How to Fail: Everything I’ve Ever Learned From Things Going Wrong


Elizabeth Day - 2019
    This is a book for anyone who has ever failed. Which means it’s a book for everyone. If I have learned one thing from this shockingly beautiful venture called life, it is this: failure has taught me lessons I would never otherwise have understood. I have evolved more as a result of things going wrong than when everything seemed to be going right. Out of crisis has come clarity, and sometimes even catharsis.Part memoir, part manifesto, and including chapters on dating, work, sport, babies, families, anger and friendship, it is based on the simple premise that understanding why we fail ultimately makes us stronger. It's a book about learning from our mistakes and about not being afraid. Uplifting, inspiring and rich in stories from Elizabeth’s own life, How to Fail reveals that failure is not what defines us; rather it is how we respond to it that shapes us as individuals. Because learning how to fail is actually learning how to succeed better. And everyone needs a bit of that.

Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart: A Buddhist Perspective on Wholeness


Mark Epstein - 1998
    We are taught that the ideal is a strong, individuated self, constructed and reinforced over a lifetime. But Buddhist psychiatrist Mark Epstein has found a different way. Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart shows us that happiness doesn't come from any kind of acquisitiveness, be it material or psychological. Happiness comes from letting go. Weaving together the accumulated wisdom of his two worlds--Buddhism and Western psychotherapy--Epstein shows how "the happiness that we seek depends on our ability to balance the ego's need to do with our inherent capacity to be." He encourages us to relax the ever-vigilant mind in order to experience the freedom that comes only from relinquishing control. Drawing on events in his own life and stories from his patients, Going to Pieces  Without Falling Apart teaches us that only by letting go can we start on the path to a more peaceful and spiritually satisfying life.About The Author: Mark Epstein, M.D., is a psychiatrist in private practice and the author of Thoughts Without a Thinker . He is a contributing editor to Tricycle: The Buddhist Review and clinical assistant professor of psychology at New York University. He lives in New York City.

This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike.


Augusten Burroughs - 2012
    If you have ever wondered, How am I supposed to survive this? This is How.

Getting to Commitment: Overcoming the 8 Greatest Obstacles to Lasting Connection (and Finding the Courage to Love)


Steven Carter - 1998
    We sabotage our relationships and undermine our chances; we focus on the wrong partners and run away from real possibility. We find it difficult to be trusting, vulnerable, faithful, and honest. No matter how great the desire, we don't know how to move forward.Getting to commitment is about growth and change. It is about getting the love you deserve. You will learn how to recognize and overcome the eight greatest obstacles to lasting connection, how to focus on real possibility, and how to make and keep the relationships that matter most. Whether you are facing your own commitment issues or the issues of a reluctant partner, there is a way to both understand and resolve these conflicts. Falling in love and staying in love requires its own kind of heroism, because it takes real courage to make a commitment to lasting love. This book is about finding that courage.

The Price of Silence: A Mom's Perspective on Mental Illness


Liza Long - 2014
    When she heard about the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, her first thought was, What if my son does that someday? She wrote an emotional response to the tragedy, which the Boise State University online journal posted as I Am Adam Lanza s Mother. The post went viral, receiving 1.2 million Facebook likes, nearly 17,000 tweets, and 30,000 emails.Now, in "The Price of Silence "she takes a devastating look at how we address mental illness, especially in children, who are funneled through a system of education, mental health care, and juvenile detention that leads far too often to prison. In the end she asks one central question: if there s a poster child for cancer, why can t there be one for mental illness? The answer: the stigma. Liza Long is speaking in a way that we cannot help but hear, and she won t stop until something changes."

Happy Fat: Taking Up Space in a World That Wants to Shrink You


Sofie Hagen - 2019
    In Happy Fat, comedian Sofie Hagen shares how she removed fatphobic influences from her daily life and found self-acceptance in a world where judgement and discrimination are rife.From shame and sex to airplane seats, love and getting stuck in public toilets, Sofie provides practical tips for readers – drawing wisdom from other Fat Liberation champions along the way.Part memoir, part social commentary, Happy Fat is a funny, angry and impassioned look at taking up space in a culture that is desperate to reduce.

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


Judson Brewer - 2021
    Whether facing issues as public as a pandemic or as personal as having kids at home and fighting the urge to reach for the wine bottle every night, we are feeling overwhelmed and out of control. But in this timely book, Judson Brewer explains how to uproot anxiety at its source using brain-based techniques and small hacks accessible to anyone.We think of anxiety as everything from mild unease to full-blown panic. But it's also what drives the addictive behaviors and bad habits we use to cope (e.g. stress eating, procrastination, doom scrolling and social media). Plus, anxiety lives in a part of the brain that resists rational thought. So we get stuck in anxiety habit loops that we can't think our way out of or use willpower to overcome. Dr. Brewer teaches us map our brains to discover our triggers, defuse them with the simple but powerful practice of curiosity, and to train our brains using mindfulness and other practices that his lab has proven can work.Distilling more than 20 years of research and hands-on work with thousands of patients, including Olympic athletes and coaches, and leaders in government and business, Dr. Brewer has created a clear, solution-oriented program that anyone can use to feel better - no matter how anxious they feel.

