Resources

Books on Depression, Anxiety, and Stress

Mindfulness for Chocolate Lovers is a easy to read introduction to mindfulness and positive psychology, offering a refreshingly down-to-earth approach to addressing both daily life challenges as well as profound life struggles. 

Authentic Happiness is a great introduction to the science of happiness, positive psychology. Strangely, what most of us think will make us happy in the long-term, only provides a short-term boost of happiness. And things we don’t think contribute that much to happiness, really are the key to long-term happiness. This book is a great option if you feel like you have much of what should make you happy, yet it still seems elusive.

Written by UCLA interpersonal neurobiology pioneer Dan Siegel, Mindsight is a straightforward approach to reducing stress, anxiety, and depression by learning to observe the mind in action. Mindsight offers readers a visual and systematic approach to managing difficult emotions in a more effective way without denying or drowning in them. Siegel’s down-to-earth style makes his approach easy to learn and practice. This is a great option for visual learners and those who want a practical approach to managing their emotions.

Written by Oprah’s life coach, Finding Your Own North Star is a fun, down-to-earth read on identifying what really makes you happy and what does not. Peppered with pointed humor, this book takes you on a step-by-step process of how to get your own version of happy, including how to deal with beliefs, emotions, and relationships that hold you back. A book for action-oriented folks, each chapter has worksheets to help you figure out the right steps for you. If you can’t stand the typical self-help book, this is a good option for you.

Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life uses a workbook format to help address unhelpful thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors that result in feeling stressed, depressed, and/or anxious. This book is based on a leading evidence-based therapy approach, acceptance and commitment therapy, that integrates contemporary cognitive-behavioral therapy with some mindfulness-based concepts (don’t worry, no meditating involved: see mindfulness books below if you’d like to do that). This is a great text if you are action- or solution-oriented and get a sense of enjoy from taking practical steps to address concerns in your life.

Books on Trauma and PTSD

The Body Keeps Score provides a comprehensive overview of current trauma treatment. The book provides a user-friendly explanation of the neurobiology of trauma, which helps one understand the reason for symptoms such as flashbacks and nightmares, and specifically addresses what happens to children’s development when they experience trauma that goes untreated. The book then lays out numerous leading approaches to treating trauma, providing survivors the option to identify what works best for their personal needs, circumstances, and preferences.

The Dialectic Behavioral Therapy Workbook teaches the life skills we all should have learned more of earlier in life: distress tolerance, emotional regulation, interpersonal effectiveness, and cognitive versions of mindfulness. Based on a leading evidence-based therapy model, DBT was specifically designed to help people learn to cope with overwhelming emotions, even one never learned to do so early in life. DBT is also helps with trauma recovery, especially when do to childhood abuse.

Healing from Trauma provides a thorough orientation to the physiological and psychological dynamics of the trauma experience as well as a practical guide for healing. It's a great place to start.

As the title implies, The PTSD Workbook provides trauma survivors with a practical guidebook for working through difficult symptoms such as flashbacks, nightmares, hypervigilance (i.e., living on eggshells), and dissociation. When combined with psychotherapy in which memories are reprocessed, these techniques can be very helpful in quickly learning to manage these difficult situations and return to a more normal life.

Books on Divorce, Recovery, and Remarriage

Rebuilding provides a comprehensive guidebook from the initial shock of divorce to creating a new, vibrant future. The authors provide guidance in coping with the many difficult emotions related to divorce, such as grief, guilt, rejection, loneliness, and trust.

Getting Past Your Break Up provides a non-nonsense guide for recovering from a potentially conflictual breakup by helping you set clear boundaries that allow you to focus on healing. The book also addresses how to make life easier for children during the divorce and strategies for moving on.

The Co-Parenting Handbook guides parents through the separation and divorce process with a focus on minimizing negative effects on the children. It covers common areas of conflict, such as holidays, new partners, public spaces, and finances.

Saving Your Second Marriage Before It Starts guides you through a series of nine questions to reflect on whether you are ready to start again. It educates on essential relationship skills correlated with happy marriages.

The Divorce Workbook for Children has 40 activities to help children discuss their feelings and cope with divorce. It can also be used as a reference for discussing divorce with your children.

Written for younger children, Two Homes is a storybook that helps children adjust to common changes that are part of divorce.

