HERE ARE A FEW BOOKS AND RESOURCES WHICH I’VE FOUND HELPFUL, BOTH FOR MYSELF AND FOR MY CLIENTS. AMAZON LINKS ARE PROVIDED, BUT I ALWAYS ENCOURAGE ORDERING THROUGH YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE WHEN POSSIBLE.
A great guide to finding your direction creatively and getting in touch with lost dreams and aspirations. Also has a nice emphasis on daily writing practice and working towards balancing the important elements in your life.
ESSENTIAL ART THERAPY EXERCISES
An accessible handbook with a ton of great ideas. Really helps explore emotional terrain in a creative way. There are other books like this, but I find this one to be very straight forward and useful. It’s obviously best to use this with an art therapist, but it has a lot of helpful exercises to use on your own or as ‘homework’.
There is so much literature on meditation. This book is focused on the nuts and bolts of building a meditation practice and what some of the benefits can be. It has some discussion of basic Buddhist philosophical/spiritual concepts, but mostly foregoes jargon and focuses on practicality.
Internal family systems is powerful and useful – this book makes it plain, interesting, and accessible. Lots of solid explanation without being overly complicated and some thought provoking exercises can be found here. It also partners with a deck of cards that help to focus, distill, and visualize what’s being discussed.
I took a workshop some years ago with this author and I like his distillation of cognitive behavioral techniques. Lots of useful exercises and frameworks here organized into areas like anger, relationships, and OCD. Like the Art Therapy book above, it’s best used alongside a therapist, but has lots of great ‘homework’ assignments.
For a certain type of guy this book can be powerful and transformational. Though the subtitle ‘a plan for getting what you want …’ makes it sound materialistic and manipulative, it’s largely based on getting insight into unresolved issues and becoming more integrated. It’s worth taking a look to see if this fits the bill for you. There is a companion workbook that takes the approach further, but this original volume has plenty of exercises that give you a lot to chew on.
For anyone interested in Zen or looking into their own mind this classic little volume should not be missed.