Book Resources
If you would like to access some resource books I would recommend any or all of the following.
Lost Connections (2018)
Johann Hari, Bloomsbury Publishing
This is a really important and very well researched book about the real causes of anxiety and depression, including loss of connenction from meaningful relationships with people, work and our environment. It also contains fascinating and thought provoking ways forward to help not only with our individual feelings but also how to improve society for everyone. The book is very well written and I feel this is an essential read. I am incorporating it into my counselling practice and into my everyday life
Reasons to Stay Alive (2016)
Matt Haig, Canongate Books
Matt is a writer who in this book has given a very open and honest account of his own anxiety and depression. The book is written in a very readable way. It also contains great chapters on how people have responded to him as well as reasons he and other people stay alive even at very dark times. I feel this book should be essential reading for everyone as it helps show how crap anxiety and depression can be at times and how debilitating but also how it is possible to continue to live your life.
Mad Girl (2016)
Bryony Gordon, Headline
Bryony Gordon is a successful journalist and author. In this book she lays bare her experience of having thought Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. She vividly describes the effects on her life and her thinking as well as how hard it was to actually admit and talk about mental health issues. It is a personal book that opens up the experience of OCD and the potential power of thoughts to a wide audience. She has also gone on to start a great walking based mental health peer support group called my mental health mates. There is a link on the websites page.
The Illustrated Happiness Trap – How to Stop Struggling and Start Living (2014)
Rus Harris and Bev Aisbett, Shambala
This is a very helpful book looking at why in an age when we seem to have so much people feel anxious and depressed. It is based on acceptance and compliance therapy. The book looks at the myth of being happy, how vicious circles start and challenging your own thoughts. The illustrated nature of the book with its many exercises makes it really accessible and useable. I suggest picking a few pages and exercises that feel most helpful and working with them for a while. It can also be a very useful companion to counselling work.
Quiet The Mind, An Illustrated Guide on How to Meditate (2011)
Matthew Johnstone, Pan Macmillan
There are many books and apps dedicated to the use of mindfulness and meditation. I particularly like this one as the illustrations are great with simple, calm explanations and an emphasis on looking after ourselves.
Counselling For Toads (1998)
Robert de Board, Routledge
This is a lovely book that looks at how a counselling relationship may be needed, start, develop and resolve through the wind in the willows characters.
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind Vintage
Yuval Harari (2011)
This is a fantastic book that somehow manages to objectively summarise the history of humans as a species. It reveals our use of collective stories to achieve mass cooperation and ultimately change how we live. This is accessibly written and led me to think about human society differently.
Life Behind Glass : A personal Account of Autism-Spectrum Disorder (1998)
Wendy Lawson, Southern Cross university Press
The author Wendy Lawson has an autism spectrum disorder. Considered to be intellectually disabled and "almost incapable of doing as she is told" at school, she was later misdiagnosed as schizophrenic – a label that stuck with her for more than 25 years. Her sense of self was then non-existent, but Wendy is now a mother of four with two university degrees; she is a social worker and adult educator, and operates her own business. She is also a poet and writer, sharing her understanding of autism with others to help "build a bridge ...from my world to theirs". This book is part of that bridge. It is a powerful and insight giving book.