“Hope” is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops – at all
-Emily Dickinson
RESOURCES
There are so may wonderful books, articles, videos and podcasts out there that can enhance your understanding of your own psychology. Here are a few of my favorites on a variety of subjects. I’d love to hear about the resources that have helped you too so please tell me about them.
Ellen
ADD/ADHD
While Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is often diagnosed in childhood, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) may go undetected. It can come as a revelation to some adults to realize this is part of their own clinical picture. That said, these conditions are in my opinion greatly over-medicated, particularly in children. It’s useful to have a clear diagnosis and to explore non-pharmaceutical means of managing this condition. In some cases medication is indeed appropriate, ideally prescribed by a psychiatrist rather than an internist or pediatrician. Here are some books that will help you learn more about these conditions.
This guide offers practical information about ADD, as well as some handy quizzes that allow you to test yourself to rate whether this is something you want to investigate further.
This book takes a fascinating alternate look at attention issues, exploring them less as an innate biochemical issue and more as a result of childhood experiences. Author Gabor Maté also tells the story of his own traumatic childhood and personal history with ADD.
Addiction
Which comes first: suffering or addiction? Do we self-medicate to soothe our pain or are our habitual coping strategies leading us to suffer? Either way, as long as those habits—whether it’s drugs, alcohol, pornography, shopping, gambling, gaming, you name it—have control over you, you’re not going to be living your best life. Figuring it all out and making meaningful change is a long, life-transforming journey. Here are some resources for learning more about addiction.
Author Caroline Knapp describes alcohol as the “liquid armor” that protected her from the pain of her past and the stress of the present. Even while successfully pursuing her career as a journalist she was spiraling into addiction. This honest and eloquent account is a recovery classic.
This raw account of the author’s descent into drug addiction and his climb out through Buddhist meditation practice has inspired many a recovery.
This is journalist David Scheff’s eloquently written memoir describing his journey as the father of an addict.
And this is David Scheff’s son Nick Scheff’s own account of his addiction. Taken together these two books by father and son make poignant and illuminating reading.
Gabor Maté’s masterful work covers the origins and treatment of addiction in a way that is thorough, informative and deeply humane.
12 Step Programs
There are many reasons (or excuses, depending on your point of view) not to love 12 step programs. I think I’ve heard them all. But they’re still a promising and inexpensive way to maintain sobriety, so well worth looking into. As they say in the program, shop around and find the group that’s right for you. There are many different 12 step programs but these are the ones I most often refer to:
AA: https://lacoaa.org/meetings/?tsml-day=5&tsml-mode=me
Ala-non: https://alanonla.store/Map/
Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous: http://slaalosangeles.org
“Being cut off from our own natural self-compassion is one of the greatest impairments we can suffer. Along with our ability to feel our own pain go our best hopes for healing, dignity and love. What seems non-adapative and self-harming in the present was, at some point in our lives, an adaptation to help us endure what we then had to go through. If people are addicted to self-soothing behaviors, it’s only because in their formative years they did not receive the soothing they needed. Such understanding helps delete toxic self-judgment on the past and supports responsibility for the now. Hence the need for compassionate self-inquiry.”
~ Gabor Maté
Anxiety
Anxiety has many sources, usually interacting in a frustrating combination: innate biochemical patterns, reactivity to trauma, effects of one’s current circumstances. So we need to work on calming down the symptoms first and then change the inner landscape that results in these symptoms. For immediate relief, see the links below to yoga, meditation and sleep.
I love this book by Atlantic editor/writer Scott Stossel because he combines well researched information with a heartfelt personal story.
And here’s a useful guide to managing anxiety attacks.
Death and Dying
It comes to us all at the end. Both of these books by physicians who’ve had up close and personal experiences with their own parents’ mortality will help prepare you for your own or a loved one’s passing.
Bestselling author, New Yorker writer, and surgeon Atul Gawande offers a candid look behind the scenes at the medical approach to end of life decisions. Very readable and informative.
Author and surgeon Sherwin Nuland won the National Book Award for this ground breaking book which he has recently updated. Both Nuland and Gawande address the experience of their own fathers’ deaths to poignantly illustrate the sometimes conflicting goals of medicine and patients’ needs and wishes.
Written specifically for the dying person, this book covers practical concerns like medical decisions, legal matters, health insurance, hospice and palliative care. The authors are also sensitive to the profound existential, spiritual, and emotional issues that can arise at the end of life.
Depression
Winston Churchill famously called it “the black dog,” while jazz musicians call it “the blues.” And many writers (who are often sufferers themselves) have tried to put into words the profound sadness that can hit like a thunderstorm. Depression comes in many shapes and sizes, from mild to moderate to crippling misery, to the mood swings of bipolar disorder. A thorough evaluation of your personal depression can help determine whether it would be wise to consult a psychiatrist about medication. And there are many other non-pharmaceutical ways to address depression.
This memoir/narrative about depression is a few years old but still an eloquent and informative personal account. If you are depressed you’ll likely find in Andrew Solomon a compassionate kindred spirit.
Depression can show up differently—and have different origins—in men than in women. Psychologist Terry Real breaks it down in a user-friendly way that many men can relate to.
In this quirky podcast, the hosts interview comedians about their depression.
EFT Couples Therapy
There are lots of great approaches to couples counseling. At the end of the day, all good couples counseling offers a supportive and calm, safe space in which partners can feel heard as they talk about the challenges of being in relationship and find new ways to communicate their feelings to one another. I practice EFT couples counseling because of its proven effectiveness and because its emphasis on “radical empathy” and acceptance are a good fit for me. Dr. Susan Johnson is the remarkable psychologist who came up with this approach. Here are several ways to experience Sue’s wisdom and begin to understand more about this model.
