Strategic Book Marketing Official Blog

On Gratitude is not as earth shattering as the patches and gum were, but if you’ve gotten over the chemical addiction to nicotine, you will find that the things the addiction were masking surface to be healed. That is when real recovery begins. The breakthrough is coming to terms with the fact that there is a lot of work that needs to be done in recovery—spiritual, emotional, psychological and behavioral. On Gratitude begins to tackle that.

Photo recovery art was how I began to overcome decades of using nicotine. There were a lot of beliefs to challenge—I also learned to be grateful. There were tasks in adolescence I had to relearn from Erik Erikson’s 5th Stage of Development “Identity v Role Confusion.” I missed those tasks because of cigarettes.

I cannot peddle the Promised Land of Consciousness if you quit. Recovery is not free of discomfort. There is work. There are also a lot of adventures—but you have to work at creating them. It is tougher if you have a mental illness. You make your peace with it and when there’s discomfort you leave it alone instead of fueling urges with more “I can’t have” and “I must not.”

It is a gift if you are creative and are overcoming an addiction—as I had invented photo recovery art and had more fun.
I also learned that without things like gratitude, creativity, humor, love, responsibility, people, integrity and the ability to challenge thinking errors and addictive logic that recovery is painful. The internal things are what sustain us in recovery. It is not material rewards. However reward is important. If the rewards are your internal state of well-being, recovery will be more peaceful.

On Gratitude deals with the things like errors in logic with everyday things. I had already quit for 3 years before writing this book; so the 2+ years after recovery were more about repairing the health and emotional damage done by 39 years of smoking. These were issues that emerged in the 4th year of recovery for me. Everyone’s timetables and issues may be quite different with similar themes. The point is smoking had covered up a lot of problems.

What will work for other smokers might be different. The important thing is to stay creative and open to new ideas and new ways of seeing or doing things. Having only one way of viewing the world as a smoker limited a lot of what I did as a smoker and that changed in recovery when I became aware and open to new ways of experiencing things.
I invite you to visit Jeannie’s website in the box below. Here you will find a link to the publisher of her book On Gratitude, see a recovery slideshow, see the release announcement and a few photographs and best of all the trailer for the book On Gratitude put together by the video editing department at Strategic.

On Gratitude: The Journey A Photo Recovery Book Part 8 by Jean Marie Manthei, MA, LPC, CACIII ISBN 978-1-60693-755-6 Publisher: Eloquent Books 2010

This might be a personal breakthrough more than a scientific breakthrough will control groups.

The breakthrough for Jean Marie Manthei came through hard work, religious adherence to her meds and a good, solid education—B.A. in psychology and communication in 1973 and a M.A. in Counseling and Human Services in 1992 from University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and decades of treatment:

The author also wrote a breakthrough book On Gratitude. She has written a whole series since 2005—part of a continuing saga of the journey to be free of tobacco.

Jeannie focused a lot of her efforts on being creative and prosocial; not being content to be on disability. She did get off disability in 1997 when she proved she could work. Despite a lot of destructive experiences hurled in her path, Jeannie had to overcome many difficulties to get where she is.

She has become well-respected in her field of on her own merit. On Gratitude and her work in the field since 1993 can attest to this.

It might be a breakthrough whenever a patient like Jeannie gets through all this treatment and goes through this much school. Although she has had classic symptoms of schizophrenia this author used cognitive behavioral tools to cope and manage her illness as well as ones used for quitting tobacco. Gratitude, humor and creativity were used to cope and manage this illness. You could not order all patients to “Be creative or you won’t get well”; “Laugh or you won’t get well”; “Be thankful or else” “Challenge Pluto or Coyote’s addictive or psychotic logic or you will forever stay in Hades” but that would be a paradoxical double bind. These things in of themselves work because they are spontaneous and not a prescription. None of this is an exact science with control groups that turn hypotheses to facts. It is not a scientific breakthrough in that sense. However it is an emotional and psychological and spiritual breakthrough that most people recovering from addictions or in remission from mental illness will find themselves breaking through to end their addictions. It may come in different forms, but the breakthrough is the same: hardwork!! A good sense of humor. Honesty and creativity and love. Can you measure these psychiatric breakthroughs? —well if you are neurotic enough or just plain silly. But there comes a point in all academia when you have to trust your senses and intuition and heart.
Something clicked for Jeannie and part of that was hard work and a lot of treatment, honesty, excellent teachers and meaningful work and adhering to her medications.

I invite you to visit Jeannie’s website in the box below. Here you will find a link to the publisher of her book On Gratitude, see a recovery slideshow, see the release announcement and a few photographs and best of all the trailer for the book On Gratitude put together by the video editing department at Strategic.

On Gratitude: The Journey A Photo Recovery Book Part 8 by Jean Marie Manthei, MA, LPC, CACIII ISBN 978-1-60693-755-6 Publisher: Eloquent Books 2010

On Gratitude and the other works in this series are applied Ivory Tower knowledge. You can tell the author has the skill to quote all the classics in the field with APA style if she would need to, but this work is an application of critical thinking skills. Plus it’s original.

