Building mental wellness on a foundation of strength
Pocket Therapy for Emotional Balance by Matthew McKay, Jeffrey C. Wood, and Jeffrey Brantley is part of a series of pocket therapy books from New Harbinger Publishers. The book is short, the chapters are bite-sized, and it's very easy to read. The book is based on dialectical behaviour therapy, with a focus on emotional regulation.… Continue reading Book Review: Pocket Therapy for Emotional Balance
Here Until I'm Gone Here Until I’m Gone: 40 Poems About Trauma, Illness, And The Inevitability Of Death is a booklet of poetry by Mio Angelo of Mentally Ill in America. The poems capture the challenges of living with chronic mental illness, including dealing with the ignorance of others. He writes about finding healing from… Continue reading Book Review: Here Until I’m Gone (& Thoughts on Therapeutic Writing)
In Safe: A Memoir, Elspeth Roake shares her journey with depression and trauma-related disordered attachment, from the lowest lows to finally finding healing. Elspeth competed in horse shows, and the book begins in Florida for the winter show season, with her going into the hospital for suicidal ideation. She ended up being Baker Acted (committed… Continue reading Book Review: Safe: A Memoir
Stop Avoiding Stuff, by Matthew S. Boone, Jennifer Gregg, and Lisa W. Coyne, tackles avoidance using techniques from acceptance and commitment therapy. It teaches microskills that you can use as alternatives to avoidance, and suggests teeny tiny practices along the way. The book starts off with a look at what avoidance is and why we… Continue reading Book Review: Stop Avoiding Stuff
Mindful as F*ck by Emily Horn is aimed at people who've slept through yoga and can't stand green juice. It's lighthearted, and provides 100 mindfulness exercises for readers to try. The exercises draw on meditation, yoga, Buddhism, Ayurveda, reiki, chakra healing, and the law of attraction. The book is part mindfulness with a big dollop… Continue reading Book Review: Mindful as F*ck
Mindful Somatic Awareness for Anxiety Relief by Michele L. Blume presents a body-based approach to dealing with anxiety. It's based on Somatic Experiencing, which is a type of trauma therapy. While the book talks about fear, worry, and anxiety, there's no explicit mention of anxiety disorders. The book describes anxiety this way: "Anxiety is a… Continue reading Book Review: Mindful Somatic Awareness for Anxiety Relief
My Beautiful Psychosis: Making Sense of Madness by Emma Goude is a gripping, up close and personal look at what it's actually like to experience psychosis. The author's honesty and complete openness quickly shatter any stereotypes of psychosis being frightening and dangerous. The book begins with the events leading up to the author's first episode… Continue reading Book Review: My Beautiful Psychosis
My Colour-Coded Life tells Megan Jackson Hall's story of living with schizoaffective disorder. She writes that she hopes the book will help to destigmatize mental illness. The book is made up of diary-style entries from 2008 to 2018. It offers a fascinating insight into living with active psychosis on a day to day basis, written… Continue reading Book Review: My Colour-Coded Life
Liar Liar by Laurie Katz tells her story of being raped in her first year of college, and the school's (mis)handling of the matter. It's part of the Inspirational series by Trigger Publishing, a mental health publisher. The book opens with the night she was raped. Afterwards, contrary to society's expectations that someone go to… Continue reading Book Review: Liar Liar
The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays by Esmé Weijun Wang gives insights into her life with schizoaffective disorder and some of the major issues she's faced as a result. Want uses the term schizophrenias to refer to primary psychotic illnesses like schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder. Her initial diagnosis was bipolar disorder, and it took 9 years to… Continue reading Book Review: The Collected Schizophrenias