5 Best Books for Dealing With Anxiety and Depression

YOU ARE READING: 5 Best Books for Dealing With Anxiety and Depression AT PhebinhvanhocEN

the best books on depression and anxiety

1. the midday demon : an atlas of depression by andrew solomon

focuses on: depression type(s): feeling less alone and increased understanding/investigation

You are reading: Best books on depression and anxiety

solomon calls his book “an atlas of depression” and once you’ve covered about half of the 688 pages, you’ll start to realize why: this is everything you wish you knew about depression. —personal experience, medical experience, drug treatments, history, cultural interpretations, and, of course, Solomon’s own struggles with it. the book is a lot to take in. What the book conveys, however, is the combination of how well written it is, coupled with the shocking severity of Solomon’s own story.

I’m going to be honest. I have been reading about depression and mental health for many years. I have even suffered some mild depressive episodes. I had no idea the depths this thing can reach. this is the only book i have read that makes me understand why a person can choose to end their own life.

reading noon demon changed several of my attitudes and assumptions that I had not only about depression, but also about antidepressants, therapy, and mental health. If I had read it while I was depressed, it would have given me more hope and helped me navigate my way out of it.

2. first, we beautify the beast by sarah wilson

focuses on: anxiety type(s): feeling less alone and increased understanding/investigation

I loved this book, but I don’t think everyone will. This is mainly due to Wilson’s writing style and, I guess, the way his brain works. as a chronically anxious person, first, we make the beast beautiful is frantic and sometimes too energetic, jumps from story to story, back ten years to fast forward five years to childhood to imagined old age, from personal disaster to scientific research to that which my meditation teacher told me, by the way, didn’t work at all, but hey, it’s funny now, looking back.

I enjoyed it because my brain (and my writing) sometimes works the same way. but I’ve seen reviews online from anxious people who have commented that the book actually made them more anxious, just reading it. obviously, that’s not the goal.

But all that aside, I think this book is the best demonstration of what it’s really like to live with severe anxiety and still find a way to function and thrive in one’s life. Wilson has suffered from bipolar disorder, eating disorders, manic episodes, and intermittent depression. but the anxiety has always been there. intensely there. and somehow he has taken advantage of it to get his places. I’ve always argued that the key to anxiety is not getting rid of it, but simply directing it more productively. the heart of first, we beautify the beast is the same storyline, demonstrated through a vibrant (and slightly wacky) life unlike anything he’s seen before.

(note: this book is not yet available in some countries).

3. feeling good: david burns new mood therapy

focuses on: anxiety and depression type(s): exercises/action

godwin’s famous law states that the longer an internet discussion goes on, the probability that someone will be compared to hitler approaches 100%. Well, in my experience, the longer an internet discussion about depression, anxiety, or any other mental health issue goes on, the chance that they’ll be recommended feel good also approaches 100%. I see this book mentioned everywhere.

That’s because if you were to write an entire book, “Here’s What Three Months With a CBT Therapist Would Look Like,” filled with enough exercises to fill a small notebook, it would have feeled good. burns has done a fantastic job of writing essentially the closest replacement to a real therapist. As a result, almost every time I come across someone who needs a therapist but can’t get one for some reason, this book is an instant recommendation.

4. the happiness trap: how to stop fighting and start living by russ harris

focuses on: anxiety and depression type(s): further understanding/investigation and exercises/action

I love this book. it was very influential to me when I read it years ago and I was very upset to discover that I had inadvertently copied one of the exercises in it into my self-knowledge pdf (it has since been properly repaired and credited).

Harris is probably the most visible advocate of something called act therapy, or acceptance and commitment. act is a relatively new form of therapy that argues that the key to dealing with depression, anxiety or addiction is not necessarily to eliminate bad feelings. instead, acting focuses on developing mental tools and habits to simply weather those bad feelings more effectively. while CBT focuses on channeling pain and suffering into more productive interpretations and actions, acting just says fuck it, bad feelings are bad feelings and they don’t necessarily have to mean anything at all, if we don’t let them. For me, acting is one of the most promising recent developments in psychology, as it incorporates some of the benefits of mindfulness, with a touch of Eastern philosophy.

The Happiness Trap is also some of the most accessible and enjoyable psychological reading out there. the writing is clear and fun, and the exercises are engaging. In my opinion, the best books on folk psychology bring some humor and humanity to the subject, and this is one of the few books that pulls it off very well.

5. self-compassion: the proven power of being kind to yourself by kristin neff

focuses on: anxiety and depression type(s): further understanding/investigation and exercises/action

In the subtle art of not giving a fuck (yes, I had to find a way to cover my own shit here), I pointed out that true self-esteem cannot be a measure of how well you feel. someone feels about their successes, it should be a measure of how we feel about our failures.

This is not a terribly original idea. people have been shitting on self-esteem for a couple of decades. but neff is the first psychologist to conceptualize an alternative metric for self-esteem: self-compassion.

People with self-compassion can cope with failure, forgive themselves for being wrong, accept their insecurities and shortcomings, and keep trying in spite of them.

Ignore the cutesy title here. self-compassion gives you the answer and how to for every time you’ve heard someone say, “hey, don’t be so hard on yourself.” In this book, Neff proposes self-compassion as a more effective measure of psychological health and investigated how we get there. How do we cultivate self-compassion? How do we forgive ourselves for screwing up, for not living up to what we want from ourselves, for having failures and bad moments and days when nothing seems to go right? *infomercial voice* Read this book to find these answers and more!

Like many popular psychology books, its examples and anecdotes are sometimes full of clichés. however, the core idea is important enough to make this book worth reading if you’re the incredibly self-critical type.

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