Everyday Cruelty

By: Helen Kobek

Narrated by: Juliet Jones

Length: 4 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's Summary

Your guide to dealing with something we all experience: Everyday Cruelty. 

Have you ever:

• Been bullied at school, home, or work?
• Been driven to the edge by an uncooperative telephone technical support employee?
• Had a medical appointment that was too short to be useful?
• Had to fight with an insurance company? 

Everyday cruelty is everywhere there are people: in stores, on the street, in churches, at home, in doctors' offices, in schools, and at work. We experience the effects of everyday cruelty in our bodies, minds, emotions, spirits, and even in how we act in the world. It is no easy task to live with cruelty in our daily lives without falling into "the big three" of troubling responses: denial, bitterness, and despair. 

Everyday Cruelty: How to Deal with Its Effects Without Denial, Bitterness, or Despair guides the listeners through the process of understanding how to deal with everyday cruelty while being fully aware of its power. By defining cruelty, examining how it affects us, delving into what makes it so painful, and then offering hundreds of strategies for dealing with it, Helen Kobek offers this promise: You can deal with the effects of everyday cruelty without pretending it is not happening, becoming resentful, or giving up.

©2014 Helen Kobek (P)2018 Helen Kobek

Books Like This Change The World

This book is packed with knowledge. It shines light on subjects that are often not discussed. The book also has hundreds of strategies and ideas to help make life more liveable, meaningful, comfortable and fun. The narrator has an intriguing clear crisp voice. I have learned a lot from this book. I'd also like to hear the author speak on a book tour.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

This Book is Important to Hear Especially in Today’s Times!

This book does a huge service to those of us who are trying to figure out why cruel interactions are so very difficult and ubiquitous. Not only does it define what everyday cruelty is, but it gives concrete and compassionate strategies to deal with he ways that is affects our bodies, minds emotions, spirits and action. In fact, given the overwhelming claim ate of hate and moral destruction, I think it is a “must read” for anyone with a conscious and we need to share these concepts and ideas with our children as they make their way.

Juliet Jones’ voice is soothing and pleasant as a reader, although some of the pronunciations are slightly different than standard American English. (She is South African.) I did not find it distracting though, just noticed that it was different.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Before I read this book....

Before I read this book, I really didn't think I was touched by cruelty, or on the receiving end much of it. But I really "woke up" while listening to this book, having also perused a print copy I borrowed from a friend. I started seeing how much I experience in stores, on the subway, on the streets. There is a lot of goodness in the world, yes. But I don't need to learn how to deal with the goodness. I have to learn how to recognize and deal with the badness, the cruelty. This book is not an easy book to read, but it's vital to our health, our relationships, and lives. This book should be in the hands anyone and everyone. It would make this world of ours much better. This book dives deep. This book heals.

I should say that the reading of this book is very well done.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Cruelty: the hardest thing about being alive

It's true, and we all can be cruel sometimes. But that's not what this book is about. it's about how hard it is to deal with other people's cruelty. Which the book does a fantastic job at. You'll pick up ideas and validation reading it. I wish the author had included some thoughts (a whole chapter) on how to get a grip on our own cruelty, which is only slightly talked about in the book, in different parts throughout. Maybe another whole book on that topic is coming. I hope so.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Crispy clear guide book for this era of humanity

Sometimes it is important and necessary to obtain detailed description of reality instead of dancing around it, so that we have a good sense of what's going on and how to respond to it. Helen's writing and Juliet's voice transmit the clarity of wisdom and the attitude of courage to face up to this seemingly confusing and overwhelming modern day living. Worth listening!

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Gave me a lot to think about

This book is short in length but long on importance, for my life. Jam-packed with explanations about why cruelty hurts so much, and full of real ideas on how to got through what we exoerirnce, sometimes everyday. I can't say that I experience cruelty everyday, but when I do, I now have a book to guide me along.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Not to be missed.

What could be better than reading a really informative and useful book? Having someone read it to you. Well read, clear and loyal to the book, this audio book did not have me nodding off as some do. The reader's voice and intonation fit the content well. It was nice to have someone say all the important things the print book does, as if she were speaking with you in person, as a friend would do. I enjoyed it very much.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Good, down-to-earth book

A good, candid review of how to deal with the problems of everyday life. this is a great book for students, of all ages, educators, parents and clinical professionals.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

thought provoking

Reading this book helped me to ponder and think of cruelty in different ways. Considering how to define it, what to do when it's experienced, what to do when observing another experiencing or perpetrating it, how our society views cruelty as a whole. I found myself encouraged to think differently about what is cruelty. This book is full of various coping skills, considerations and was a very interesting read. My only difficulty with it was as an audio book the book is comprised of items broken into a rather long numbered list, I found myself sometimes struggling to remember what any particular list was referring to at any given time in the reading. All in all though a book I'm glad I read.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Outstanding Book, Author & Narrator!

Brilliant and timely, a masterpiece of observation, research and writing. Kobek has hit one out of the park with her first book, and has teamed up with Juliet Jones, a narrator who couldn't be more perfect for the job. Our most underappreciated problems are coherently clarified, and a wide variety of solutions are presented. Kudos!

How much of your best energy and limited time do you spend dealing with everyday cruelty? A clerk gives you a hard time about returning a purchase, though the store policy is "no questions asked;" a driver deliberately cuts you off in traffic; a colleague belittles your humanity or spirituality because you have different tastes in music.

We pride ourselves for trudging through a world full of these so-called "minor annoyances." But, Their cumulative and long-term impacts on our lives and health are anything but minor. Kobek calls these virtually ubiquitous events, which are often over before we know what hit us or can determine how to respond, "the hardest thing about being alive." We are experiencing, in her words, "an epidemic of unhappiness."

Everyday Cruelty tackles a timely and thorny subject. Kobek has created a no-holes-barred, well-written masterpiece that fleshes out a tangled problem with clarity and leaves the reader enlightened and empowered. Drawing from critical thinkers from the past as well as her own insights, she presents a road map for dealing with our greatest challenges. Her suggestions illuminate a variety of roads to success that will suit a myriad of preferences and needs.

So, download your copy of Kobek's Everyday Cruelty: How to Deal With its Effects without Denial, Bitterness or Despair. put your feet up and allow Audible narrator Juliet Jones to enlighten and empower you with her strong but gentle rendering of this excellent book.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful