Language: Slovenian
Publisher: Mladinska knjiga d.d.
Pages: 296.
Hardcover
Date of issue: 10.10.2023
Prisoners of the Past
How to Recover from Trauma
In the book, the author tried to get closer to her loyal audience by explaining the laws of trauma,
addiction and recovery through a page turner story. As you follow the narrative of Anna, the client, you will learn about the basic principles of childhood trauma, addictions and the difficult path of recovery. You will understand that even good people sometimes find themselves in situations they swore would never happen to them, and in painful relationships that reopen old, unhealed wounds. Parallel to Ana’s story, you will learn what her psychotherapist experiences and how her past has shaped her, too.
The intertwining of two unique personalities in a special relationship that heals both will reveal to
you what the essence of psychotherapy is: a deeply intimate and sincere meeting of people united in mutual trust and hope. Such relationships are a prerequisite for profound personal change and growth of both protagonists.
Stories that guide us with examples of recovery and teach us the most important things in life, serve as therapeutic tools. When we read them, something inside of us awakens and grows, so that we begin to experience ourselves and others differently. After reading Prisoners of the Past, you will no longer see the world as a hostile place where danger lurks from everywhere. Rather than that, you will begin to see the potential for love in yourself, other people and relationships.
PRISONERS OF THE PAST REVIEW
How to define this fluently readable, literary refined, professionally enriched dynamic narrative that offers the reader more perspectives of reading and peeling knowledge and thus addresses a diverse public? We can read it either as psychotherapy clients, or as psychotherapists, for the narrative is set as the dynamic relationship between the psychotherapist, the author in the first person and her client Ana. It can also be read as curious humanists who want to follow new insights from the fields of neurology and psychology.
Language: Slovenian
Publisher: Modrijan d.o.o.
Pages: 232.
Paperback
Date of issue: 28.11.2015
Courage
How to Recover from Trauma
At the core of your soul, deep in your body, is a memory of trauma. It’s a wound, a source of pain so deep, that you needed to numb yourself to survive. But what is frozen, cannot grow. For years, decades, you needed to actively push this memory out of your awareness, and what used to be a source of relief turned into an obsession. When you try to limit your addictive behavior, no longer numbing yourself, memories re-emerge, making it possible to heal. It is very important to let this happen safely, best in the presence of a psychotherapist, because it will lead to reprocessing of memories and the relief of symptoms.
I wrote this book together with my client Mia (pen-name), who described in her touching and sometimes extremely painful personal testimony, how her memories of sexual abuse by various family members gradually re-emerged in therapy. She came into treatment in her thirties, suffering from several chemical and behavioral addictions, the consequences of which were destroying her life. Her story speaks for itself, but we did not want just to shock you with atrocities; we wanted you to understand the motive and psychology behind such obviously dysfunctional addict's behavior. The latest scientific discoveries about the consequences of trauma are included in the book, and explained with the language anybody can understand. Reason and heart work best if they cooperate. Mia speaks for the heart, I am the speaker for reason, but I tried hard to remain an engaged and compassionate witness of her suffering.
COURAGE REVIEWS
Vesna Zunic, editor of woman's magazine Viva
Courage
The title is encouraging, and so is the contents. Encouraging, but heartbreaking. But this should not deter you from reading; the violence that Sanja's client Mia had been put through and is described in the book, is happening among us, here and now, to the child you meet on your way to work, to the girl sitting in your classroom, to the boy chasing the ball on the neighbor’s courtyard … For Mia is just one of the 400 000 victims of physical, psychical or sexual abuse in Slovenia who are now grown up and suffer the consequences of trauma.
In their attempts to ease their suffering and to find sense in the violence, the victims turn to the behaviors that in the beginning make sense, but later become dysfunctional. The consequences of trauma are indulgence in the behaviors that bring relief: drinking, drug abuse, eating disorders,
Some victims may find relief in the acting out of the abuse upon other children or in self-abusive behavior. Shame, stigma and other consequences of abuse are not only an individual problem, but a great, although secret, societal problem.
Language: Slovenian (English translation in progress).
Publisher: Modrijan d.o.o.
Pages: 286.
Paperback
Date of issue: 28.11.2013
Sobriety
How to Recognize, Understand and Recover from
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Behavioral Addictions
“Sobriety” is the first part of the trilogy that describes the complex and holistic system of recovery from addictions, that Sanja Rozman has been developing and working with for more than twenty years. It teaches how to recognize addiction, understand it and begin recovery. Highlighted with personal stories of people in recovery, “Sobriety” explains addiction from its very beginning, describing the family of origin where children first take in the wrong messages. Then it thoroughly portrays the behavioral addictions: to love, relationships, sex, food, gambling, work, shopping and debting. It offers expert advice where and how to find help. It will also be useful to those who are not addicted, but have accepted far too many compromises in life, for helping them recognize the nature of their recurring problems and adjust their life course.