This is Sue’s classic EFT guide for couples on understanding their relationship dynamics:
This audiobook is my favorite introduction to EFT. Read by Sue Johnson herself, it is warm, personal and direct, explaining the basic concepts of attachment and romantic love in a plain, easy to follow manner that makes sense of the complexities of being in a relationship.
Here’s a video of Sue talking about love and bonding:
“For all of us, the person we love most in the world, the one who can send us soaring joyfully into space, is also the person who can send us crashing back to earth. All it takes is a slight turning away of the head or a flip, careless remark. There is no closeness without this sensitivity. If our connection with our mate is safe and strong, we can deal with these moments of sensitivity. Indeed, we can use them to bring our partner even closer. But when we don’t feel safe and connected, these moments are like a spark in a tinder forest. They set fire to the whole relationship.”
― Sue Johnson
Meditation
Centuries old and now scientifically validated in numerous studies, meditation helps with just about everything: depression, anxiety, stress, focus, overall well-being. Especially if you are someone who prefers not to explore medication, this is an excellent starting point for managing your symptoms naturally. People often tell me, “I can’t meditate. I keep having all these random thoughts.” I tell them, “That is meditation!” You don’t have to be “good at” meditation. You just have to make time to sit (or lie on your back if sitting is uncomfortable) and breathe and observe your thoughts. It’s that simple, but it helps to have a guide so here are some really helpful resources.
For meditation guidance with a spiritual flavor you can’t beat Thích Nhất Hạnh, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk and peace activist.
Jon Cabot Zinn offers a purely secular, more scientific spin on mindfulness meditation instruction.
This is one of many popular apps that talk you through a meditation program. Headspace is secular and surprisingly left brain, with incentives and motivators to keep you on track.
By contrast, Tara Brach offers spiritually rich talks and meditations in this (free) podcast.
Parenting
I would argue that parenting is the most important “job” any of us does. It’s certainly one of the hardest! Especially these days with so many conflicting suggestions about how to do it “right” and with all the challenges of the digital revolution to contend with. I’m happy to help clients grapple with parenting issues, having written for years on the topic and being a mother and grandmother myself. Here are some texts I like:
So many parents these days struggle with setting limits; here’s a book that describes how to approach this issue in a loving and compassionate way.
And here’s a book that reminds parents that children are resilient.
Self Help
There’s so much you can do on your own to understand and improve your mental health. Here are few inspirations.
Dr. David’s Richo’s simple guide to doing the right things.
Brene Brown became a TED Talk sensation by daring to name the un-namable emotion: shame. In this short, eloquent book she describes how to let go of self-criticism and accept yourself.
If you’re on a quest to find the meaning of life, this excellent but somewhat densely written book will give you a lot to think about.
Cheryl Strayed, the popular author of Wild, had an anonymous life as an advice columnist named Sugar. These answers to a wide range of letter-writers are little gems of wisdom and loving kindness
Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a way of thinking of our minds as composed of many different parts of the self. This is an audio guide in which IFS founder Richard Schwartz explains his approach while taking listeners through IFS based meditations.
“It is not necessary to teach others, to cure them or to improve them; it is only necessary to live among them, sharing the human condition and being present to them in love.”
― Charles de Foucauld
Sexuality
On the one hand, our society is saturated with sexual imagery, pornography, jokes, and other references to sex. On the other hand, real life people — and even couples who have been having sex for years — may find this topic very hard to talk about. And the gap between what real people experience in the bedroom and the expectations our culture creates is ever widening. Becoming informed about sexuality is a good way to open up the topic. Here’s a book that will help that process along.
This compilation of the latest research into sexual arousal offers some surprising and helpful insights.
Trauma
It sometimes seems to me that all psychological problems are connected to trauma. Sometimes it’s overt—an act of violence or betrayal, or a car crash, or other accident. And sometimes it’s subtle, like a childhood marked by disruptions or parental indifference or the negative ways in which society has reacted to an individual’s unique characteristics. In addition to straightforward PTSD these influences can lead to depression, anxiety and other problems. One promising approach to trauma (one which I am not trained in) is Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). You may want to look into this if you find yourself stuck in a traumatic event. Other approaches (which I draw from) emphasize the ways in which trauma can be “stuck” in the body. Here are two excellent books describing the impact of trauma on the physical body and the ways that we can recover through bodily awareness.
This very readable and important book on trauma introduces Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing approach.
And this slightly older book, ground-breaking when it was published, was written for both clinicians and their patients.
Sleep
You need your sleep! Practically everything feels better after a good night’s rest. There are lots of helpful ideas about “sleep hygiene,” including avoiding caffeine in the afternoon and evening, turning off all screens a half hour before bedtime and leaving your phone in another room when you go to bed, using the bed itself only for sleep and sex, practicing yoga or meditation before bed and, of course, counting sheep. There are also several apps designed help you drift off. Here’s one I like.
This helpful app offers meditation, stories and audio recordings to soothe you to sleep.
Yoga
If you don’t have the patience for sitting meditation, yoga is a fantastic alternative. And it will help you get limber and fit too. (Please consult with your physician before beginning any exercise program.)
This beautiful book by a popular local teacher combines practical guidance with yoga philosophy for a fusion of mind, body and spirit.
You can’t drive around LA without seeing a yoga studio on every block. Here’s a good starting place, a studio with branches throughout the city offering a variety of classes and a high standard of teacher training.
If getting to a studio is difficult, no excuses! There are numerous You Tube videos and streaming services. Here’s one I like.