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Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Depression and anxiety workbooks

Occasionally I've alluded here on the blog to having suffered from depression in the past. While I plan to go into more detail in the future about what happened and how I managed to fight off my depression and anxiety, I thought it might be helpful for those currently suffering or prone to suffer from either or both if I highlighted some of the books I read that were especially helpful for me to reset my thought patterns. A comment I hear often is how well adjusted I am considering my past and I want to emphasis, by way of this post and future posts, that my current state of relative normalcy was hard fought for and is something that requires regular maintenance.

I saw both a psychologist and a psychiatrist during my last major episode of depression a few years ago. I had a great experience with my psychologist (just an okay experience with the psychiatrist) and she was the one to recommend the following books to me. If you learn best by reading and writing, you might find these as helpful as I did. I still have the notes I took for a number of the exercises in these books and find it beneficial to review them from time to time if for nothing else than to see how far I've come.

I found these first two to be the most helpful in breaking down the different aspects of depression and detailing how a change in thoughts and actions will improve your quality of life:



The following was one more book that was specifically related to depression. I think I didn't find it as helpful because I had already read through the books above before it and a third workbook was kind of overkill for me.




The final two books deal specifically with anxiety. I personally felt the books that focused on depression were better suited for my specific issues at the time, but for those who suffer more acutely from anxiety and its related issues, you could potentially benefit more from workbooks specifically for anxiety.


 




Have you found a book to be especially helpful in working through your depression and anxiety? If so, which one?

2 comments:

  1. I don't have any suggestions but appreciate your post about these books. They might be helpful for me (depression) and my daughter (anxiety. HIGH anxiety. Crippling anxiety). These books appear to be of more concrete help than many I've come across. Thanks again. And I really enjoy your blog, loved the travel posts recently especially.

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    1. Michele, thank you so much for commenting! You and your daughter are the reason I post about my experiences and I hope these books can provide at least a little help. Thanks for reading!

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