Books on Abusive Relationships

Why Does He Do That? examines the psychology of men who are verbally abusive. Bancroft argue that the underlying belief that leads to such abuse is male privilege. He also identifies several different types of male abusers. This book can be helpful for those trying to make sense of a psychologically abusive relationship.

A Harvard psychologist, Stout radically proposes that most sociopaths are not serial kills, but rather charming yet manipulative people that not only lack empathy but a conscience. She estimates that 1 in 25 Americans fits this profile, who manipulate others for not only financial gain but also a personal sense of power and fulfillment. The Sociopath Next Door can be helpful in understanding some of your most challenging relationships.

Books for Couples

Written by the developer of one of the only two evidence-based treatments for distressed couples, Hold Me Tight provides an outstanding roadmap for maintaining a health relationship. The first three chapters on adult attachment in romantic relationships should be required reading for everyone who turns 18 years of age. Sue Johnson clearly outlines the underlying emotional and survival role intimate relationships play in our lives and uses this explain why we can behave so badly once committed. She then outlines seven conversations she recommends couples should have to create an emotionally safe relationship for years to come. This book is essential for anyone wanting a stable, long-term relationship.

Written by the developer of one of the only two evidence-based treatments for distressed couples (Sue Johnson’s was the other), Reconcilable Differences is the leading cognitive-behavioral approach to helping couples build long-term, satisfying relationships. The book helps partners to examine their differences and find new ways to understand each other, communicate better, and solve problems effectively. This is another essential read for anyone wanting to improve the quality of their current or future relationships.

Books for Adolescents and Their Parents

For parents of teens and soon-to-be-teens, Brain Storm provides a brain-based understanding of these often challenging and painful years. Dan Siegel provides a new way to think of the teens changing brain and how it relates to risk-assessment, motivation, and identity develop and offers parents useful suggestions for how to deal with this frequently turbulent time.

Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child provides parents with a developmental understanding of emotional intelligence and provides guidance on how to promote it a various stages of a child’s development. As most parents quickly discover, compassion, empathy, kindness, friendship, manners, and civility are not inborn—but taught. And today’s society creates many challenges for parents to do this easily and successfully.

The Dating Radar guides you in identifying common personality disorder types early in the dating process.

Girls and Sex is a must read for parents and teens alike, Peggy Ornstein shares what she learned after interviewing 40 high school girls and 40 college girls about their sexual experiences. This book provides parents with essential information for helping their children (boys and girls) through their sexual development, and provides girls with a better road map for navigating a complex and often painful journey.

Boys are failing to launch and thrive at alarming rates. In Saving Our Sons, parents learn how to help their boys thrive during a time where they are more and more likely to under-perform in school, lack emotional maturity, and struggle with forming healthy relationships.

Books for Parenting

1-2-3 Magic is an essential guide for any parenting struggling with children’s behavior issues ages 3-12. If you happened to not start off particularly good at setting limits, this is your essential guide to getting children to listen without drama. And, it ALWAYS works if you can do it calm, without drama, and consistently. It is a very gentle approach to regaining control. If your child has impulse control issues, including ADHD, this book is a must.

Based on positive psychology research, Raising Happiness teaches parents how to raise their children in a way that promotes a lifetime of happiness. Much of the advice is not intuitive and may not be shared by the Jones’ down the street. But in a nation where anxiety and depression are epidemic in children and adults, it is well worth some time to consider these evidence-informed guidelines for raising children who know how to maintain their own happiness, even when life does not go their way.

For parents of teens and soon-to-be-teens, Brain Storm provides a brain-based understanding of these often challenging and painful years. Dan Siegel provides a new way to think of the teens changing brain and how it relates to risk-assessment, motivation, and identity develop and offers parents useful suggestions for how to deal with this frequently turbulent time.

Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child provides parents with a developmental understanding of emotional intelligence and provides guidance on how to promote it a various stages of a child’s development. As most parents quickly discover, compassion, empathy, kindness, friendship, manners, and civility are not inborn—but taught. And today’s society creates many challenges for parents to do this easily and successfully.

Boys are failing to launch and thrive at alarming rates. In Saving Our Sons, parents learn how to help their boys thrive during a time where they are more and more likely to under-perform in school, lack emotional maturity, and struggle with forming healthy relationships.