Only Say Good Things

When have you smiled through something that felt wrong because it seemed like the price of belonging? In Only Say Good Things, Crystal Hefner argues that a culture obsessed with beauty, power, and access grooms young women to trade agency for approval—then calls that trade “choice.” She contends that the Playboy universe wasn’t just a house with rules; it was a machine engineered to convert women’s bodies and silence into brand myth, while convincing them they were lucky to be there. Her core claim: when power sets the terms for “consent,” the line between a glamorous opportunity and a gilded cage blurs, and the cost gets charged to your sense of self.

This memoir is Crystal’s decade-long passage from being cast as an accessory to becoming the author of her story. She begins on Halloween 2008, a 21-year-old in a French maid costume, handpicked at the rope line by 81-year-old Hugh Hefner. She ascends the staircase—literally and symbolically—into a world of velvet-curtained rooms, staged intimacy, and nonnegotiable routines. Over time, she becomes main girlfriend, then fiancée, runaway bride, and finally wife and caretaker. After his death, she faces the harder task: leaving a worldview that required her to be perfect, silent, and endlessly available—and learning to listen to the inner voice she had muted to survive.

What you’ll learn

You’ll see how image-making and logistical rules (curfews, matching hair and nails, allowance rituals) enforced compliance and made defiance feel unthinkable. You’ll look closely at sexual dynamics framed as “fun” but choreographed and unequal—from silk pajamas and four synchronized porn screens to baby oil in lieu of consent-centered care. You’ll trace how beauty operated as both currency and debt, requiring surgeries, constant maintenance, and—eventually—extracting a toll on health (Lyme disease, implant illness, toxic mold in the mansion’s vents). You’ll also meet the players who kept the machine humming: staff, producers, paparazzi, and even celebrities who reinforced the myth. And crucially, you’ll see the role of other women—sometimes collaborators, sometimes competitors—in a system that pits them against one another.

Why it matters now

Crystal’s story isn’t only about Playboy; it’s about any environment where proximity to power masquerades as empowerment. Whether you’re navigating social media validation, an industry that quantifies your appearance, or a relationship with lopsided rules, the book asks you to interrogate the frame: Who benefits from your performance? What would happen if you said no? And whose dream are you living? (Compare Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth and Emily Ratajkowski’s My Body for parallel critiques of how female value is manufactured and monetized.)

From fairy tale to script-flip

Crystal structures her memoir like a fairy tale turned inside out. The “castle” dazzles—Picassos and Pollocks on the walls, peacocks on the lawn, a private 747—yet the rules are exacting: home by six, no red lipstick, matching white-blonde hair, and a nightly schedule tracked to the minute. The allowance ritual forces women to line up for cash counted from a velvet pouch, staged so they feel grateful for what they have already paid for with their bodies, time, and silence. Even the media amplifies the mythology, rewarding “good sport” answers and punishing truth. Chelsea Handler’s on-air “Daddy issues!” quip after Crystal mentions her father’s death shows how shame keeps women compliant and content keeps ratings high.

By the end, the mirror flips. Crystal introduces the concept of trauma-bonding (think Patrick Carnes’s work) to explain why she returned after fleeing as the “runaway bride.” She shows how “choice” was constrained by money, safety, reputational threats, and carefully engineered rituals. And she models exit-building: saving quietly, creating independent income streams (DJing, brand work, real estate), and, post-Playboy, rebuilding friendships with women, reconnecting with nature, and redefining beauty on her terms. She ends at Iron Mountain, face-to-face with 3,000 scrapbooks that immortalize a man who told her to “only say good things.” A sixth-grade fan letter breaks her heart—and clarifies her purpose. No more silence in service of someone else’s legacy.

Key idea

When power scripts your story, your first act of freedom is to narrate it yourself—even if your voice shakes.

This summary follows Crystal’s arc: the machine that made the myth; the sexual and economic price of admission; beauty as currency and health hazard; the isolation that keeps women divided; the leave–return–leave cycle; caretaking the legend and witnessing its end; and the aftermath—how to hear the inner voice again. If you’ve ever been rewarded for shrinking or punished for speaking, this is a mirror and a map.

Crystal shows you that the Playboy Mansion wasn’t just a location; it was a system designed to generate a myth and keep it sold. The house ran on rituals that made women feel both lucky and replaceable, and on documentation that made the myth look permanent. At scale, it worked like a brand studio and a surveillance state merged into one opulent set.

