Dr. Keith's Bookstore

About the Author

Dr. Keith Witt is a psychotherapist, teacher, and author who has lived and worked in Santa Barbara, CA. for over forty years. Founder of The School of Love, Keith’s work has explored Integrally Informed Psychotherapy, intimacy, human development, and sexuality from multiple perspectives yielding five books (Integral Mindfulness, Waking Up, Sessions, The Attuned Family, and The Gift of Shame), three TEDx talks, and lectures and classes which he has taught across the U.S.

Waking Up and its companion volume, Sessions, are two of the first texts on Integrally Informed Psychotherapy. Keith has conducted over fifty thousand therapy sessions, led many groups, and has been a contributor to Integral Life and the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice.

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Trauma Into Transcendence

The Four Stages of Trauma Work

Trauma into Transcendence reconceptualizes trauma as inevitable and central to normal development. Contrary to most current frameworks, which present trauma as uniformly intrusive and destructive, Trauma into Transcendence, explores how small and large traumas (little t and big T traumas) are part of the normal developmental process. 

How we understand and process traumas in ourselves, our intimates, and our children, is a central variable in whether we become happier and healthier as we mature, or more fragmented and disabled.

There are many wonderful approaches to treating trauma in today’s healthcare landscape. What’s missing in the field is a more global understanding of the stages of trauma work and the different demands and challenges of each stage. Most systems are strong in some stages and less so in others. The four stages I detail in Trauma into Transcendence provide a roadmap for all trauma survivors and clinicians to navigate the healing journeys that are the hallmarks of successful trauma work. Briefly the four stages are:

  1. The first stage is to face the traumatic material and learn to comfortably share it with caring others.Usually, this involves grieving losses—like the loss of your pre-trauma life, the loss of innocence, or the loss of living without the burden of trauma induced symptoms of anxiety, rumination, panic, or suspicion.  
  2. The second stage is to grow your life story so post-traumatic growth is embodied in how you understand your universe.The trauma story of being diminished by painful events becomes the resilience story of becoming stronger and wiser through courageous work.
  3. The third stage is to learn to turn negative states of consciousness when you get triggered into positive states of gratitude, presence, optimism, love, or confidence. This usually involves practices of deliberately generating positive states that we turn into new virtuous habits.
  4. The fourth stage is to be the Compassionate Witness and let Wise Self call the shots.We can look with compassion at ourselves and everything we experience and do. We can connect with our Wise self and let Wise Self call the shots. Wise Self will notice when trauma intrudes and stages 1, 2, or 3 are once again needed.

I’ve found that understanding these four stages has simplified and supported my work with clients as well as my own development. I’m hoping that in reading this book you’ll have the same experience.

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100 Reasons to NOT Have a Secret Affair

And What To Do If One Shows Up In Your Life

We’re hard-wired genetically to pair bond and to cheat. The miracle of human relationships is that only 25% to 40% of men and 15% to 25% of women are sexually unfaithful at some time in their lives. 100 Reasons explores why we cheat, how we cheat, how to avoid affair disasters, and how to heal when they happen.

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Loving Completely

A Five Star Practice for Creating Great Relationships

Wouldn’t you like to know – quickly, easily and succinctly – what the very best of science tells us about how to have amazing, life-changing relationships, intimacy and sex?

Loving Completely is your guide.

“Why is it that 40 percent of U.S. adults report chronic loneliness and over 60 percent of self-reported lonely people are married and live with a spouse? Why is it that 37 percent of U.S. adults answered, “Yes,” to “Has marriage not worked out for most people you know?”

The answer is that satisfying modern relationships are complicated and demanding in ways that are regularly difficult to understand and deal with.

That’s why this is a different kind of relationship book. Not only do I explain why we know so much about intimacy and still have to struggle so hard to be consistently fulfilled, but I’ll tell you what to do about it when the inevitable problems arise” – Dr. Keith Witt

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Shadow Light Workbook

Recording Our Shadow Journey

Shadow Light Workbook coordinates the dozens of practices offered up in Shadow Light with brief descriptions and opportunities to create individualized programs for discovering and growing your Shadow self. As you engage in these practices you both discover and amplify your deeper wisdom, while also uncovering and integrating self-destructive patterns and habits. This supports constructive Shadow and transmutes destructive Shadow into constructive Shadow.

Shadow Light: Illuminations at the Edge of Darkness was written to help people understand and work with the human paradox of being both conscious and volitional but also constantly influenced by non-conscious Shadow forces. This Shadow self–what some neuroscientists call the “Adaptive unconscious,”–is where real change and growth occurs as we develop through life. The measure of any psychotherapy or spiritual practice is how well it helps us grow our Shadow.

Shadow Light Workbook  brings together all the Shadow Light practices to help readers establish an individualized grow-your-Shadow program.

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Shadow Light

Illuminations at the Edge of Darkness

Shadow is everything in us we can’t see – everything we are not conscious of. Our Shadow self monitors hundreds of thousands of inputs from the world and our body/mind systems, processes the information, and constantly sends constructive and destructive messages into our conscious awareness in the forms of sensations, feelings, impulses, stories, and thoughts. This Shadow material is generated in less than a tenth of a second, and our conscious selves become more or less aware of it after one or two seconds, leaving our conscious awareness always one step behind the non-conscious flood of Shadow material. Personal development is largely growth of our Shadow selves–our adaptive unconscious in which resides our deepest senses of self, morality, intimacy, vulnerability, and spirituality. Shadow Light offers a wealth of research, ideas, and practices to help us grow our Shadow selves and accelerate personal evolution.

