Take Care of Your Mind

The books, in order

1. 1

   Mental Health · 15 min

   Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

   Lori Gottlieb

   When the deadline of life becomes visible, everything you've been putting off gains weight and urgency.

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2. 2

   Mental Health · 16 min

   Self-Compassion

   Kristin Neff

   According to the book, people who treat themselves kindly after a mistake have more courage to try again than people who punish themselves.

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3. 3

   Mental Health · 16 min

   Radical Acceptance

   Tara Brach

   The feeling of not being enough works like a filter we barely notice, and simply seeing it already weakens part of its power.

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4. 4

   Mental Health · 18 min

   What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing

   Bruce D. Perry and Oprah Winfrey

   Understanding someone's past wounds helps explain their outsized reactions in the present, without giving them permission to behave abusively.

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5. 5

   Mental Health · 13 min

   When the Body Says No

   Gabor Maté

   For the author, kindness that becomes a shield against conflict comes at the price of ignoring your own needs.

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6. 6

   Mental Health · 15 min

   The Body Keeps the Score

   Bessel van der Kolk

   A frightening experience from years ago can put your whole body on alert today, even when your mind understands that the danger has passed.

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7. 7

   Mental Health · 14 min

   Waking the Tiger

   Peter A. Levine

   The body keeps a record of a fright the mind has already filed away, which is why explaining the past is rarely enough to bring relief.

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8. 8

   Mental Health · 16 min

   The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture

   Gabor Maté and Daniel Maté

   For Maté, what marks a person is not exactly what happened to them as a child, but what stayed locked inside because they had no one to process it with.

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9. 9

   Mental Health · 16 min

   In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts

   Gabor Maté

   For Maté, addiction looks like the hungry ghost of Buddhist tradition: a hunger so big that no amount of a substance can truly satisfy it, because the emptiness it tries to fill isn't in the stomach.

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10. 10

    Mental Health · 17 min

    Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence--From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

    Judith Lewis Herman

    For Herman, the study of trauma was born, forgotten, and revived more than once over a century, because acknowledging someone's suffering carried a political price for the people who listened.

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