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 …
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 …
Disclosure: I received a free paint by numbers kit from Winnie’s Picks, but all opinions are my own. I probably hadn’t done any kind of painting since elementary school. I’m not visually artistic at all; all of my creativity comes out in words. But when Winnie’s Picks reached out to me, I thought it sounded …
The Gratitude Project, edited by Jeremy Adam Smith et al., is a project of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley in California. It includes chapters by a number of different authors on various aspects of gratitude. I liked that the book took a realistic approach to what gratitude can and can not do. …
In this emerging blogger post, Meagon of Prose for the Masses writes about living with PTSD, and the many different ways it can look. I am not a veteran. I have not survived a major genocide nor am I a survivor of horrific abuse. I do not outwardly bear the signs of someone struggling, but …
52 Small Changes for the Mind by Brett Blumenthal lays out a year-long series of weekly small changes to improve your overall mental wellbeing. It’s not specifically geared towards people dealing with mental illness, but there are plenty of common sense, realistic ideas that could be useful for anyone. Each of the book’s 52 chapters …
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is compassion-focused therapy. Compassion-focused therapy (CFT) was developed by Paul Gilbert and draws on compassion to eliminate suffering, including shame and self-criticism. The theoretical basis spans a number of fields and incorporates both Western and Eastern philosophies. Part …
A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook, 2nd edition, is written by Bob Stahl and Elisha Goldstein. MBSR was originally developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn; I’ve previously reviewed his book Wherever You Go There You Are. The authors offer this description of mindfulness: Mindfulness is about being fully aware of whatever is happening in the present moment, without …
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Mindfulness for Insomnia by Catherine Polan Orzech and William H. Moorcroft lays out a day-by-day four-week meditation program to facilitate sleep. I’ll start off by saying that I read the book because I was curious about the method, but I didn’t actually practice it myself. Aside from the sleep education in the first part of …
The Happiness Diary: Practice Living Joyfully by Barbara A. Kipfer guides you through various self-reflection exercises and prompts to connect with the potential for happiness that already exists in your life. It’s designed to be used as a notebook and written in, and each page is beautifully illustrated. I’m always a tad wary of happiness-promoting …