Rituals that rehearse dependence

Every Friday, girlfriends “asked” for allowance. Hef opened a velvet pouch, unlocked a cabinet, and counted out crisp $100s—$1,000 per woman—slowly, theatrically. The message: your money comes from me. Crystal describes the shame of standing there, palms out, feeling like a “hooker,” yet terrified to refuse. Curfew (as early as 6 p.m.) ensured your schedule—and social world—orbited the mansion. Hair, nails, and makeup were normalized as workplace uniform; deviating from white-blonde hair or light, glossy nails could trigger censure. Even movie nights were orchestrated: a classic cartoon, then Casablanca-era films where women faint and men rescue them, as if the screen were training you in the role you were hired to play.

Content as control

Hef’s empire thrived on documentation. Thousands of scrapbooks cataloged every favorable mention. Disposable cameras on limo nights captured compromising images—women flashing, legs spread—shot by the man who controlled the archive. There were spy holes by the bedroom TVs and a “little black book” noting which women went upstairs. Crystal later shredded shoeboxes of limo photos, a symbolic strike against a quiet blackmail apparatus. (Context: image capture is a recurring control tactic in exploitative settings; see also revenge-porn scholarship and privacy law debates.)

The TV halo that sells the fantasy

The Girls Next Door blurred reality and PR. Crystal wasn’t paid for the show, while Hef earned ~$400,000 per episode; later, her wedding spinoff offered her $2,500 while producers slated $800,000 for themselves. Producers fed her lines that stoked feuds (“I’m not the new Holly. She’s the old me”), then filmed “campouts” in the backyard that were set pieces, not life. The camera amplified the brand—then trapped the women inside it. Media appearances recycled the pattern: shock jocks and hosts mined humiliation for laughs. When Chelsea Handler branded her with “Daddy issues!” on-air after Crystal mentioned her father’s death, the audience roared. The cost of access was a public who felt entitled to mock your pain.

Staff as myth enforcers

Mary (the longtime gatekeeper) curated who got near Hef, gathered intel at “card nights,” and fed competition. Butlers floated through like extras from a 1940s set, anticipating Hef’s Jack-and-Pepsi before he asked. Schedules ran with the precision of a studio: Manly Mondays (men-only film salons dissecting women in the magazine), game nights, Thursday outings, Fun in the Sun Sundays with hula hoops and bikini roller-skating. The choreography kept everyone busy—and isolated. “Nothing good happens after 9:30,” staff told Crystal, reinforcing curfew’s moral high ground while shrinking her world.

A house that preserved him—and consumed you

Crystal’s “vanity”—a tiny annex off Hef’s room—was the only space that felt “hers.” Yet even there, she later learned the vent above her desk was laced with black mold. The metaphor is almost too neat: the one sliver of autonomy slowly poisoned the person clinging to it. Meanwhile, Hef’s archive team printed out every Saturday’s coverage to slide into binders, immortality stitched page by page. He forbade white sheets (hospitals had them; hospitals were where people die) and refused walkers—until Crystal found a black one with a basket for his Pepsi. The myth required him to be ageless; she quietly supplied the props he needed to keep performing.

Key idea

Systems don’t need bars when they have rituals. If you’re always grateful, busy, and recorded, you’re easier to control.

(Comparison: In Open Book, Jessica Simpson shows how image contracts can define a life; in My Body, Emily Ratajkowski details how “ownership” of an image rarely belongs to the woman in it. Crystal’s contribution is the inside view of a brand that made dependency feel like prestige.)

Crystal invites you to examine how “choice” works when power sets the menu. Her first night upstairs is staged: twins handing out silk pajamas “handcrafted in Italy” (actually mass-produced), four TVs playing vintage porn, Madonna bopping on repeat, a wooden box with joints and sex toys, baby oil instead of lube, no condoms. Women cycle on and off like performers while Hef watches the ceiling mirror. It’s presented as playful, consensual fun. But the context—his authority, the public myth, the gatekeepers, the girls who brought you up and can send you down—changes what consent means.

