Unf*ck Your Life and Relationships

Unf*ck Your Life and Relationships (Forefront Books, exclusively distributed by Simon & Schuster, Dec. 6, 2022), combines therapist Anita Astley’s personal story and the culmination of twenty-five years of clinical experience with individuals, couples, and families. She demonstrates that building healthy relationships starts from the inside out and calls for a “back to basics” of love and life that have become lost in a culture driven by electronic communication and social media attachment.

Experiencing conflict in relationships is an unavoidable fact of life. When our relationships are messed up, our lives feel messed up. Likewise, our hearts and minds hurt—the two are intricately linked.

Drawing on twenty-five years of clinical experience with individuals, couples, and families, psychotherapist Anita Astley will walk you through practical steps to unf*ck yourself from the inside out in order to establish healthy relationships. Her approach takes you back to the basics of love and life that have become lost in a culture consumed by electronic communication and social media attachment. Anita will guide you through your journey of transformation through identifying various psychological dynamics that serve to do more harm than good, to you and your relationships. In addition, she will provide you with tools to help hone your communication skills through active listening and effective speaking as a means of working through conflict to arrive at solutions. These practices have helped countless patients and proven effective to be effective.

In this book, she also shares her childhood journey from India to Germany (and then to Canada), reuniting with her father, a reunion, and what would later prove to be, a relationship filled with conflicting needs and expectations, to say the least. His expectations for Anita to follow a culturally traditional path and consent to an arranged marriage destroyed her confidence and self-worth and left deep emotional scars. As she pursued higher education, Anita found a mentor who enabled her to break free, find her path to healing and inner strength, and eventually unlock the skills needed to help herself and then others. In these pages, Anita Astley will be your mentor and guide so you too can learn to maintain inner emotional balance and form healthy, fulfilling relationships with those you love.

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about the author

Born in India, Anita Astley moved to Germany as a child with her family to reunite with her father. However, years of separation due to his ambitious quests for travel and employment opportunities created an emotional distance between father and daughter, contributing to what would be a very conflicted relationship. This experience triggered Astley to step into her destiny as a psychotherapist and adopt the mantra, “adversity builds resilience.”

After living in four countries and becoming fluent in Hindi, French, and English, Astley has vast experience working with diverse populations covering a wide array of culturally specific relational dynamics, personally and professionally.

Astley received her Bachelor of Arts from Concordia University, her master’s degree in education and counseling from McGill University, and post-graduate marriage and family therapy certification from the Argyle Institute of Human Relations.

Over the twenty-five-plus years, Astley has founded private practices in Montreal (Quebec, Canada), New York and Wisconsin, helping individuals, couples, and families with various mental health and relational challenges. In addition, she has worked as an adjunct professor and consulted for mental health agencies. Astley has also held leadership positions in local chapters of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, holding the notable title of a clinical fellow.

Her passion for helping others build healthy relationships—from the inside out—has led Astley to take her expertise beyond the confines of her private practice and launch her Ask Anita Astley mission via a new book, social media, podcasts, radio and TV.

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From reading this very personal, informative, and practical guide to self-help, I have been able to increase my own knowledge and creativity in facilitating my patients’ successes. As Anita likes to remind me, she’s “…been there, done that.” You too can now benefit from her successful expertise, clinical experience, and life story. Thank you, Anita, for doing what we ask our patients to do, make ourselves vulnerable in order to allow the healing process to begin.

- David Steindorf,

Ph.D., Psychologist, Albany, NY

Ms. Anita distinguished herself as a licensed Family Therapist and quickly became the go-to therapist with whom I would collaborate. She has always shown a great capacity to assess, design, and implement a bevy of options that quickly improve the welfare of those with whom she worked. And it’s great to see her branching out into mass media where she can share her considerable experience and expertise with a wider audience. Ms. Astley has always made a positive impact in her professional pursuits, and I am certain that the book she is offering to you will continue her growing legacy.

- John Seltenreich,

Ph.D., Psychologist, Albany, NY