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Disclosure: I received free copies of the "The Emotionally Healthy Child" by Maureen Healy, "Trust Your Intuition: 100 Ways To Transform Anxiety And Depression For Stronger Mental Health" by Jill Sylvester, and "Mindfulness for Teens in 10 Minutes a Day: Exercises to Feel Calm, Stay Focused & Be Your Best Self" by Jennie Marie Battistin, but all thoughts and opinions are my own. Affiliate links are also used in this post. You can read my full disclosure here.
Since October 6 - October 12 is Mental Health Awareness Week, I decided to share five of my favorite books that focus on Mental Health.
Three of the books provide tips or exercises on how to manage our mental health for various age groups and two of the books focus on digging into our childhoods (as well as society) to see how it has affected our mental health growing up and today.
1) The Emotionally Healthy Child by Maureen Healy
Many of the tools she provides in her book are ones my therapist has even recommended for my anxiety, such as deep breathing.
To read my full review of The Emotionally Healthy Child by Maureen Healy, check out this post, and to purchase your own copy, head to my Amazon Shop.
2) The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self by Alice Miller
This was the very first Alice Miller book I read and it's so eye-opening, so many of us had abusive childhoods, which has affected our mental and emotional health, and the first step to healing is to recognize and deal with that pain, this is the purpose of The Drama of the Gifted Child.
"The damage done to us during our childhood cannot be undone, since we cannot change the past. We can, however, change ourselves." - Alice Miller.
Get your own copy of The Drama of The Gifted Child by Alice Miller in my Amazon Shop.
3) Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth by Alice Miller
This was the second Alice Miller book I read and my favorite. In Breaking Down the Wall of Silence, Alice Miller looks into childhood trauma and it's effects on the world by looking into some of the biggest "villains" of our past, such as Hitler and Stalin.
Her book shows how childhood abuse comes back to affect us as a whole and is a cry for help. We need to rethink the ways we are raising our children. Our past methods are too damaging to our children's mental health and emotional wellbeing.
To learn and read more, get your own copy of Breaking Down the Wall of Silence by Alice Miller on Amazon.
Jennie Marie Battistin's new book, Mindfulness for Teens in 10 Minutes a Day: Exercises to Feel Calm, Stay Focused & Be Your Best Self may be geared towards teens, but I believe this book is a great resource for anyone struggling with mental health.
Battistin provides 60 exercises that take 10 minutes or less to help teens develop mindfulness. The exercises are broken up into 4 categories: calming, focusing, reconnecting, and responding. Calming ones are designed to help with stress, focusing activities help with concentration, reconnecting exercises teach how to handle and accept your emotions, and the responding tips teach you how to recognize negative emotions and think positively.
You can find Jennie Marie Battistin's book, Mindfulness for Teens in 10 Minutes a Day: Exercises to Feel Calm, Stay Focused & Be Your Best Self on Amazon.
Her book shows how childhood abuse comes back to affect us as a whole and is a cry for help. We need to rethink the ways we are raising our children. Our past methods are too damaging to our children's mental health and emotional wellbeing.
To learn and read more, get your own copy of Breaking Down the Wall of Silence by Alice Miller on Amazon.
4) Mindfulness for Teens in 10 Minutes a Day: Exercises to Feel Calm, Stay Focused & Be Your Best Self by Jennie Marie Battistin, MA, LMFT
Battistin provides 60 exercises that take 10 minutes or less to help teens develop mindfulness. The exercises are broken up into 4 categories: calming, focusing, reconnecting, and responding. Calming ones are designed to help with stress, focusing activities help with concentration, reconnecting exercises teach how to handle and accept your emotions, and the responding tips teach you how to recognize negative emotions and think positively.
You can find Jennie Marie Battistin's book, Mindfulness for Teens in 10 Minutes a Day: Exercises to Feel Calm, Stay Focused & Be Your Best Self on Amazon.
5) Trust Your Intuition: 100 Ways To Transform Anxiety And Depression For Stronger Mental Health by Jill Sylvester, LMHC
I loved many of the methods she mentioned (many of which I use now to help with my anxiety), however, she does mention God or a higher power (like the universe, whatever you believe basically) a few times, while I do believe in God, I don't really believe in "surrendering" to him, which she mentions in some of her methods. However, I have come to interpret it to mean that sometimes you just have to accept you have no control, things just happen because well that's just life, so basically letting go, rather than surrendering. That's probably just me being picky about her words.
You can also find her book in my Amazon Shop.