The rent you pay to stay

Crystal calls sex “the rent.” If you wanted safety, a roof, a career chance, you paid—with your body, your schedule, and your smile. Saying no wasn’t illegal; it just meant exile from the very system that had convinced you your value lived inside it. “Nobody likes a prude,” Hef would say. If you agreed, the mechanics were clinical: take turns, moan on cue, switch when waved off. When Crystal kept getting infections from baby oil, she begged to swap in lube. The lube disappeared, the oil returned. Sometimes she chose anal to avoid yet another UTI. Survival decisions in an unequal system look like “preferences” from the outside.

Coercion without shouting

No locks were needed when threats were ambient: eviction, blacklisting, or being framed as ungrateful. “Detain her,” Hef ordered security over the house speaker when Crystal once tried to leave mid-movie. She stopped at the sight of guards; she didn’t test whether they’d restrain her. Later, blackmailers outside the house tried to sell “affair” stories or secret recordings of her private complaints; Playboy paid to suppress them. You learn quickly where speech ends and cost begins. (This aligns with Evan Stark’s concept of coercive control—freedom limited not by a single act, but by a climate of credible consequences.)

The sunk-cost trap

Crystal names the sunk cost fallacy: once you invest years, surgeries, and reputation, walking away feels impossible. The machine counts on it. Your face is on a centerfold (Miss December 2009), your episodes have aired, your friends are conditioned to compete with you. If you leave, the brand keeps the archive; you keep the gossip. That’s not a fair trade. So you “choose” to stay another day. Another year. Crystal shows you how the brain makes captivity feel like commitment.

Why she went back

After fleeing as the “runaway bride,” Crystal is love-bombed by Jordan McGraw (Dr. Phil’s son): ten thousand dollars’ worth of roses, an emptied closet space for her, promises of safety. When that relationship soured—emails from his mother urging him to dump Crystal—Hef’s world offered familiarity and order. Mary called to say he was “crying for you.” Crystal recognizes the pattern now as trauma-bonding: intermittent reward, fear of abandonment, a rescuer who doubles as jailer. But at the time, going back felt easier than facing uncertainty with no net.

Key idea

Consent isn’t free if the cost of refusal is losing shelter, livelihood, or identity. If you can’t say no safely, your yes isn’t free.

(Context: Chanel Miller’s Know My Name reframes consent within systems that discount women’s voices; Crystal adds how “glamour” masks coercion. Taken together, they suggest you audit the conditions around any choice you’re praised for making.)

From La Jolla high school to the mansion staircase, Crystal learns that beauty pays—then sends you a bill with interest. The Playboy look is strikingly precise: white-blonde hair, translucent nails, glossy lips (never red; “harlots,” Hef said), and breast implants that sit like architecture. Maintaining that look costs time, money, pain, and, in Crystal’s case, health.

The build: surgeries and standards

At 21, she gets breast implants via her belly button (saline shells tunneled up her abdomen) because modeling gigs often demanded “oomph.” Later, once on TV, she adds a rhinoplasty and liposuction. In the culture of the house, procedures are as routine as gel manis—women discuss labiaplasty “like getting their nails done.” Allowance money is implicitly earmarked for this maintenance, so the brand never pays directly; the women do, twice: in cash and bodies. “Wear the flag,” Hef would say—put on the bunny logo. Your body is the billboard and the ad buy.

When currency turns toxic

By her early 30s, Crystal is exhausted and frightened: brain fog, bone and joint pain, night sweats, heart palpitations. Doctors dismiss her—stress—but tests later confirm Lyme (Borrelia with Bartonella and Babesia), thyroid and adrenal dysfunction, and breast implant illness (autoimmune response to silicone shells). A mold inspector pulls off a vent in her vanity; it’s caked with black mold. The air she breathed to “get ready” was poisoning her. The house that fetishized her body was making it fail. She removes her implants, stops dyeing her hair, and returns to her natural face. Hef doesn’t comment. The brand’s rules accrue on women—never on the man who made them.

Media shame as enforcement

Outside the mansion, the press polices that same beauty script. Crystal’s talk-show gauntlet reduces her to a punch line—“Daddy issues,” “old balls”—a ritualized shaming that nudges women back into compliance: be hot, be game, be grateful. She hires a media trainer who teaches her she can pause, say no, or redirect. That micro-skill—owning silence—is a hinge in her larger transformation. (Parallel: Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist explores how public women are punished for taking up complex space; Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth details how standards tighten as women gain other power.)