I Don't Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression


Terrence Real - 1997
    And these escape attempts only hurt the people men love and pass their condition on to their children.This ground breaking book is the "pathway out of darkness" that these men and their families seek. Real reveals how men can unearth their pain, heal themselves, restore relationships, and break the legacy of abuse. He mixes penetrating analysis with compelling tales of his patients and even his ownexperiences with depression as the son of a violent, depressed father and the father of two young sons.

Memoirs Aren't Fairytales: A Story of Addiction


Marni Mann - 2011
    My body was acting on its own, and my mind was empty, like all my memories had been erased. There was scenery behind my lids. Aqua-colored water and powdery sand that extended for miles. I was never going back to coke. I wanted more heroin. And I wanted it now."Leaving behind a nightmarish college experience, Nicole and her friend, Eric, escape their home of Bangor, Maine to start a new life in Boston. Fragile and scared, Nicole desperately seeks a new beginning to help erase her past. But there is something besides freedom waiting for her in the shadows—a drug that will make every day a nightmare.Heroin.With one taste, the love that once flowed through Nicole's veins turns into cravings. Tracks mark the passing of time, and heroin's grip gets tighter. It holds her hand through deaths and prostitution, but her addiction keeps her in the darkness. When her family tries to strike a match to help light her way, Nicole must choose between a life she can hardly remember, or a love for heroin she'll never forget.

The Beauty in Breaking


Michele Harper - 2020
    Brought up in Washington, DC, in an abusive family, she went to Harvard, where she met her husband. They stayed together through medical school until two months before she was scheduled to join the staff of a hospital in central Philadelphia, when he told her he couldn't move with her. Her marriage at an end, Harper began her new life in a new city, in a new job, as a newly single woman.In the ensuing years, as Harper learned to become an effective ER physician, bringing insight and empathy to every patient encounter, she came to understand that each of us is broken—physically, emotionally, psychically. How we recognize those breaks, how we try to mend them, and where we go from there are all crucial parts of the healing process.The Beauty in Breaking is the poignant true story of Harper's journey toward self-healing. Each of the patients Harper writes about taught her something important about recuperation and recovery. How to let go of fear even when the future is murky. How to tell the truth when it's simpler to overlook it. How to understand that compassion isn't the same as justice. As she shines a light on the systemic disenfranchisement of the patients she treats as they struggle to maintain their health and dignity, Harper comes to understand the importance of allowing ourselves to make peace with the past as we draw support from the present. In this hopeful, moving, and beautiful book, she passes along the precious, necessary lessons that she has learned as a daughter, a woman, and a physician.

Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism


Temple Grandin - 1995
    She also lectures widely on autism—because Temple Grandin is autistic, a woman who thinks, feels, and experiences the world in ways that are incomprehensible to the rest of us. In this unprecedented book, Grandin delivers a report from the country of autism. Writing from the dual perspectives of a scientist and an autistic person, she tells us how that country is experienced by its inhabitants and how she managed to breach its boundaries to function in the outside world. What emerges in Thinking in Pictures is the document of an extraordinary human being, one who, in gracefully and lucidly bridging the gulf between her condition and our own, sheds light on the riddle of our common identity.

What Women Want Men to Know: The Ultimate Book About Love, Sex, and Relationships for You and the Man You Love


Barbara De Angelis - 2001
    You've read her advice on relationships. Now, in her most powerful and provocative book yet, best-selling author and renowned human relations expert Barbara De Angelis, Ph.D., reveals everything women want men to know about loving and understanding the women in their life. This is the book women have always hoped someone would write -- one that women will read to understand themselves better, and can give to their mate, confident that it will explain everything women feel about love, communication, sex, and intimacy that they've always wished men would know. WOMEN AND MEN WILL DISCOVER:The Three Secret Needs Every Woman HasSeven Myths Men Believe About Women and Why They Are Absolutely WrongHow to Avoid Turning a Perfectly Sane Woman into a Raving ManiacWomen's Top Twenty Sexual Turn-offs -- and Turn-onsThe Ten Male Communication Habits that Drive Women CrazySexual Secrets About Women Men Need to KnowHow to Turn Power Struggles into CooperationTechniques for Being the Perfect Lover In and Out of Bedand much more.IF YOU'RE A MAN: Read this book to learn what you can do to be a woman's dream come true. IF YOU'RE A WOMAN: Read this book to learn why you are the way you are, and give it to the man you love so you can have the relationship you've always wanted. Ever since Barbara De Angelis wrote the #1 New York Times bestseller Secrets About Men Every Woman Should Know, her readers have been begging her to write its counterparts book for both sexes that explains what women want men to know about understanding and loving the woman in their life. Delivered in her signature frank, provocative and down-to-earth style, this new book does just that, and is an insightful guide that women will read to learn more about themselves, and that they will be excited to give to the man they love. HELPING MEN TO UNDERSTAND WOMENHave you ever wondered why it's so hard for your mate to figure out what you need when your female friends understand you perfectly? Learn about The Three Secret Needs Every Woman Has, and how to communicate them in a way men can really hear.Have you ever felt misunderstood, and wished you could explain to your partner how you really are? Read about The Seven Myths Men Believe About Women and Why They Are Absolutely Wrong.Barbara includes groundbreaking information on the nature of women that will make you feel better about yourself than ever before, and will help men understand the real you.

