The Tender Heart: Conquering Your Insecurity

I've read the other reviews claiming this book doesn't live up to expectations. Whilst I agree in some ways, and did find it often repetitive, I personally got a lot out of it. By taking the time to reflect after each chapter on how it applied to my life I was able to better process this. A big part of me wanted to jump straight to solution mode but by working through my own "stuff" and looking back on my childhood etc I was able to better understand my own insecurities. After that I basically came up with the solutions on my own - it all comes down to self awareness. Too often we rely on books to help us solve our problems rather than use them as a key to unlock our own ability to help ourselves. Dont dismiss this book as I believe it has a lot to offer and has helped me immensely.

I agree that the author does not provide specifics on solving the problem of insecurity. However, I don't think that was his purpose in this book. He focuses on providing an understanding of the tenderhearted personality type. The information was very helpful to me, opening my eyes up to aspects of this issue that I had not considered previously. I learned a lot from this book.

It was the best book I have read on the subject. My husband read it as well. Really explained a lot--it was like a light bulb went off. Excellent! I even bought another copy for my son.

The author had great insite to different types of personalities and reasonable explanations as to why certain people react differently to situations. What I didn't get was how to address the problems of insecurity. The author gave some very general guidelines, but nothing specific to work toward. That part was very frustrating to me. I was hoping to take away some good advice on how to approach these problems.

The Tender Heart focuses on sensitivity as a trait a person is born with. A person is either highly sensitive or hard hearted, most likely somewhere inbetween, as described in Joe Nowinski's new book. For the first time, I feel this is an understanding of human nature that has not been explored before. I feel it puts into perspective, why different people react differently to the same situations, just by their very natures they are born with. It addresses why some people can be so disturbed by a situation, while another is completely oblivious to it. Then added is a layer of security or insecurity, and how it interacts with the sensitive or hard hearted person. This explains a lot of the interpersonal interactions of people. Human emotions are very much multi-dimensional and complex. By understanding the layers in which a person perceives a situation, colored by their emotional make-up, helps shine a light on easing many problems that exist in many relationships. What makes this book such a valuable tool, is that Nowinski is able to help describe situations and give solutions, not only for adults dealing with troubling situations, but to recognize sensitivities in children and how it affects their development. I highly recommend this book.