Part of the interesting origin story of this book is that I did not write the title. I was asked, several months ago, by a publisher to write a book entitled The Neurobiology of Connection. At the time I was working on two related manuscripts, one entitled The Autonomic Spectrum: Mapping the Neural Landscapes of Wellbeing and Disease, for wellness professionals, and one entitled Elemental Healing, for a general lay audience. Just for fun, here are draft covers from both (I like to create covers early: it helps me create a container for the manuscript)
My friend and colleague Dr. Arielle Schwartz was kind enough to introduce us to the acquisitions editor at one of her publishers, and I pitched him on both of these projects. As I described our work, he got increasingly excited, and finally burst out that he didn’t want either of those books, but had been searching, for years, for the right person to write a book on the neurobiology of connection. I started laughing. “That’s my wheelhouse,” I told him. “Of course I’ll write that. I’m a connection phenomenologist with a focus on neurophysiology.”
He asked me to write a non-fiction proposal for the book. In order to do this, because of how my mind works, I had to begin to write the book. (I haven’t figured out how to write an outline of a book before I understand the architecture of book itself. I’m an animist- books are possibly alive;) ) I got about 20,000 words into it, until I could feel it organizing around me, and then submitted the proposal. A week later, he contacted me and said he had bad news. The book was titled, at the time: The Neurobiology of Connection: Transforming Loneliness, Isolation, and Disconnection at its Source, based on the US Surgeon General’s Advisory about Loneliness in May of 2023. To me it seemed EXTREMELY timely.
Him: “Our editorial team doesn’t want to buy the book.”
Me: “Why not?”
Him: “They say that books about loneliness don’t sell.”
Me: “You told me to write this book.”
I know, I know, he said. But they say that people who are lonely don’t buy books about how to fix this.
So then he asks me, “Can you write it about something else?” To which I responded:
It doesn’t matter what I write it about, because THE BOOK IS NOT ABOUT DISEASE. The book is about THE NEUROBIOLOGY OF CONNECTION. It’s about HOW TO CREATE THE CONDITIONS WHERE ENDURING WELLBEING CAN ARISE.
It is possible I raised my voice.
I know, he said. But here’s the way this works, from our perspective. People buy our books because they have a PROBLEM, and the book is the SOLUTION to that problem. So let’s pick a different problem for the book to solve. It could be anxiety, depression…
I thought about this for awhile. It is possible that I ranted to my lovely wife and other people as well. I’m not saying I didn’t. And then I re-wrote the book proposal with the following title: The Neurobiology of Connection: Transforming Chronic, Toxic, and Traumatic Stress at its Source.
I know damn well that people buy books about stress and trauma.
And he presented it to his editorial team, and they rejected it again.
From the rejection email: Despite our attempts to sharpen the problem, we felt like we weren’t sure exactly how to target the audience for this book. The editorial team was concerned that we were trying to accomplish too much in one book, writing, [your] “eclectic background may be what makes this book a success, in terms of its originality and content, and I fear that it will take too much wrangling to keep the book in line with core psych…. . The author may be writing clearly, in innovative ways, but she is not yet using a voice that addresses the problem or a personal tone that meets reader needs. Without seeing just how she balances psychoeducation with practices in a prescriptive sample chapter, it’s hard to anticipate what she envisions. I think the author is a solid writer”(sorry about the misgendering there)
At this point, gentle reader, I had reached the point of
synthesizing this newest book with the two previous books I had been writing into a single fractal manuscript architecture that was beginning to upload into my body
determining that I did not prefer to work with this publisher
coming to the conclusion that their model was upside down, and that there is an audience out there for a book on health creation, but that they did not know how to frame or market it
And so I wrote back to the Acquisitions editor, and said, more-or-less–
Thanks for giving me the title to my next book.
And here we are. I finished the manuscript several days ago, sitting in the same café I am sitting in now, writing these words.
There are two ways that you can access this Substack. I will post previews of all chapters here, available to all for free. These will, I hope, contain something of usefulness. Some of the practice chapters I’ll publish free in their entirety. If you want to read ALL of the entire chapters, and give us feedback, you can either create a paid subscription ($9/month, $99 for the year) or your can preorder the book here. If you’ve already done that, you are already subscribed.
If you are bargain-minded, preordering will get you access to the Substack until publication in April (we’ll grant you 6 months of access, plus the hardcover of the book delivered to your door).
Finally, if it turns out that you are so stoked on our work that you can’t help yourself, you can both preorder this book, get digital access, and order our previous book Restorative Practices of Wellbeing (the introduction to which you can read here), here. Yikes.
For simplicity, you can access the full book in 3 ways:
Become a paid subscriber to this Substack.
3.
Ok. Now that all of the preliminaries are out of the way, context set, origin story of the book told, what will begin to arrive next are chapters.
Onward.
Steven Hayes has been working for years on how to move psychotherapy & psychology past the DSM medical model of diagnosis of conditions that are inherently unexplainable from a medical model. He has recently published a book called Moving beyond the DSM. He is promoting a process-based model of change to replace the DSM & ICD11. Worth a look and a chat maybe? As a family therapist & counsellor I am moving along with Hayes and others on the journey away from the disorder paradigm.
I also note the work of Lucy Johnston on the Power Threat Meaning Framework which is also an alternative to using the DSM/ICD medical model in addressing mental health problems. https://www.bps.org.uk/member-networks/division-clinical-psychology/power-threat-meaning-framework
Your work on connection makes perfect sense in this new paradigm. Perhaps a publisher like New Harbinger might be a better host. Still, I like the way that you are making this project work from a challenge to accepted capitalist tradition point of view.