The relapse and the line

Even after leaving, Crystal nearly dies during a “natural” fat transfer to her breasts—massive blood loss on the table. She recognizes the compulsion as a familiar loop: a world taught her that worth sits in curves and clicks, then she kept paying the subscription after quitting the app. Recovery requires behavioral edits: no bikini photos on social, turning off films with a predatory gaze, replacing the dopamine of likes with the calm of travel and nature.

Key idea

If your body is your currency, someone else is your banker. Reclaiming ownership may first look like losing value; in time, it feels like gaining health.

(Note: The medical literature on breast implant illness is evolving; Crystal’s account joins a body of patient narratives driving research. Her mold/air findings echo Sick Building Syndrome cases.)

A reliable way to keep you small is to keep you alone. Crystal’s Sundays—Fun in the Sun by name, panic by reality—show how a system turns potential teammates into rivals. You learn fast that the woman beside you might be a spy, a competitor for allowance, or the next “girlfriend.” Real intimacy becomes a liability.

Engineered scarcity

There’s one main girlfriend slot, a few bedrooms near the throne, and a waiting room of women angling for entry. Mary’s card nights gather intel; a careless confession (“my boyfriend back home!”) gets a girl ousted by morning. Sundays are staged play: bikini hula hoops, roller skates, watermelon smiles. A woman whacks Crystal with a giant rainbow lollipop to get Hef’s attention; someone else keys “HOAR” into her car back in high school. The spelling error doesn’t soften the message: women who want are fair game.

The cost of “girl drama”

Hef liked competitiveness, not conflict. If drama erupted among the women after Crystal returned, she could quietly point to the “volcano,” and the offender vanished. This gave Crystal tactical leverage, but it also reveals the trap: in a system designed by and for male power, women enforce the rules on one another to survive. Paige, once her friend, turns into a demander of favors (a BMW in exchange for watching over Hef). The Shannon twins mirror her every move, right down to pajamas, but freeze her out of belonging. When friendship is conditional, you stay guarded by default.

Finding women who see you

Crystal’s few real bonds matter: Amber, the fellow “new girl” from night one, remains her refuge. Years later, at a polo match, she meets Anne; they end up in a golf cart, crying and trading origin stories, beginning a friendship that feels like repair. Post-mansion, Crystal notices research showing women with strong female friendships live longer and healthier. It tracks: friendship provides reality checks, resource sharing, and compassion that systems of scarcity suppress. (Compare Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman’s Big Friendship for a blueprint of sustaining deep female bonds.)

What you can do

• Name the competition script. If your context rewards you for undermining another woman, say it out loud. It disrupts the automation.
• Build backchannels. Create spaces (text threads, walks, no-phones dinners) where women can speak without performance pressure.
• Trade intel, not gossip. Swap resources (lawyers, doctors, media-training tips) the way the machine swaps rumors.

Key idea

If a system profits when women don’t trust each other, then friendship is not just comfort—it’s resistance.

(Context: bell hooks emphasized sisterhood as political resistance; Crystal’s memoir gives you a practical case study in why and how that solidarity gets starved.)

Crystal’s engagement story reads like stage direction: a mermaid music box (a nod to The Little Mermaid), a ring revealed beside a twirling Ariel, cameras conveniently rolling though no season was filming, no question actually asked. A press release goes out before she has processed. Then comes the wedding show contract: $2,500 to star in a series that nets producers hundreds of thousands. When she protests pay, Hef asks, “What are you in this for?”—a question that flips projection into accusation. Her anger finally eclipses her fear; she storms out. The loudspeaker booms: “Close the back gate! If Crystal tries to leave, detain her!” She stops. Then she walks—straight to her car, straight to Walgreens “for tampons,” and keeps going.

The runaway—and the new rescuer

Jordan McGraw offers a closet cleared just for her, love notes, 10,000 roses, and his father’s (Dr. Phil’s) therapy couch. Dr. Phil validates the exit—“You’re 25. You shouldn’t be trapped”—and Crystal feels seen. But cracks show: Jordan performs surprise he already knows about, trashes hotel rooms like a cosplay rock star, and is financially enmeshed with his parents. She reads an email from his mother advocating he end it: “Better after one year than two.” The message is unmistakable: you’re not chosen here either—just cast.