You need to see this for yourself. There’s 148 pages of large photos with good text. This is all likable because you don’t have to read tomes or volumes of this material. It doesn’t require footnotes and quotations—it isn’t scholarly in that sense of the word—it is scholarly in terms of its unique approach. It is easy on the eyes with nice photographs and good thought that doesn’t have page after page of single spaced text all the way down the page. So if you want something thoughtful and deep and jammed into a couple of sentences on each page that makes you think—well this is for you. You can be thankful that this author is deep in fewer words and phrases. There is plenty to make you think for weeks.
As a masterpiece in the field of addictions it speaks to the emotional and academic needs for change with respect to addiction. This is somehow tied together with gratitude, a more spiritual aspect. And as she says—if you are grateful it is easier to be creative than if you’re hurting or angry.

In this book the author responds to things one would be more likely to tackle in the 4th year of recovery after behavior issues have long since been mastered. In that sense it offers hope.
Her other works have not been published yet. If this is any indication of skill and power of her pen this may very well be a significant contribution to the field of addictions that has not been seen in the scholarly academia and emotional work of the recovery field.

I invite you to visit Jeannie’s website in the box below. Here you will find a link to the publisher of her book On Gratitude, see a recovery slideshow, see the release announcement and a few photographs and best of all the trailer for the book On Gratitude put together by the video editing department at Strategic.
On Gratitude: The Journey A Photo Recovery Book Part 8 by Jean Marie Manthei, MA, LPC, CACIII ISBN 978-1-60693-755-6

Recovery art is art that comes from recovery from addictions. This makes such work important for two reasons: one it comes from personal journeys back from the Hades of addiction where Pluto rules with his cunning, baffling and powerful logic; second, such work will be done by authors and artists that have something to say—so pay attention.

If such an author, photog or other type of artist has a disability and journeyed back from Hades they’re probably not lying to you—But see for yourself. Such an author I got to know as Jean Marie Manthei, MA, LPC, CACIII. This author happens to have schizophrenia—and as long as she is on her medications you would not notice that she is a 293 or any more odd than anyone else in the general population.

Besides having a disability with that label, Jeannie has quit smoking—a smoking hobby that spanned 39 years since the age of 13. After quitting in 2002 she started to pick up her old hobby of photography. She found she could write deep little recovery thoughts underneath pictures that could convey this remarkable journey out of Hades and Pluto’s grips. Thus recovery art was born. This also allowed her to walk her talk in this field. The art was practical, responsible and positive instead of destructive and negative and hostile. Important. This became a way to heal, grow, pray and love.

I invite you to visit Jeannie’s website in the box below. Here you will find a link to the publisher of her book On Gratitude, see a recovery slideshow, see the release announcement and a few photographs and best of all the trailer for the book On Gratitude put together by the video editing department at Strategic.

On Gratitude: The Journey A Photo Recovery Book Part 8 by Jean Marie Manthei, MA, LPC, CACIII ISBN 978-1-60693-755-6 Publisher: Eloquent Books 2010

“Today I bought a box with a sun painted on it. In my smoking days this box might have held 80 hand rolled cigarettes. I did not get this diagnosis of schizophrenia for nothing. If I buy a $96 box with a sun on it and I’m struggling financially—that is schizophrenic.”

On Gratitude is a new genre of art—photo recovery art—art that comes out of recovery from an addiction and mental illness.

The author found a way to express thoughts related to recovery from tobacco addiction with photographs.
This book is 148 pages with large B&W photos on each page accompanied by thoughts related to serious issues in recovery.

As a new genre this may be a new way to go to deeper levels of consciousness. It is healing and becomes art that is responsible.

On Gratitude will give you a different perspective on schizophrenia and professionals with disabilities. This may change how you view therapy and the people who give it or get it. The author is schizophrenic and managed to quit this 39 year hobby.

She went back to graduate school in 1988 and received her master’s degree in 1992. She has worked in the chemical dependency field since 1993. Part of staying in this field meant no longer smoking cigarettes. “How can you tell clients to cope with anger or stress if you are coping with it by smoking 80 cigarettes a day?” Being a counselor who happens to have a disability meant changing beliefs she had about her own illness and how to cope with it.
It is remarkable and yet it is not that you can be a 293 (schizophrenic) and get through college and graduate school and become a Licensed Professional Counselor and a Certified Drug and Alcohol Counselor III. It is more remarkable to quit smoking with this illness than get through all this education. This took an incredible amount treatment as well as staying on her medications and getting good supervision. Jean-Marie feels that if you do some self-care like that you don’t notice you’re on medications and will function like most other people and possibly better in some cases.
Hopefully Jean Marie will publish more of her work in this series. The interesting distraction here is that Jean Marie happens to be a counselor with a disability and that may at first be more intriguing than her work which you will later learn is important and practical in itself. On Gratitude is an important contribution. It is also a feather in the cap of persons with disabilities who achieve responsibly.

I invite you to visit Jeannie’s website in the box below. Here you will find a link to the publisher of her book On Gratitude, see a recovery slideshow, see the release announcement and a few photographs and best of all the trailer for the book On Gratitude put together by the video editing department at Strategic.

On Gratitude: The Journey A Photo Recovery Book Part 8 by Jean Marie Manthei, MA, LPC, CACIII ISBN 978-1-60693-755-6 Publisher: Eloquent Books 2010