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MENTAL HEALTH & HAPPINESS
BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS
Here are a selection of the mental health and happiness books I often recommend to clients and training participants:
1) Anxiety Journal: 130 mindful prompts to manage anxiety, increase self-awareness and cultivate calm
Written by me (Laura Duester), this guided journal is an essential companion to navigate anxiety with mindfulness, self-compassion and coping strategies. It's filled with thought-provoking prompts to encourage reflection, calm, emotional expression and positive change.
2) The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook
This workbook guides you through a range of exercises to help you be kinder and more supportive towards yourself. It’s by the self-compassion expert Kristin Neff and is a great way to learn how to challenge and overcome your self-critical inner voice.
3) You Are Not A Before Picture
I meet so many people who struggle with negative body image, so this book provides a refreshing and useful alternative way to view yourself. It includes tips and advice to make peace with your body and question diet culture and fat phobia.
This inspiring book by Viktor Frankl details his experiences in Auschwitz. He considers what helps us cope with even the darkest and most challenging experiences, sharing simple ways to find resilience and hope.
5) The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read
By psychotherapist Philippa Perry, this book offers a great insight into how early life shapes the way we think, feel and behave. It explores the varied emotional messages that may be conveyed by parents, and considers how best to raise emotionally-healthy children.
6) Performance Psychology For Dancers
This is a great book full of practical, psychological tools to help dancers navigate training, improve performance and overcome setbacks.
7) Happy: Why more or less everything is absolutely fine
This book draws on a range of philosophical and psychological theories in considering what makes us happy. Written by TV illusionist Derren Brown, it offers practical and accessible suggestions for accepting life's difficulties and finding contentment.
8) Springboard: Launching your personal search for success
What does 'success' look like for you? With practical activities, this book encourages you to consider what's truly meaningful and create your own personal definition of success.
By renowned psychiatrist Irvin D. Yalom, this book offers an insight into human nature as he tells the stories of 10 of his patients. It’s almost like a series of short stories, with each tale showing the truly powerful and transformative nature of therapy.
10) Attached: Are you anxious, avoidant or secure?
This accessibly-written book explores different attachment styles (secure, avoidant or anxious/preoccupied), considering how these are formed and impact our feelings, behaviours and satisfaction in relationships.
Exploring the impact of trauma on both body and mind, this internationally-bestselling book includes case studies and practical tips to help you heal and move on from traumatic experiences.
12) Positive Psychology in a Nutshell
Written by one of the leaders in the field (Ilona Boniwell), this book offers a great introduction to positive psychology, which is the science of happiness, wellbeing and the 'good life'.
If you struggle with eating in any way, this book will help you explore your feelings towards food and consider how emotions and past experiences influence the way you eat.
14) Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?
Clinical psychologist Dr Julie Smith offers bite-sized practical advice for overcoming mental health difficulties and optimising your wellbeing, with topics including low mood, anxiety, self-esteem and and motivation.
15) Depressive Illness: The curse of the strong
This book considers how and why it tends to be 'strong' people who experience depression, with practical advice on recovery, symptoms, medication and lifestyle changes to help you get better.
16) Motherkind: A new way to thrive in a world of endless expectations
For anyone who's a mother, this encouraging and validating book focuses on helping you feel 'good enough', manage daily ups and downs, and become a happier parent.
17) The Seven Principles For Making Marriage Work
Including lots of practical exercises to analyse and improve your relationship, this book features the the best of John M. Gottman's ground-breaking research into the factors that maximise couple happiness and longevity.
18) And How Does That Make You Feel?
Psychotherapist Josh Fletcher shares his fascinating, candid and humorous insights into the process of counselling - giving a unique insight into what happens inside the therapy room.
19) How To Be An Imperfectionist
Stephen Guise offers simple but effective behavioural and emotional changes to 'let go' of unrealistic high standards, increase confidence, improve performance, and find freedom from perfectionism.
20) How To Be Sick: A Buddhist-inpsired guide for the chronically ill and their caregivers
Using insights and techniques from Buddhism, this book focuses on how to find acceptance, joy and hope when faced with a long-term illness or disability.
Another brilliant book by psychiatrist Irvin D. Yalom, this explores existential anxiety, what it means to be human, and how we can face life – and death – with clarity and confidence.
22) The State Of Affairs: Rethinking infidelity
Have you experienced infidelity? In this book, relationship therapist Esther Perel examines why people cheat, and considers the longing and loss that such behaviour often both causes and reflects.
There’s a common psychological trap, where we try to be happy by pushing away negative emotions and this ends up making us less happy. This book offers an alternative way to approach life and its challenges, based on the principles of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.
I will add to this list in the future with more recommendations, or feel free to contact me if you have any suggestions!