Public reckoning and private doubt

The July cover hits newsstands: “America’s Princess: Introducing Mrs. Crystal Hefner,” now patched with a sticker—“RUNAWAY BRIDE IN THIS ISSUE!” Crystal tries to sell the ring discreetly; paparazzi pop from behind a jewelry counter. Headlines reduce her to a grifter. She soft-pedals interviews to protect the brand she’s still partially bound to—proof that leaving the house doesn’t erase the contract in your head. As her relationship with Jordan implodes, the machine starts to look safe again by contrast. Mary calls: Hef’s in tears; her mother echoes the script. Crystal returns describing herself as “grown up”—and more powerful now that he fears she could leave again. She leans into that leverage to prune the girlfriend harem.

Why this matters for you

Escapes are rarely linear. You may leave a job, hometown, or relationship and return once (or more) before you’re really gone. That doesn’t mean you failed; it means you were metabolizing fear, scarcity, and the logistics of survival. Crystal shows the practical exit math: secret savings, alternative income (DJ residencies, brand deals, real estate), allies outside the system, and a plan that accounts for retaliation. She also shows the psychological: name the trauma bond, and expect love-bombing to follow your first no.

Key idea

Leaving is a process, not a moment. Prepare logistics, expect backlash, and measure progress in boundaries kept, not miles logged.

(Comparison: Paris Hilton’s memoir also features a spectacular escape and public reframe; Crystal’s addition is the return—and how to leave again with more agency.)

Marriage flips Crystal’s job title from girlfriend to wife—and from prop to protector. She negotiates small things that become big: direct deposit instead of the Friday allowance ritual; quietly curating Hef’s archive; installing a lock on the storage room when she discovers “everything was gone” that had been gifted over decades. She becomes the only person who can both hold his arm down the stairs and hold his myth together in public.

Witnessing decline with dignity

Hef refuses walkers; she finds a sleek black one. He hates hospitals; she swaps white sheets for black silk and turns the bedroom into an ICU when he’s dying. He wants the archive to live forever; she invests in Iron Mountain and an indexing system. She senses addiction patterns—decades of Dexedrine, Quaaludes, later Percocet—so staff begins dispensing pills as the “earthquake supply” runs out. She learns to pivot conversations from death while building the plan: buried by Marilyn Monroe (his wish), funeral under a privacy tent, scrapbooks marked for posterity. It’s loving, logistical, and clear-eyed about a man who “only thought of himself” yet also became a human she didn’t want to see suffer.

Sickness in body and house

While she cares, her own body breaks. Lyme and co-infections, thyroid/adrenal crashes, and mold exposure flatten her. She removes implants, stops performing sex, and shreds shoeboxes of limo photos—a small justice against a lifetime of documentation that wasn’t for her. The last nights, she loops The Wizard of Oz. As the glittering face of Oz dissolves to reveal the man behind the curtain, she names the metaphor directly: Hef had always been both—the myth and the small, frail person in need.

The final decision

Doctors can’t agree: hospitalize or keep him home? The infection (aggressive E. coli) is a superbug; a particular antibiotic might work, but his body can’t bear much. “I didn’t want him to know he was dying,” she writes, remembering her father’s fluorescent final hours. She ushers out anyone who says something grim within earshot. She chooses presence over procedure. His last words—“I’m okay”—are both denial and truth: the performance ending the way it began, on his terms. After, she orders a carved wood urn with a lock and key. He would have liked that—exclusivity to the end.

Key idea

You can honor someone’s humanity without endorsing their mythology. Grief can hold truth and tenderness at once.

(Note: Caregiver narratives—Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking—often hinge on love’s logistics. Crystal’s twist is caretaking the body and the brand.)

After the funeral, Crystal moves into “The Cloud Room,” unable to sleep in the bed where he died. Media obits arrive prewritten. Tributes roll in; critiques do too (GLAAD: stop calling him a pioneer). She issues a loving statement, honoring her promise to “only say good things,” but the gap between press-release Crystal and actual Crystal yawns. She stalls for six weeks as the mansion is dismantled around her—3,000 scrapbooks carted to climate-controlled vaults, faux Picassos bubble-wrapped, memories boxed. Then, in the dark, she drives away. She can’t figure out how to turn on her car’s headlights; the metaphor writes itself. They flick on. The road curves forward.