SOBRIETY REVIEWS
Kenneth M. Adams, Ph.D. psychotherapist, supervisor, author of Silently Seduced: When Parents Make Their Children Partners
"In her new book, Sanja Rozman integrates the themes of Serenity, Courage, and Wisdom. She brings together all the three qualities in her work as a psychotherapist, medical doctor, and writer.
Driven by the energy of her own recovery, she has transformed her personal experience into therapeutic wisdom that has helped recover many of her clients.
Whether you are looking for help for your own addictions or for someone you love, or you are a professional in the field of addiction, or you are just conscious of the world our children grow up in, this book will teach you about the difficult but necessary path of human growth through adversity."
Language: Slovenian (English translation in progress).
Publisher: Modrijan d.o.o.
Pages: 114.
Paperback
Date of issue: 2014
Sobriety Workbook with audio
How to recognize addiction, understand it and find your way out
While “Serenity” is about understanding and recognizing addiction, there’s work to be done to get out of its trap. “Workbook Serenity”, the addition and upgrade of the textbook, will guide you through your own path of recovery. It is a well-planned and comprehensive system of exercises that help the reader through the first year of sobriety:
The exercises are first explained with examples and refer to the chapters of “Serenity”, then there is room for your notes, and next for discussion with your peer group. Making changes is not easy: you have to make a sound plan, revise it with reliable people, and facilitate deep change with daily meditations. Seven guided meditations are recorded on an audio CD, so that you can use them to meditate in a safe environment.
​Workbook Serenity was much needed for a long time. It is a manual you can write in, a personal diary, a planner and a description of everything that can stand in the way of recovery of any addiction: obstacles, blocks, delusions, excuses, ways to avoid the traps … Aligned with the 12-step recovery movement, it is about the first seven steps of the way to recovery. It will help you stop should you start sliding into a relapse.
SOBRIETY WORKBOOK REVIEW
Dora Pal, professional leader of programs Project Man, a non-governmental program for recovering drug addicts,
family therapist and social worker, about Workbook Sobriety
In Project Man, while we work with drug addicts, we have to consider process addictions as well as substance addictions. People exist in relationships, and early experiences of unsafe childhood attachment patterns certainly adversely affect their lives and the choices they make later on. Substances and behaviors are abused to escape from the painful feelings such life creates, and frequent long-term abuse may lead to addiction.
Sanja Rozman speaks about different types of addictions in all her works. Me and my fellow therapists in Project Man have found in her book Serenity all the answers we needed for our work, the “state of the art” explanations and yet written in simple language. In our therapeutic community, we work with those addicts who are determined to change their lives for the better. We have found that, once the people abstain from their compulsive behaviors, their traumatic stories that used to have been hidden in the background, start to emerge. To medicate the emptiness and withdrawal they feel while abstaining from their drug of choice, our clients may resort to different unhealthy behaviors like fantasizing, masturbation, complicated relationships, sex, sports and overeating. They do not think these behaviors could jeopardize their sobriety, but they must learn that it may happen. They need to understand the dangers of the potential attraction of process addictions. Serenity arguments the case gently but quite unequivocally.
Our clients use the Workbook Serenity in their recovery assignments, and by doing the exercises the book suggests, they are slowly and certainly led on the way out of their addiction. Most of our clients find it hard to accept that by abstaining from the substances, as hard as it may be, they have solved only a smaller part of the problems their addiction had created. Sometimes they may feel as though we are adding to their problems. But working through the books Serenity and Workbook Serenity helps them realize that there is only one addiction with so many faces, and that there is the same dynamic in the background of all their temptations. These two books have become indispensable basic tools or our work.
Language: Slovenian
Pages: 270.
Paperback
First printed in 2004, reprinted in 2004. Sold out.
Change in Heart
The book is a result of eight years of work as a consultant in a women’s health magazine Viva, answering the readers’ questions. They were asking about relationship problems; whether the relationships were scarce or distant, or enmeshed and problematic. The troubles they wrote about were many, but there was something they had in common; the belief, that the world was not a safe place, and that there was not enough love to go around. The solution was not simply to leave and find a new relationship, as the troubles re-appeared with the new partners, once they were settled down. I tried to find the common thread of their perceived problems, and found that the origins of the feelings of insecurity in relationships stemmed from their childhood experiences. Reading the book may help you identify the causes of your relationship struggles.