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Integral Mindfulness: Clueless to Dialed-in

How Integral Mindful Living Makes Everything Better

Dialed-in is Integral mindful awareness. Mindful awareness is being aware with acceptance and caring intent, on purpose, with compassionate judgment, in the present moment. Integral mindful awareness is mindful awareness guided by the elegant, priceless perspectives of Integral understanding, which can help us know who we are, what’s really happening around us, and what our purpose is right now.

Dialed-in makes everything better:

  • We’re healthier, more joyful, less irritating and way less crazy.
  • Relationships are more fun and less pain.
  • Children thrive.
  • Sex keeps getting yummier.
  • Spirituality intensifies.

The world constantly unfolds into interconnecting patterns that make sense and guide thought and action. The good news is that we can learn how to be aware with acceptance and caring intent, on purpose, with compassionate judgment, in the present moment, and we can keep improving at it as long as we live. The even better news is that Integral mindful awareness – mindfulness informed by foundation perspectives like what type of person we are, or what state of consciousness we’re in – accelerates and stabilizes the entire growth process.

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Sessions

All Therapy Supports Relationships Integrating Toward Unity

Follow one family struggling with infidelity and other life crises through a series of psychotherapy sessions that help them find deeper love and wholeness. Dr. Witt draws from his extensive background as a clinician and educator as he integrates the seminal theoretical work of Ken Wilber, David Deida, and many others with his own. The result is a synthesis that is thought provoking, detailed, and clinically invaluable. Therapists and anyone else interested in the human psyche and relationships will deeply benefit from this book.

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Waking Up

Psychotherapy as Art, Spirituality, and Science

This book is a transmission from a gifted therapist. His generosity and comprehensive sharing in this book can be a rich guide to anyone fascinated with their own and other’s development. ~ Patricia Albere, Founder of Integral Enneagram, is a spiritual teacher, group leader, public speaker, and private counselor.

Psychotherapy is co-creative art. Therapists and clients create healing cultures. Dr. Witt takes us into the minds of therapists and into psychotherapy sessions where multiple perspectives and dozens of techniques come alive. We feel the pleasures of helping individuals and couples wake up to greater joy, health, and intimacy.

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The Attuned Family

How To Be a Great Parent To Your Kids and a Great Lover To Your Spouse

Are you happy with your love affair with your spouse? Are you confident with how effectively you parent your children? Attuned families have mothers and fathers who know how to consciously grow as lovers and parents. Attunement is our ability to feel into ourselves and others with caring intent. Even though we are all born hard-wired neurologically to attune, we often disconnect, distract, or avoid healthy attunement do to lack of knowledge or past hurts. We are always connecting with family members verbally and non-verbally, but are often not aware of how effectively we are relating, or what our responsibilities are as parents and lovers. Ideally, marriage and parenthood are journeys where we steadily become more accomplished at attuning to ourselves, our partners, and our children. We can always grow to be better lovers to our spouse and better parents to our children. The Attuned Family provides a roadmap for such growth for each life stage of a family.

More About The Attuned Family

Attunement is feeling into yourself and others with caring intent. Attuned families have parents who continually improve attuning to themselves, each other, and their children through all life cycles. Obstacles to attunement are defensive states, the incredible demands of modern life, lack of knowledge, and lack of resolve in loving ourselves, our spouses, and our children. In the last fifty years many disciplines from interpersonal neurobiology to developmental psychology to psychotherapy have generated, tested, and proven optimal processes that result in joyful living. All these process involve attunement, all are accessible to us in this post-modern era, and many are offered in this book.

The Attuned Family follows two families through various stages of individual and systemic development. Using therapy transcripts, exposition, stories, and life events, Dr. Witt elucidates and demonstrates principles and practices that support hot erotic polarity between spouses and increasing expertise in guiding children through the incredible changes, challenges, and demands of their progressive worldviews.

How do I best support the growth of my one-year-old, two-year-old, five-year-old, or fifteen-year-old? How do I help my spouse and myself transition from romantic infatuation to a continually expanding passionate eroticism? Why do I sometimes lose my rational judgment, and what can I do to minimize damage and maximize growth for my family when I’m less than my best self? All these questions and more are addressed in The Attuned Family.

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The Gift of Shame

Why We Need Shame and How To Use it To Love and Grow

Shame is a misunderstood emotion necessary for healthy development and relationships. Certainly, shame and related shame emotions like guilt, embarrassment, remorse, and regret are painful and dangerous if not adequately processed and regulated, but without them we could not function as prosocial humans in society.

The Gift of Shame explores how shame is central to social maturation, moral discernments, and spiritual growth. Using examples drawn from Dr. Witt’s vast experience with individuals, couples, and families, The Gift of Shame explores what shame is and how to deal with it in love, parenting, sex, and development.

Read this book and change your understanding of shame forever.