You Are the Boss of You
Shauna Brittenham Reiter
Regalo Press (2025)
ISBN: 979-8888455777
Reviewed by Lily Andrews for Reader Views (11/2024)
Shauna Brittenham Reiter’s book “You Are the Boss of You: Cultivate the Mindset and Tools to Live Life on Your Terms” is an honest guide for emotional liberation and relief. Drawing on the author’s personal experiences with mental stress and unresolved childhood trauma, it aims to mend the massive holes in the mental health system that have left most individuals suffering with no long-term coping methods.
Brittenham asserts that the prevalence of mental health issues is rising yearly in the twenty-first century. She has witnessed the majority of people around her juggling poor relationships, prescription medicines, and even identities, all while battling with increased worry, despair, and insomnia. For the majority of them, the urge to feel deserving of love and free of deeply embedded trauma is at the center of the conversation. Drawing from her struggle with an abusive background that caused her to spiral into crippling paranoia while attempting to identify herself, she shares with readers her journey to regain herself while developing her ideal family, career, and inner self.
Using a variety of therapeutic approaches, she unpacks important mental wellness concepts, including the need for boundaries, their connection to self-blame, the difference between boundaries and control, and how to break free from entangled identities. She demonstrates how to empower yourself to self-soothe and embody the qualities of a parent that you may have missed while growing up. She also emphasizes the peril of suppressing your emotions and the need to allow yourself to feel them. Along with revealing some of the ingenious techniques people use to suppress their emotions, she provides practical advice to promote awareness and healing.
This book is essential for everyone who is in dire need of emotional support and is worn out by ingrained habits and beliefs that they cannot seem to break free from. It boasts The Five Steps to Creating Dynamic and Inspired Possibilities, the author’s groundbreaking signature approach, which promises a lasting foundation for healing and a long-term coping mechanism for mental health problems. Once plagued by anxiety, paranoia, hypervigilance, and unexplainable grief, the author openly recounts her life’s path, including the highs and lows that ultimately led her to achieve long-lasting emotional liberation. As you read it, you feel as though she is encouraging you to emerge from a dark place while holding your hand and telling you to be true to who you were intended to be.
“You Are the Boss of You: Cultivate the Mindset and Tools to Live Life on Your Terms” will put an end to your search for ways to redefine who you are. Each page contains invaluable information that has been meticulously and precisely prepared. Stunningly, it develops a plan for your life that is more fulfilling and motivating than you could have ever dreamed. It is a worthy read for anyone seeking to heal on all levels—emotionally, physically, cognitively, and spiritually.