A Personal Choice of Ten Books to Help with Therapy and Living

Most therapists could draw up a list of ten books such as this.  Each would be different and all I can do is give my own personal list. The following books certainly cover many aspects of how to make life more bearable, comfortable- and probably more joyous.  As a counsellor, I strongly discourage quick or magic fixes.  Life does not work like that, so all of the following books require some commitment, or at least point the way of a more profound way of thinking and feeling.

Awareness – Anthony de Mello

De Mello was part Jesuit priest (with a Buddhist leaning), part counsellor, part teacher, part author and part philosopher. His books are both easy to read and profound.  Early on, De Mello declares that the purpose of the book is to do no less than wake people up.  It is his assertion (perhaps following on from Socrates) that most people find little comfort and contentment in their lives precisely because they are not aware of their ways of thinking and dealing with life.  By becoming aware we can change some things and leave other alone.  He also talks about the nature of love, suffering, selfishness and our relationships with self and others.  He has a way of explaining things via his own short parables which make things very easy to follow

Love’s Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy – Irvin Yalom

Yalom is a great story teller and he has a way of wrapping up important thoughts about life in a simple way.  He writes mainly about what he considers to be the four main problems that people have to deal with in their lives – loss (including bereavement), meaninglessness (which he says is very prevalent in today’s society), isolation and freedom vs responsibility.  Although his stories are all extreme cases of suffering, it is from these extreme cases that we can learn much about ourselves and the nature of what it is to be human.  Yalom offers no quick fixes but he is an expert at making us feel more at ease with the difficulties of life – which are, after all, universal. 

Taming Your Gremlin – Rick Carson

This is really about how to change our internalised habits of negative criticism and low self-esteem.  Carson asks us to imagine that the urge to do things which are causing us suffering (such as that we cannot do something or that we are not good enough) is a gremlin on our shoulders (poking and prodding us like some cartoon demon).  He teaches us how to deal with that gremlin so that it starts to lose its power and eventually gives up.  He deals specifically with messages that people tend to tell themselves daily, such as “I should do this” or” I shouldn’t do that.” 

The Road Less Travelled – M Scott Peck

Peck famously begins his book with “life is difficult.”  He doesn’t pull any punches from start to finish, and often retells his own difficult experiences as a way of illuminating his ideas.  He tells us there are no quick fixes and there is no magic.  Changing painful problems is often painful in itself – at least for a time.  Like Yalom he talks about people wanting to change but being too afraid to actually do so – their old habits, though painful, being safer than the risk of going through the relatively short term pain barrier into the unknown and a better life.  He talks about loving oneself (not in a selfish but in a generous way) and loving others, and about the importance of spiritual growth especially in our important relationships.

Ten Days to Great Self-Esteem – Dr David Burns

This book is different from all the others on the list in that it is a systematic, practical guide.  It doesn’t necessarily seek to solve deep rooted causes of suffering (as some of the other books do) but it’s strength is that it seeks to alleviate symptoms by getting the reader to go through a series of tasks to change the way they think about themselves.  It is definitely a book to use alongside therapy rather than instead of it.

Loneliness and Love – Clark E Moustakas

Quite aside from having profound ideas, Moustakas also writes as beautifully as a poet, which makes him a delight to read.  He mainly writes about the joys of solitude and the difficulties of loneliness.  By spending lots of time on his own he came into deep contact with himself and found that this enabled him to build better relationships.  He draws a big distinction between loneliness and solitude.  He experienced both and learned much from them.  It’s a short book, and you feel that you are in the presence of a good, caring and deep soul as you read it.

The Consolations of Philosophy – Alain de Botton

The great philosophers have had much to say on how best to live life and De Botton does a good job of guiding us through that.  Like most of the writers here, De Botton writes beautifully and succinctly about the most profound issues.  Here we get consolations for: a broken heart, lack of money, lack of friends and feeling inadequate.  He quotes Montaigne (one of my favourite philosophers) as saying – “what matters in a book is usefulness and appropriateness to life."  Here, too, De Botton provides us with a book that shows the usefulness of philosophy when we are faced with the trials and tribulations that life inevitably brings – or as Epicurus puts it:  “Just as medicine confers no benefit if it does not drive away physical illness, so philosophy is useless if it does not drive away the suffering of the mind.” 

Total Freedom: The Essential Krishnamurti

I found it hard to pick one specific Krishnamurti book but this one is a conglomeration of many of his best ideas. He deals with freedom, life, death, suffering, love, truth, friendship and contentment.  He talks about how when individuals change for the better, the societies they are in can do too.  Above all, his is a message of the need to take courage.  This is my favourite quote of his: “What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it.”

The Art of Loving – Erich Fromm

This bestselling book is perhaps more of an intense read than any of the other books on this list.  Fromm discusses at length the nature of different types of love – romantic, brotherly, for friends, erotic, religious and for self.  In doing so, he explodes a lot of ideas that you may have taken for granted and makes you rethink them.  His message is that love is an art that we need to develop and that we should start by loving ourselves.  Only if we love ourselves can we love others.  But he is set against all forms of selfishness, arguing that love is not love if it is delivered selfishly.  He argues that man must stop treating his fellows as a commodity and break loose from the modern inclination to do so – people should be loved and valued for who they are not what they do.

Being Human (More Real Poems for Unreal Times) – Edited Neil Astley

As a poet, I know of the healing power of poetry.  Both writing and reading it can bring us great relief and help us to view our problems as universal.  I could recommend hundreds of poems and poetry books, but this one is part of a trilogy that is particularly relevant to making life more bearable – and it contains a good variety of poetry, from the classics to contemporary poets.  There are poems covering such areas as love, death, the stages of life, universal human difficulties, hope and body and soul.  None of them will solve your problems, but they will offer you some comfort and sometimes a new angle on them – and often that’s more than enough.

I would also like to mention Depression as a Spiritual Journey by Stephanie Sorrell because it’s a totally different slant on depression and could really help some clients to think about things in another way. As a bonus, I would also suggest the range of CDs by Jon Kabat-Zinn.  He is the founding director of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society.   He is one of the world’s leading lights in teaching about mindfulness (living in the present moment) and he does this by encouraging people to do breathing exercises. His voice is very soothing and his ideas about meditation are not specifically religious. Quite simply, it’s all about the power of being rather than doing.