Things Get Better


Katie Piper - 2012
    To look and listen to the extraordinary Katie Piper, it is difficult to comprehend the severe physical and psychological trauma she suffered from a brutal rape and acid attack which left her with deep physical and emotional scars. These terrible events would have crushed most people, but through her incredible courage, bright and positive outlook and sheer determination, Katie has become living proof that no matter what life throws at you, if you work hard and believe - things will get better. Katie’s story alone has proved inspirational to millions of people, and now in this important book she begins to answer the question that everyone wants to know – “where did you find the courage?” Katie shares the key steps and support that led to her emotional recovery so that she can help others in their own lives, whether suffering a breakup or life change or more serious trauma. Through her own stories of emotional recovery and in letters sent to her by others, she acknowledges the pain we have all felt at times, whether physical or psychological, grief or trauma, and shows with spectacular compassion and encouragement that we can all find the strength within to carry on.

Chase the Rainbow


Poorna Bell - 2017
    Punk rocker, bird nerd and book lover Rob Bell had a full, happy life. He had a loving wife, a big-bottomed dog named Daisy and a career as a respected science journalist. But beneath the carefully cultivated air of machoism and the need to help other people, he struggled with mental health and a drug addiction that began as a means to self-medicate his illness. In 2015, he ended his life in New Zealand on a winter’s night. But what happened? How did a middle-class Catholic boy from the suburbs, who had an ocean of people who loved him, and a brain the size of a planet, end up dying alone by his own hand? How did it get to this point? In the search to find out about the man she loved, and how he arrived at that desperate, dark moment, Poorna Bell, Executive Editor of The Huffington Post UK, went on a journey spanning New Zealand, India and England to discover more about him.A month after his death, she shared her personal tragedy in an open letter to Rob on the site, which went on to be read by hundreds of thousands of people across the world. This is Poorna’s story, not only of how she met the man of her dreams and fell in love, but also Rob’s story and how he suffered with depression since childhood and had secretly been battling addiction as a means to cope with the illness.Suicide is the biggest killer of men under 45 and a staggering 1 in 4 of us will experience mental illness disease at some point in our lives, but the stigma surrounding mental health means that millions still suffer in silence.Chase the Rainbow is an affecting, poetic, and deeply personal journey which teaches to seek hope and happiness, even in the most tragic of circumstances. Shattering the stigma surrounding depression and suicide, Poorna Bell challenges us talk about what we most fear, and to better understand the personal struggles of those closest to us.

Learning to Breathe: My Yearlong Quest to Bring Calm to My Life


Priscilla Warner - 2011
    Despite all her good fortune and success, she suffers from anxiety and panic attacks so debilitating that they leave her unable to breathe. She’s tried self-medicating—in high school, with a hidden flask of vodka—and later, with prescription medications—daily doses of Klonopin with a dark-chocolate chaser. After forty years of hyperventilating, and an overwhelming panic attack that’s the ultimate wake-up call, Warner’s mantra becomes “Neurotic, Heal Thyself.” A spirited New Yorker, she sets out to find her inner Tibetan monk by meditating every day, aiming to rewire her brain and her body and mend her frayed nerves. On this winding path from panic to peace, with its hairpin emotional curves and breathtaking drops, she also delves into a wide range of spiritual and alternative health practices, some serious and some . . . not so much. Warner tries spiritual chanting, meditative painting, immersion in a Jewish ritual bath, and quasi-hallucinogenic Ayurvedic oil treatments. She encounters mystical rabbis who teach her Kabbalistic lessons, attends silent retreats with compassionate Buddhist mentors, and gains insights from the spiritual leaders, healers, and therapists she meets. Meditating in malls instead of monasteries, Warner becomes a monk in a minivan and calms down long enough to examine her colorful, sometimes frightening family history in a new light, ultimately making peace with her past. And she receives corroboration that she’s healing from a neuroscientist who scans her brain for signs of progress and change. Written with lively wit and humor, Learning to Breathe is a serious attempt to heal from a painful condition. It’s also a life raft of compassion and hope for people similarly adrift or secretly fearful, as well as an entertaining and inspiring guidebook for anyone facing daily challenges large and small, anyone who is also longing for a sense of peace, self-acceptance, and understanding.