Book picks similar to
Crazy: Notes On and Off the Couch by Rob Dobrenski
psychology
non-fiction
nonfiction
memoir
An Unknown Woman
Alice Koller - 1981
Why am I here? There's no place else to be. What am I doing here? I don't really know. What am I trying to do here? To find some way to live."This is the true story of a courageous journey - a journey inward, undertaken alone, in the middle of winter, thirty miles out to sea. It is the story of Alice Koller, who went to Nantucket to find - Alice Koller. During the course of her extraordinarily brave and honest self-analysis, she found and discarded the deepest source of her profound unhappiness. Alone, she faced all that she had fled from throughout the thirty-seven years of her life. Alone. she discovered the beginnings of her own vision for a new life.The intensely personal account of a philosopher's struggle to articulate the process of coming to understand oneself, "An Unknown Woman" speaks with startling intimacy to the unknown person within each of us.
Memories, Dreams, Reflections
C.G. Jung - 1961
G. Jung undertook the telling of his life story. At regular intervals he had conversations with his colleague and friend Aniela Jaffé, and collaborated with her in the preparation of the text based on these talks. On occasion, he was moved to write entire chapters of the book in his own hand, and he continued to work on the final stages of the manuscript until shortly before his death on June 6, 1961.
Unfiltered: No Shame, No Regrets, Just Me
Lily Collins - 2017
We all understand what it’s like to live in the light and in the dark. For Lily, it’s about making it through to the other side, where you love what you see in the mirror and where you embrace yourself just as you are. She's learned that all it takes is one person standing up and saying something for everyone else to realize they’re not alone.By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, Lily’s honest voice will inspire you to be who you are and say what you feel. It’s time to claim your voice! It’s time to live your life unfiltered.
The Undying
Anne Boyer - 2019
For a single mother living paycheck to paycheck who had always been the caregiver rather than the one needing care, the catastrophic illness was both a crisis and an initiation into new ideas about mortality and the gendered politics of illness.A twenty-first-century Illness as Metaphor, as well as a harrowing memoir of survival, The Undying explores the experience of illness as mediated by digital screens, weaving in ancient Roman dream diarists, cancer hoaxers and fetishists, cancer vloggers, corporate lies, John Donne, pro-pain ”dolorists,” the ecological costs of chemotherapy, and the many little murders of capitalism. It excoriates the pharmaceutical industry and the bland hypocrisies of ”pink ribbon culture” while also diving into the long literary line of women writing about their own illnesses and ongoing deaths: Audre Lorde, Kathy Acker, Susan Sontag, and others.A genre-bending memoir in the tradition of The Argonauts, The Undying will break your heart, make you angry enough to spit, and show you contemporary America as a thing both desperately ill and occasionally, perversely glorious.
Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction
David Sheff - 2007
Before Nic became addicted to crystal meth, he was a charming boy, joyous and funny, a varsity athlete and honor student adored by his two younger siblings. After meth, he was a trembling wraith who lied, stole, and lived on the streets. David Sheff traces the first warning signs: the denial, the three a.m. phone calls—is it Nic? the police? the hospital? His preoccupation with Nic became an addiction in itself. But as a journalist, he instinctively researched every treatment that might save his son. And he refused to give up on Nic.
Hope's Boy: A Memoir
Andrew Bridge - 2008
Trapped in desperate poverty and confronted with unthinkable tragedies, all Andrew ever wanted was to be with his mom. But as her mental health steadily declined, and with no one else left to care for him, authorities arrived and tore Andrew from his screaming mother's arms. In that moment, the life he knew came crashing down around him. He was only seven years old. Hope was institutionalized, and Andrew was placed in what would be his devastating reality for the next eleven years--foster care. After surviving one of our country's most notorious children's facilities, Andrew was thrust into a savagely loveless foster family that refused to accept him as one of their own. Deprived of the nurturing he needed, Andrew clung to academics and the kindness of teachers. All the while, he refused to surrender the love he held for his mother in his heart. Ultimately, Andrew earned a scholarship to Wesleyan, went on to Harvard Law School, and became a Fulbright Scholar. Andrew has dedicated his life's work to helping children living in poverty and in the foster care system. He defied the staggering odds set against him, and here in this heartwrenching, brutally honest, and inspirational memoir, he reveals who Hope's boy really is.
The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating
Elisabeth Tova Bailey - 2010
While an illness keeps her bedridden, Bailey watches a wild snail that has taken up residence on her nightstand. As a result, she discovers the solace and sense of wonder that this mysterious creature brings and comes to a greater understanding of her own confined place in the world. Intrigued by the snail’s molluscan anatomy, cryptic defenses, clear decision making, hydraulic locomotion, and mysterious courtship activities, Bailey becomes an astute and amused observer, providing a candid and engaging look into the curious life of this underappreciated small animal. Told with wit and grace, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating is a remarkable journey of survival and resilience, showing us how a small part of the natural world illuminates our own human existence and provides an appreciation of what it means to be fully alive.
Good Morning, Destroyer of Men's Souls: A Memoir of Women, Addiction, and Love
Nina Renata Aron - 2020
"The disease I have is loving him." Their love affair was dramatic, urgent, overwhelming--an intoxicating antidote to the long, lonely days of early motherhood. But soon after they get together, K starts using again, and years of relapses and broken promises follow. Even as his addiction deepens, she stays, convinced she is the one who can get him sober. If she leaves him, has she failed? After an adolescence marred by family trauma and addiction, Nina can't help but feel responsible for those suffering around her. How can she break this pattern?In prose at once unflinching and acrobatic, Aron delivers a piercing memoir of romance and addiction, drawing on intimate anecdote as well as academic research to crack open the long-feminized and overlooked phenomenon of codependency. She shifts between visceral, ferocious accounts of her affair with K and introspective analysis of the part she plays in his addictions, as well as defining moments in the history of codependency, from temperance to the formation of Al-Anon to more recent research in the psychology of addiction. Good Morning, Destroyer of Men's Souls is a blazing, big-hearted book, one that illuminates and adds nuance to the messy tethers between femininity, enabling, and love.
