Thriving with Adult ADHD: Skills to Strengthen Executive Functioning by Phil Boissiere MFT

This is an excellent resource designed to help you build executive functioning skills (including focus, organization, impulse control, emotional regulation). While there’s good information here, the assessments and evidence-based exercises are what I find the most helpful features.

The Mindfulness Prescription for Adult ADHD: An 8-Step Program for Strengthening Attention, Managing Emotions, and Achieving Your Goals by Lidia Zylowska.

This book is special in that it has extremely specific and surprisingly practical guidance in how to practice various mindfulness-based meditations specifically for individuals with ADHD. I do believe it’s an excellent resource for even those without ADHD too, and is a great book for those beginning to practice mindfulness.

How to Control Your Anxiety Before It Controls You by Albert Ellis.

Dr. Ellis created Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), and using it’s concepts helps you distinguish between healthy and unhealthy anxiety and how to gain control over it. This book is a classic for a reason, it’s a great resource with examples of patients Dr. Ellis has succesfully treated and some very easy and helpful exercises.

Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind by Judson Brewer.

A modern guide to reducing anxiety written by addiction psychiatrist and neuroscientist Dr. brewer. I love this book because it teaches you to recognize anxiety triggers and how to defuse them with techniques that are easy to learn.

This Is Depression: A Comprehensive, Compassionate Guide for Anyone Who Wants to Understand Depression by Diane McIntosh.

Dr. McIntosh is a Psychiatrist who is regarded as an expert on depression and other mood disorders. I love this book because she does a wonderful job of explaining the causes, profound impact, and available treatment options of depression. This book written to be accessible to all readers and has an evidence-based approach founded on the most recent research.

101 Ways to Be Less Stressed: Simple Self-Care Strategies to Boost Your Mind, Mood, and Mental Health by Caroline Leaf.

You know how everyone always recommends self-care when you’re going through a hard time? And how difficult it can be to even come up with self-care activities? This book is great because it actually has useful and realistic easy things you can fit into your life for “mental self-care” to reduce stress and improve your mood.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Made Simple: 10 Strategies for Managing Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Panic, and Worry by Seth J. Gillihan Ph.D

I like this book by Dr. Gillihan for a number of reasons: it’s easy to read, well written, inherently practical, and, most importantly, it really can help you to grow and heal. This is a workbook and contains strategies and self-reflection opportunities.

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk M.D.

This is, in my opinion, the most pivotal book about trauma. Dr. van Der Kolk has decades of experience working with trauma survivors and is a leading expert in the field. Here he describes the devastating reality of how trauma actually reshapes a persons body and brain impacting every aspect of their life. Despite the intense content, this book is validating in that it gives scientific proof that survivors do have real and lasting effects from their trauma, and is empowering in that the author discusses treatment options available that individuals can use to take control, heal, through literally rewiring their brains.

This Naked Mind: Control Alcohol, Find Freedom, Discover Happiness & Change Your Life by Annie Grace

Annie Grace wrote a book that has been a leader in the recent movement of “sober curious” individuals, people who don’t consider themselves to be “alcoholics” but are concerned about how alcohol is impacting their lives. This book is part-memoir, and part expose with a wealth of scientific and social information about why people drink and the stigma of addiction. While I don’t agree with the somewhat grandiose blanket claim that this book will give the reader “freedom from alcohol” and stop cravings, I do believe that it is an excellent resource that will change the way you think about alcohol and addiction.