A New Memoir · Represented by Wild Goose Agency
Come On In. The Water Is Fine.
A Memoir About the Strengths That Protect Us — and the Life We May Be Missing While They Do
At eighty-three, after more than fifty years as a psychologist, I began asking questions I had spent a career helping other people ask.
What if the vigilance, independence, competence, and emotional self-protection that helped us survive eventually begin keeping us from fully living?
Come On In. The Water Is Fine. is a memoir about achievement, vulnerability, marriage, aging, and the possibility that late is not the same as too late.
“At 83, a cardiac psychologist finally asks: did a lifetime of guarding his heart end up breaking it?”
Currently being pitched to publishers. Not yet available for purchase.
Published Books
Six published books, all available on Amazon. Each cover links to its Amazon page.
The Cost of Strength
What the Heart Pays for Success
Most people don’t struggle because they’re weak. They struggle because they’re strong in ways that work.
If Your Heart Could Speak: What Is It Trying to Tell You?
A short, reflective book about listening to what the body may be holding—and what it may be asking for.
For Leaders and High Achievers
This pattern doesn’t only show up in patients. It often appears in high-functioning leaders as well.
From the outside, everything looks right—success, respect, control.
But for many leaders, something else is happening beneath the surface.
The Heart of Leadership explores the hidden emotional patterns that drive performance—and the quiet cost they can carry for health and longevity.
The Hidden Heart Trilogy
The Hidden Heart Trilogy traces a progression:
A Change of Heart — psychological patterns behind heart disease
Cardiac Wellness — the toll of stress and exhaustion
What the Heart Remembers — how early experience continues to live in the body
Readers can begin anywhere, though many read them as a sequence.
Two Completed Manuscripts
Come On In. The Water Is Fine.
A Memoir About the Strengths That Protect Us — and the Life We May Be Missing While They Do
At eighty-three, psychologist Lawrence A. Decker began examining the emotional defenses that had helped him succeed but sometimes prevented him from fully experiencing his own life.
Through stories of childhood, family, marriage, achievement, and heart disease, the memoir explores what happens when we begin questioning the strengths we have depended on for decades.
That Wasn’t My Intention
When Your Best Efforts Backfire
What happens when our best qualities produce results we never wanted?
Drawing on more than fifty years as a psychologist and executive coach, Decker explores how competence, responsibility, independence, and good intentions can become automatic responses that interfere with the very outcomes we hope to achieve.
Combining personal experiences, psychological insights, and practical exercises, the book offers readers ways to recognize those patterns and make more deliberate choices.
Both completed manuscripts are represented by Wild Goose Agency. Neither is currently available for purchase. About the memoir
Heart Health & Psychology
Sometimes the hardest heart problems don’t show up on a scan.
If you’ve experienced chest pain, palpitations, exhaustion, or wondered whether stress may be part of the story, you’re not alone.
These ideas are meant to complement medical care, not replace it. New or unexplained chest pain, palpitations, or other cardiac symptoms always deserve prompt medical evaluation.
Dr. Larry Heart Coach
For readers who want a companion along the way, I’ve created Dr. Larry Heart Coach—an interactive guide in my voice. It’s not medical advice; it’s an educational companion, designed to help you reflect, ask questions, and take the next small step toward healing.
The goal is simple: to help you feel less alone, more connected, and more curious about what your heart may be trying to say.
“What we carry emotionally often finds another way to speak.”
Every heartbeat carries a story. Some are joyful, some painful, and many remain unspoken. What the Heart Remembers is about listening to those stories—the hidden connections between early experiences, emotions, and the symptoms our bodies carry.
I’m Lawrence A. Decker, PhD. Heart health is one part of a much broader career in psychology, and this book brings together decades of clinical work, personal stories, and discoveries about how the heart remembers what the mind forgets.
Watch this video to see Dr. Larry explain how stress, exhaustion, and hidden emotional patterns affect the heart—and how healing begins.
*This shortened version of the full video emphasizes themes from my new book, What the Heart Remembers: The Hidden Story Behind Heart Symptoms. If you’d like to see the original full discussion, click below to watch the complete video.*
In this 5-minute video, Dr. Larry shares how stress and hidden emotional patterns affect the heart—and how healing begins.
Professional Legacy
In 2026, Dr. Lawrence Decker contributed the new foreword to the Routledge/Taylor & Francis Psychology Revivals reissue of his father Robert J. Decker's Effective Psychotherapy: The Silent Dialogue, originally published in 1988. The new edition brings his father's work to another generation of readers and reflects a shared commitment to understanding the deeper processes of psychotherapy and human relationships.
His relationship with his father is an important part of his memoir, Come On In. The Water Is Fine.