Depression and Anxiety
Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life: The New Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
by Steven C. Hayes
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is based on a rather remarkable fact: when normal problem solving skills are applied to psychologically painful thoughts or feelings, suffering often increases. Fortunately, there are ways of correcting it.
The basic research underlying ACT shows that entanglement with your own mind leads automatically to experiential avoidance: the tendency to try first to remove or change negative thoughts and feelings as a method of life enhancement. This attempted sequence makes negative thoughts and feelings more central, important, and fearsome--and often decreasing the ability to be flexible, effective, and happy.
The trick that traps us is that these unhelpful mental processes are fed by agreement OR disagreement. Your mind is like a person who has to be right about everything. If you know any people like that you know that they are excited when you agree with them but they can be even more excited and energized when you argue with them! Minds are like that. So what do you do?
ACT teaches you what to do. The book has so many exercises. What ACT teaches is acceptance of emotions, mindful awareness of thoughts, contact with a transcendent sense of self, and action based on chosen values.
Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy
by David D. Burns
An excellent self-help book that presents many the principles of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). The book is a national best seller and easily available at libraries and bookstores.
Stop Obsessing!: How to Overcome Your Obsessions and Compulsions
by Edna B. Foa, Reid Wilson
A self-help book for people with obsessions and compulsions that is clear, precise, and immensely practical.
Personal Growth
Care of the Soul : A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life
by Thomas Moore
Care of the Soul is considered to be one of the best primers for soul work ever written. Thomas Moore, an internationally renowned theologian and former Catholic monk, offers a philosophy for living that involves accepting our humanity rather than struggling to transcend it. By nurturing the soul in everyday life, Moore shows how to cultivate dignity, peace, and depth of character. For example, in addressing the importance of daily rituals he writes, "Ritual maintains the world's holiness. As in a dream a small object may assume significance, so in a life that is animated by ritual there are no insignificant things." This is the eloquence that helped reintroduce the sacred into everyday language and contemporary values.