Perfect Sound Whatever
James Acaster - 2019
Thinking this is his rock bottom, little does James know that by the end of the year he will have befouled himself in a Los Angeles steakhouse and disrespected a pensioner on television. Luckily, there is one thing he can rely on for comfort – music. In true Acaster fashion, this ends up with a completely unnecessary mission: to buy as much music as he can released in 2016, the year before everything went wrong (for James, at least). Some albums are life-changing masterpieces, others are ‘Howdilly Doodilly’ by Okilly Dokilly, a metalcore album devoted to The Simpsons character Ned Flanders. But all of them play a part in the year that James gets his life back on track.In PERFECT SOUND WHATEVER, James takes us through the music of 2016, the bullshit of 2017, and how the beauty of one defeated the ugliness of the other. He will also reveal how he stole a cookie from Clint Eastwood and attempted to complete his musical odyssey by reforming one of Kettering’s most overlooked bands.
Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities
Flora Rheta Schreiber - 1973
What happened during those blackouts has made Sybil's experience one of the most famous psychological cases in the world.
Hungry: A Young Model's Story of Appetite, Ambition, and the Ultimate Embrace of Curves
Crystal Renn - 2009
An inspiring and cautionary tale for women of all ages, Hungry is an uplifting memoir with a universal message about body image, beauty and self-confidence.
Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression - and the Unexpected Solutions
Johann Hari - 2018
He was told—like his entire generation—that his problem was caused by a chemical imbalance in his brain. As an adult, trained in the social sciences, he began to investigate this question—and he learned that almost everything we have been told about depression and anxiety is wrong. Across the world, Hari discovered social scientists who were uncovering the real causes—and they are mostly not in our brains, but in the way we live today. Hari’s journey took him from the people living in the tunnels beneath Las Vegas, to an Amish community in Indiana, to an uprising in Berlin—all showing in vivid and dramatic detail these new insights. They lead to solutions radically different from the ones we have been offered up until now.Just as Chasing the Scream transformed the global debate about addiction, with over twenty million views for his TED talk and the animation based on it, Lost Connections will lead us to a very different debate about depression and anxiety—one that shows how, together, we can end this epidemic.
An Impossible Life: The Inspiring True Story of a Woman's Struggle from Within
Rachael Siddoway - 2019
Wife of a CEO, mother of three, living in a beautiful suburb, Sonja’s life appears ideal. How did she get here?In a gripping and breathtaking narrative that makes the reader feel as though they are listening in on a private conversation, Sonja tells the compelling real account of her struggle with marriage, motherhood, and mental illness.An Impossible Life is an unforgettable true story of perseverance when all hope seems lost. Intriguing and heartfelt, Sonja’s personal account of her mental health journey shines a beacon of hope to all who feel overwhelmed by the specter of mental illness.
Hot Lights, Cold Steel: Life, Death and Sleepless Nights in a Surgeon's First Years
Michael J. Collins - 2005
A natural overachiever, Collins' success, in college and medical school led to a surgical residency at one of the most respected medical centers in the world, the famed Mayo Clinic. But compared to his fellow residents Collins feels inadequate and unprepared. All too soon, the euphoria of beginning his career as an orthopedic resident gives way to the feeling he is a counterfeit, an imposter who has infiltrated a society of brilliant surgeons.This story of Collins' four-year surgical residency traces his rise from an eager but clueless first-year resident to accomplished Chief Resident in his final year. With unparalleled humor, he recounts the disparity between people's perceptions of a doctor's glamorous life and the real thing: a succession of run down cars that are towed to the junk yard, long weekends moonlighting at rural hospitals, a family that grows larger every year, and a laughable income.Collins' good nature helps him over some of the rough spots but cannot spare him the harsh reality of a doctor's life. Every day he is confronted with decisions that will change people's lives-or end them-forever. A young boy's leg is mangled by a tractor: risk the boy's life to save his leg, or amputate immediately? A woman diagnosed with bone cancer injures her hip: go through a painful hip operation even though she has only months to live? Like a jolt to the system, he is faced with the reality of suffering and death as he struggles to reconcile his idealism and aspiration to heal with the recognition of his own limitations and imperfections.Unflinching and deeply engaging, Hot Lights, Cold Steel is a humane and passionate reminder that doctors are people too. This is a gripping memoir, at times devastating, others triumphant, but always compulsively readable.
Girl Logic: The Genius and the Absurdity
Iliza Shlesinger - 2017
Why cope with insecurities I don't already have?That last one's just me? All right, then.But if the rest sounds familiar, you are experiencing Girl Logic: a characteristically female way of thinking that appears contradictory and circuitous but is actually a complicated and highly evolved way of looking at the world. You end up considering every repercussion of every choice (about dating, career, clothes, lunch) before making a move toward what you really want. And why do we attempt these mental hurdles? Well, that's what this book is all about.The fact is, whether you're obsessing over his last text or the most important meeting of your career, your Girl Logic serves a purpose: It helps push you, question what you want, and clarify what will make you a happier, better person. Girl Logic can be every confident woman's secret weapon, and this book shows you how to wield it.