********UPDATE ****** AS OF 03/07/2023--Now to include a fireside chat with Amy Cuddy following the reading of Unrestricted.

Join us to celebrate the release of Dawn Brockett's Unrestricted with a reading, signing, and Q&A session with Brockett!

ABOUT THE BOOK 

In Unrestricted, Dawn Brockett challenges the pervasive belief that anorexia is compelled by a desire to control. Having battled and beaten severe restrictive anorexia herself, she proposes that anorexia is triggered by a lack of the space a young woman needs to fully individuate— to become who she chooses to be without being controlled by others.  

Given how long treatment paradigms have held firm to this belief about control—and the limited progress we’ve made in treating anorexia, the deadliest of all mental health disorders—she issues a call to action to change the way anorexia and anorectics are viewed and treated through the lens of her own successful battle against the disorder. 

The anorectic is not compelled by a desire to control the world or to be thin.  She is compelled to disappear, shrinking to the space that she feels she is allowed to take up in her life, the size of which is dictated by others’ demands and expectations.  

At once heart-wrenching, heartwarming, and hopeful, this is the story of how one woman stopped disappearing, started listening to her own voice, and finally claimed her rightful place in the world.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

In Unrestricted: How I Stepped Off the Tightrope, Learned to Say No, and Silenced Anorexia, Dawn Brockett challenges the pervasive belief that anorexia is compelled by a desire to control. 

Given the limited progress medicine has made in treating anorexia—the deadliest of all mental health disorders—she issues a call to action to change the way anorexia and anorectics are viewed and treated through the lens of her own successful battle against the disease. 

Dawn was published in 2021 alongside many women’s powerful stories in What Doesn’t Kill Her: Women’s Stories of Resilience. 

Dawn is a classically trained chef, college professor, advisor to clinical trials in anorexia, and managing director of a medical society. She is a master yoga instructor and has an honors degree in Philosophy from Westminster College, a graduate certificate in French Language and Literature from the Université de Paris—Sorbonne, an advanced graduate certificate in French Literature and Poetry from L’Institut de Touraine, and a graduate certificate in Negotiation & Peace Studies and Master of Public Policy & Administration degree from Boise State University.  

She lives in the Mountain West on a small but demanding farm with her outrageously talented wife, their remarkably smart and hilarious puppy, and a small flock of loud but prolific chickens. Mountains of exceptional height, chocolate of profound depth and conversations of extraordinary length reliably lure her from her writing mat.

PRAISE FOR UNRESTRICTED

“Unrestricted is an inspiring narrative of Dawn Brockett’s fight against anorexia nervosa and a compelling chronicle of recovery. For anyone who
loves someone struggling with an eating disorder, this book will shine a light on both the ferocity of the disorder and what it takes to triumph.” - Thomas R. Insel, MD, Former Director, National Institute of Mental Health (2002-2015); Author, Healing: Our Path from Mental Illness to Mental Health

“A powerful call to action for the field to modernize the perception and treatment of anorexia which impacts more than 80 million women worldwide and carries the highest mortality rate of any mental
illness." - P. Murali Doraiswamy, MBBS, FRCP, Professor of Psychiatry and Medicine, Duke University, and Former Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum's Global Future Council on Mental Health

ABOUT AMY CUDDY

Dr. Amy Cuddy is a social psychologist, bestselling author, award-winning Harvard lecturer, and acclaimed keynote speaker. Her writing, research, teaching, and speaking focus on how we can take control of our own thoughts and feelings to affect presence and performance under stress, the causes and outcomes of feeling powerful vs. powerless, our own prejudices and stereotypes, nonverbal behavior, and the delicate balance of projecting both our trustworthiness and our strength.

Cuddy earned her Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2005. Rutgers University from 2005 to 2006. She served as a full-time professor at Harvard Business School (2008-2017), Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management (2006-2008), and Rutgers University (2005-2006). She now devotes the majority of her time to writing and speaking, and continues to serve on the Harvard Business School Executive Education Faculty.

Her 2012 TED Talk, “Your Body Language May Shape Who You Are,” has more than 65 million views and is the second-most viewed of all time. Her NYT bestseller Presence, described in the NYT Sunday Book Review as “concrete and inspiring, simple but ambitious - above all, truly powerful,” has sold more than half a million copies and been published in 35 languages. In 2023, she will publish her next book, Bullies, Bystanders, & Bravehearts (Mariner), on the psychology of adult bullying — and how we find the courage to stop it.

For over 20 years, she has rigorously researched stereotyping and prejudice, nonverbal behavior, and presence and performance under stress. Cuddy’s doctoral dissertation at Princeton University presented a paradigm-shifting scientific model that has become one of the most cited theories in social psychology — and has ultimately changed psychologists’ understanding of the nature and mechanics of prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination and even more broadly, how we form first impressions of each other. In short, her research revealed that (1) people immediately evaluate each other on two dimensions: warmth/trustworthiness and competence/strength; and (2) these evaluations, accurate or not, powerfully direct how feel about and interact with each other. This theory has changed both academic and popular thinking on leadership, marketing, and diversity and inclusion. In 2022, Amy and her co-authors on this work, Profs. Susan Fiske and Peter Glick, were honored with the Scientific Impact Award, which is given annually to the most impactful paper in social psychology over the previous 25 years.

Her highly-cited research has been published in top academic journals, including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Science, and Psychological Science, and a range of internationally-known publications, like The Economist, The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, Wired, and Fast Company. She has been a guest on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, The Today Show, CBS This Morning, and BBC World News, among others. Cuddy also has written for The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Harvard Business Review, and CNN.

Early in her college career, at age 19, the gifted Cuddy suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident. Doctors said she would struggle to fully regain her mental capacity and finish her undergraduate degree. She proved them wrong, eventually going on to earn her doctorate from Princeton in 2005.

Her remarkable road to recovery, battle against imposter syndrome, and ultimate ascension has become a foundational part of her journey as a social scientist. It’s also a facet of her life that resonates powerfully with a strikingly broad range of people.

Cuddy has been honored with numerous awards over her esteemed career. Among the most prominent, she has been named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, one of 50 Women Changing the World by Business Insider, a Top 50 Management Thinker by Thinkers50, and one of the BBC 100 Women, honoring inspiring and influential women around the world. She has also received the Harvard Excellence in Teaching Award and the Scientific Impact Award from the Society for Experimental Social Psychology.

Cuddy is currently writing her second book, Bullies, Bystanders, and Bravehearts, which delves into the psychological causes and consequences of bullying among adults – a pervasive and often devastating problem. Propelled by extraordinary new insights, she’ll share the concrete steps that we must all take to move toward social bravery in our daily lives and broader culture, concluding that we all have the power to become bravehearts.

Amy is an avid skier and roller skater (In fact, she worked as a roller-skating waitress when she was an undergraduate), was a serious classically-trained ballet dancer, and remains a loyal Deadhead and lover of live music. She most enjoys spending time with her husband and son in the mountains, on the ocean, and at live music concerts.