family Systems Model of Therapy, integrating it with boundaries concepts. The first third of the book concentrates of helping us understand the parts of our souls, how to identify the parts that need care, and how we can be Spirit-led. The authors write, "The focus of this book is to help you access the Spirit of God abiding in your soul and to encourage you to invite his Spirit to be near those parts of your soul needing care." (722/4229)

The next part of the book outlines the five part strategy the authors prescribe to do a you-turn and bring the parts of the soul under the leadership of the Spirit-led self. They include focus on an overwhelming part of yourself, befriend this part you don't like, invite Jesus to draw near, unburden this weary part, and finally, integrate it into your internal team of rivals. Specific instructions are given as well as personal examples from their counseling experiences as to how the technique works.

The authors address specific issues in the last third of the book, such as anger, fear, perfectionism, etc. Readers are taken through the five steps for each issue, including an example from the authors' counseling experiences. The authors even point out good aspects of each of these emotions generally thought to be detrimental. Each can be put to good use. There is even a chapter for strategy when the other person has the challenging soul issues.

I think this book has great personal potential. It reminds me of the healing of memories technique that was popular in the Christian realm decades ago. Imagining Jesus coming into the situation is essential. The successful examples in the text are of people doing the imagining as they are directed by one of the authors. How well this process can work by reading a book may be very different. I tried to go through a few of their exercises but my scientifically trained mind had difficulty with the whole imagining Jesus idea.

I do recommend this book to readers who desire to deal with parts of their souls and establish soul integration. Just know there will be much work on the part of the reader required. Just reading the text will not create the healing. Reading this book and going through the suggested exercises might be quite a journey. It may be most helpful to read this book with a trusted friend who can help with the process.

I received a complimentary egalley of this book from the publisher. My comments are an independent and honest review.

Published by: Nelson Books

Written by: Alison Cook, PhD and Kimberley Miller, MTh, LMFT

I like to read books that can help me grow and deal with issues in my life. I was excited to read and review Boundaries for Your Soul because I thought it might be a book that would help me to grow.

Boundaries for Your Soul: How to Turn Your Overwhelming Thoughts and Feelings into Your Greatest Allies - By: Alison Cook PhD, Kimberly, Miller MTh LMFT

Who This Book is For:

This book is meant to help people deal with anxiety, shame, and other emotions that mess with a person's life. Those who are in need of healing for their souls can grow through the reading of this book.

What I liked:

I appreciated the stories that are mixed into this book of real life people and the ways that they changed.

I like how the different parts of this book are focused on different issues.

There are a few little tidbits and quotes that I got from this book that I feel will help me change my life in a positive way.

What I didn't like:

I felt like there was just something missing with this book and it wasn't as helpful as I wanted it to be.

This is a little boring and hard to get through/the chapters are a little long.

My conclusion:

Overall, I thought this book was interesting.

I give Boundaries for Your Soul 4 out of 5 stars.

I received this book free to review from BookLook. The opinions expressed in this review are my true thoughts and feeling regarding this book. I am disclosing this information in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255.

Boundaries For Your Soul

By Alison Cook, PhD and Kimberly Miller, MTh, LMFT.

This 171 page book encourages someone to look at various aspects of his/herself and see how they all come into play in life. The author suggests that the emotions we experience are for a good cause, and we should try to find out the message that those emotions are passing to us. We can then see that certain parts of ourselves (our souls) are trying to protect us and giving us warnings about various situations.

I thought it was a good way of looking at the chaotic sides of our lives and trying to learn from them, appreciating that they are all trying to protect us from further pain as perceived by them.

The book deals with emotions such as anger, fear, anxiety, sadness, envy and desire, guilt and shame among others. The author encourages the reader to acknowledge what's going on, appreciate that it's for the reader's own good, give the burden to the Lord and then move ahead positively from there.

This is a book to read slowly as one applies the lessons learnt. The book also comes highly recommended by other authors, pastors and lead practitioners in various related fields.