There are a lot of books out there giving crappy advice about anxiety and depression. Here's my shortlist of books that actually help. D epression blows. Anxiety isn’t any fun either. And perhaps the only thing worse than the well-intentioned friends and family who implore you to just “get over it” or advise you to “keep your head up” is the fact that there are approximately 3,102 crappy books out there promising to wave a little wand and sprinkle fairy dust in your ass, and everything will instantly be better.

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Focuses on: Anxiety and Depression Type(s): Greater Understanding/Research and Exercises/Action I love this book. It was quite influential on me when I read it years and years ago and I was quite upset to find out that I had inadvertently ripped off one of the exercises in it in my <a href="https://markmanson.net/downloads/self-knowledge">Self-Knowledge PDF </a>(it has since been fixed and credited appropriately).

4. The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living by Russ Harris

Focuses on: Anxiety and Depression Type(s): Greater Understanding/Research and Exercises/Action In <a href="https://markmanson.net/books/subtle-art">The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck </a> (yes, I had to find a way to plug my own shit here), I made the point that true self-esteem can’t be a measure of how someone feels about their successes, it must be a measure of how we feel about <a href="https://markmanson.net/why-you-fail">our failures </a>. This isn’t a terribly original idea. People have been shitting on self-esteem for a couple decades now. But Neff is the first psychologist to conceptualize an alternative metric for self-esteem: <a href="http://amzn.to/2BHZotI">self-compassion </a>.

5. Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself by Kristin Neff

Focuses on: DepressionType(s): Feeling Less Alone and Greater Understanding/ResearchSolomon calls his book “An Atlas of Depression” and once you’ve covered about half of the 688 pages, you start to realize why: this is everything you would ever want to know about depression—the personal experience of it, the medical experience of it, the pharmacological treatments, the history of it, the cultural interpretations of it, and of course, Solomon’s own struggles with it. The book is a lot to take in.

1. The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression by Andrew Solomon

Focuses on: AnxietyType(s): Feeling Less Alone and Greater Understanding/ResearchI loved this book but I don’t think everyone will. This is mostly due to Wilson’s writing style and, I suppose, the way her brain works. Like a chronically anxious person, <a href="http://amzn.to/2B99MLM">First, We Make the Beast Beautiful </a> is frenetic and at times, overly-energetic, leaping from story to story, back ten years to ahead five years to childhood to imagined old age, from <a href="https://markmanson.net/how-to-grow-from-your-pain">personal disaster </a>to scientific research to that thing my <a href="https://markmanson.net/meditation">meditation </a>teacher told me that, by the way, totally didn’t work, but hey, it’s funny now, looking back.

2. First, We Make the Beast Beautiful by Sarah Wilson

Focuses on: Anxiety and DepressionType(s): Exercises/Action<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law">Godwin’s Law </a>famously states that the longer any internet discussion continues, the probability of someone being compared to Hitler approaches 100%. Well, in my experience, the longer an internet discussion about depression, anxiety, or any other <a href="https://markmanson.net/managing-your-mental-health">mental health </a>problem goes on, the probability that <a href="http://amzn.to/2jd6ADq">Feeling Good </a>gets recommended to them also approaches 100%. I see this book mentioned everywhere.That’s because if you were going to write a comprehensive, “This is what three months with a CBT therapist would be like,” book, full of enough

3. Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David Burns

There are a lot of books out there giving crappy advice about anxiety and depression. Here's my shortlist of books that actually help.