Grief opens questions, then space

In a tiny 600-square-foot bungalow, she goes quiet. She lets friendships (Noah) back in. She travels—Egypt, Maldives, England, Hawaii—and notices that nature’s pace matches her nervous system better than a red carpet. She removes bikini photos from social feeds; she turns off movies with predatory gazes. At a polo party, she meets Anne and remembers how female friendship feels in the body: safe, curious, seen. She buys a house with “good bones,” deer on the canyon hill, and room for peace. She hangs her dad’s blue guitar and, for the first time in decades, frames his photo—permission to love without pain.

Revisiting the archive

At Iron Mountain, she opens Volume 2199: a photo of her and Amber flanking Hef days after Halloween 2008. She sees a girl beaming because a powerful man’s arm is on her shoulder. She doesn’t scold that girl. Then she reads a letter from Mackenzie, a sixth-grader: “I have a dream to become a Playmate… What do you have to do to get in the mansion?” Crystal cries—the future she once advertised now looks like a funnel into silence. It crystallizes her pivot: she will no longer protect a myth that endangers girls like Mackenzie.

A new dream

Crystal names the prison: not the mansion, but a culture that rewards women for shrinking and punishes them for speaking. She sets her compass by simple coordinates—happiness, friendship, love, truth—and reclaims the right to “say whatever I want.” She keeps nuance: she did love Hef in the way a captive sometimes loves a captor; she could count on him as an “umbrella.” But she is her own umbrella now. That means risk—and the first clear day in years.

Key idea

Your inner voice is a muscle. It comes back when you stop outsourcing your value and start practicing your no.

(Context: Glennon Doyle’s Untamed similarly centers the inner knowing; Crystal’s narrative shows what it takes to hear it after a decade of performance.)

Crystal’s memoir doubles as a field guide for anyone untangling from a story that shrinks them. You won’t face a peacock-lined driveway with a cherub fountain—but you might face a workplace, social circle, or platform economy that runs on similar fuel: adoration, scarcity, and silence. Here’s how to apply what she learned, with examples from the book.

Audit the frame of “choice”

Ask: What happens if I say no? If the cost is housing, money, status, or safety, your yes is being priced. Crystal’s “rent” metaphor is clarifying—if access requires sex (or any boundary violation), name it as payment. That language makes negotiation possible (“I don’t pay in that currency”) and exit plans concrete.

Build an exit stack

• Financial: Quiet savings (Crystal’s paper tally), new income streams (DJ gigs, sponsored posts, real estate), and ownership vehicles (LLCs) lower dependency.
• Social: Allies outside the system (Amber, media trainer, later Anne), and a short list of safe places to land (she chose a tiny bungalow vs. a big public house).
• Legal/Media: Understand contracts (her spinoff show), say no on record, and assume cameras are rolling. If someone leverages images for control, document and seek counsel.

Replace dopamine with dignity

Crystal weaned herself from bikini likes to nature, travel, and friendships. You can too. If your self-worth dashboard pings red without external validation, schedule “non-optimized” time—no photos, no posts, just being. The calm feels strange at first; that’s withdrawal, not emptiness.

Care for the body that carried you

If your industry demands body modifications, demand second opinions and long-term risk assessments (Crystal’s implant illness, fat-transfer hemorrhage, mold exposure). Track symptoms even when dismissed as “stress.” Your lived experience is data.

Rehearse boundary language

• “I need time before I answer.” (Buys space from pressure tactics.)
• “That’s not in my contract.” (Shifts from personal to professional.)
• “I don’t do that.” (Full stop—no justification.)

Invest in women

Appoint your own “Mary,” minus the manipulation—a friend who protects your access to yourself. Share resources the way Crystal shared DJ sets and gas money with Amber, but attach clarity: generosity without obligation.

Let endings be messy

Crystal left, returned, and left again. Measure growth in different metrics: fewer secrets, faster nos, healthier friendships, less performance. If you relapse into old validation loops, note it and reset. Recovery is iterative.

Key idea

The opposite of being “chosen” is choosing. The life you pick may be smaller on Instagram—and infinitely larger in you.

(Comparison: Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism offers tactics for reclaiming attention; Crystal applies the principle to reclaiming self.)