"The letters keep surprising me”, says the author, “as they are the perfect and beautiful testimonies of people’s destinies.” When you are in trouble, it may be a relief and encouragement to learn that other people share the same or similar problems. The book is for those who want to solve their piled-up emotional problems, but do not know just where to start.
​ What are you going to learn from this book?
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That deeds and thoughts have consequences.
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That people always act the best they can, according to the way they understand the world.
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They do not respond to the world as such, but rather to the meaning they attribute to it, and this has to do with their whole life experience.
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You can choose whatever you want in relationships, but there will be consequences, therefore denial will not take you far.
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You cannot NOT choose in life, for this is a choice!
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To forgive means to let go of the illusions of yourself being a victim. You always meet the right people at the right times.
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There is no point discussing with people when they are angry, drunk, aggressive.
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Whenever you react too fiercely, there is a good chance that some forgotten trauma has been triggered.
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Teach to learn.
The only time for change is NOW!"
A BESTSELLER, STILL IN DEMAND AFTER 27 YEARS!
Language: Slovenian
Publisher: Modrijan d.o.o.
Pages: 364.
Hardcover and paperback.
First issued: 1998, reprinted in 2007.
Sold out.
E-book in preparation.
The Roller Coaster to Hell
All You Need to Know about Behavioral Addictions
This book is a classic textbook on behavioral addictions. Simple enough for anybody to read, yet comprehensive and rich with examples, so that even therapists can find interesting. This is the book to start with, if one suspects they or their loved one might have problems with behavioral addictions. Starting with basic facts and describing the formation of the addictive vicious cycle, it continues with thorough descriptions of all behavioral addictions and concludes with a treatment and recovery plan. It answers the important question: “How can you become addicted to food, sex, work, gambling, shopping, debting, daydreaming, television, spirituality, relationships… and how to recover from it!” The author offers a comprehensive program of recovery as well as directs the reader towards the recognition of what love is – and what only feels like love, but leads to betrayal and addiction later.
This is the book for everybody who think they don't have enough love in their lives. Desperate, they resort to surrogates. But you can't get enough of what you don't need, so you crave for more and more! In the end, they are caught into a vicious circle of addiction.
Language: Slovenian
Publisher: Modrijan d.o.o.
Pages: 334.
Hardcover and paperback.
First issued: 1995, reprinted in 2006.
In Love with Dreams
All you Need to know about Codependent Relationships
What does it mean to be addicted to relationships? Don’t we all have intimate relationships that are important to us? Can you even imagine life without “your” people? When does love get “corrupted” into a disease? How can one “love too much?” Why are some people choosing to stay in relationships, which are full of betrayal, exploitation and lies? What is the difference between helping and enabling?
The second bestseller of Sanja Rozman is a book about relationship addictions and codependency. It holds the key to understanding the essence of addictions, whether to a substance or a behavior. This is the first book in Slovenian language to speak about behavioral addictions, explaining their logic, the family systems where they are originated, and suggesting that treatment and recovery are possible. It is completed and illustrated by true stories of people in recovery.
A BESTSELLER, STILL IN DEMAND AFTER 27 YEARS!
Language: Slovenian
Pages: 282.
Hardcover and paperback.
First issued: 1993, reprinted in 1994, 1999, 2006.
Dreams about the Red Cloud
Memoirs of a Woman who Loved too Much
This is a deeply touching memoir of the author’s personal recovery from relationship addiction and codependency, shared in a manner of the Twelfth step of AA. It has carried the message of recovery to sufferers from process addictions in Slovenia, serving as a beacon and a landmark to direct them in starting their own recovery journey. From this book, the reader can decipher the elements of relationship addiction, and the change to accepting healthy choices. One who has codependent problems can identify with the author and try following her recovery path.
A lot of people are disappointed in love, but prefer not to let go and even endure psychological and physical violence in hopes that, if they loved more, everything will magically turn right. They try to change their partners with love, hoping to somehow make them more loving, understanding and capable of sharing intimacy. These attempts are not love, but pathological dependence upon a relationship. It bears a lot of resemblance to other behavioral addictions. In time, it will grow worse and lead to other comforting behaviors and addictions, ending in misery and even death. But letting go of the partner does not solve anything, for the causes of such behaviors are within ourselves. That’s where you need to look for the source of love.