what is up everybody this is Chris from the rewired soul where we talk about the
problem but focus on the solution and if you're new to my channel my channel is
all about mental health so if you're somebody like me who is actively trying
to improve their mental and emotional well-being make sure you subscribe and
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check out the description down below use code Easter you get the e-book and
audio book for free telephone but it's just today today on Easter Sunday
alright so make sure that you have the notification bell turned on be one of
the first to watch it because I might do more stuff like this in the future
alright but speaking of books this is something that I've wanted to talk about
for a very long time a very very long time like the word self-help when it
comes to books it has this there there's weird like taste that you get in your
mouth and as somebody who writes and you know I'm a fan of just like vocabulary
and all that kind of stuff I hate that there's certain words that aren't
specific enough let me give you an example
alright this is a way off example but it's the only thing I could think of so
I hate the word overdose alright so as many of you know not only am i sober for
over seven years but I work in the drug and alcohol rehab for a little over
three years so in my lifetime I span of sobriety I have known many many drug
addicts and alcoholics and the word overdose is always just you know in my
face okay so anyways the word overdose god it puts you in such an awkward
position because when you hear someone overdosed then you gotta ask the weird
awkward question of did they survive alright um in just you know a little
over three years of working at the treatment center I had over 70 people
died of overdose right but I had hundreds of people survive from overdose
because an overdose does not mean that the
person died alright so I wish there was some kind of different words that you
can use when it comes to overdose but it's the same thing when it comes to
self-help books when we hear of self-help books we think of just this
kind of like crazy you know I don't even know the word for it but it has a bad
place and I think it starts off with books like the secret so in this video
I'm gonna break down a few different categories because I love to read and
there's so many self-help books out there that you could check out right
that can actually benefit your mental health but first let's talk about this
first section right this little subcategory we're gonna call it the
gurus okay so this book the secret came out a while
back like God what 10 15 years ago and it's all about manifesting you know
things that you want right and the law of attraction okay this gained a ton of
traction and Oprah Winfrey herself put her stamp of approval on it and when
Oprah endorses your book like it is going to take off that's just how it
goes alright and like one of my one of my very few gripes with Oprah Winfrey
like I don't know her I don't got the issues with her but the fact that she
endorsed this book okay books like The Secret or what I feel
people think of when they hear of self-help books like this book and the
whole idea behind it is nonsense one of the reasons is is that it has non
falsifiable claims okay what does that mean okay so if you want something good
you you use a law of attraction you get on the same frequency and all that and
it comes to you boom it worked but if you try to manifest something and it
doesn't work well you just weren't doing it right
alright you see what I mean there's no scientific backing because it's not
falsifiable there's no way to explain why it didn't work when you're living in
the mindset of the law of attraction and I think a lot of people think of
self-help books as something like the secret so I read this other book like I
never read a secret I refuse to read that book but I read another book it's a
best-seller it's called you are a badass it's an excellent book and I could have
put it into this next category but I decided not to um but anyways you are a
badass it has some great inspirational and motivational stuff that talks about
but every now and then I'd say maybe 15 to 20 percent of the book it talks about
this law of attraction frequency type stuff and I'm not a fan of that but the
rest of the book is very good and I figured should check it out okay so
first section the first subcategory was the gurus next let's talk about
motivation and inspiration all right so check this out like sometimes sometimes
we all just need a good kick in the ass okay like not all of us have people in
our life who tell us what we need to hear and we'll sit in a pity party or we
think about how we can't do anything or you know there's nothing we can't take
control of in our lives to make things start going better and sometimes like we
we get this person who talks a little trash to us or motivates us or inspires
us and it gets us to start making new steps forward right now when it comes to
this motivation and inspiration subcategory I would argue like with all
the books that I'm gonna dive into next like there's some scientific backing
behind it like there are different studies I could find that say look
here's what they said here here's some science that actually proves it okay so
motivation and inspiration books like they can definitely help you so some of
my favorite ones are unearth yourself by Gary John Bishop the subtle art of not
giving an F by Mark Manson Mark Manson he's a great author he blends in some
psychology some philosophy like stoicism and things like that another one is the
obstacle is the way by Ryan holiday Ryan holiday he uses a lot of other people's
stories from like biographies that he reads and he he teaches you about how to
improve your own life based on these and he's also a huge fan of stoic philosophy
then if you're somebody who's like in the entrepreneurial kind of world or
creative world I highly suggest question or crushing it by Gary Vaynerchuk so
these are motivational inspirational books there are books I will give you
the kick in the butt that you need okay so now let's talk about the main
category scientific self-help okay so one of the reasons I wanted to make this
video and it's something that I think about a lot is because everything is
self-help okay like everything aside from like taking like antidepressant
medications everything is self-help like check it out when you go to therapy when
you go to therapy the best therapy that you will get is self-help therapy okay a
therapist is not there to hold your hand for the rest of your life and navigate
every single move that you make like this is something I learned when I got a
sponsor back in 12-step programs like they weren't there to like make every
single choice for me their job is to teach you things so you can then help
yourself so that's why it hurts me that self-help has kind of got this bad rap
because psychology a therapy is self-help okay so in this realm of
scientific self-help first we'll talk about Education / science / research
okay so these are books where they heavily rely on you know research and
everything but they're mainly like education so as some of you know like
I'm not a licensed professional I'm not currently in college but I hope to
pursue a psychology degree in the future after I take care of some old student
loan stuff and back when I was a drug addict and alcoholic anyways these are I
don't want to use the word textbooks because even the word textbook has a bad
connotation to it but they're purely education like if you just want to learn
about you know depression or anxiety or how the brain works or trauma or
whatever it is here are some books okay one of them is from the Nobel Prize
winner Daniel Kahneman it's called Thinking Fast and Slow amazing book from
a Nobel Prize winner so it better be a good book alright the next one is good
reasons for bad feelings this is about evolutionary psychology why did we
evolve to experience depression to experience anxiety why do some people
have schizophrenia where does bipolar disorder come from where do eat and
asuras come from what about addictions and all that this is the evolution
every reason for that the next one is the science of evil and this is a little
bit different okay like it's not necessarily about psychology like it is
but I think it helps a lot with empathy like it's very easy for us to just
believe like oh this person's evil that person's evil they're just a bad bad bad
person but when you read the science of evil you start to understand that it's a
lot more nuanced than that it's not just people are good or bad there are a lot
of different reasons for why people are the way they are like we often want to
be like oh that person is a psychopath or a sociopath reading this book we
start to say oh okay maybe this person made bad decisions based on you know
their their emotions in that moment maybe it's based on their childhood you
know it helps us give a get a reason for it so we don't just automatically hate
somebody who's a jerk to us alright then the next portion of scientific self-help
is the category of stories okay so there are other books where if you're
a fan of like fiction or storytelling these are the books for you for example
one of the best-selling books of last year into this year is maybe you should
talk to someone from the therapist laurie Gottlieb she is amazing
storyteller and I love this book because she not only talks about therapy and
tell some stories of her own clients she also shares her story of going to
therapy as a therapist but throughout the book she breaks down different forms
of therapy different therapy therapeutic terminology and she explains them so
you're learning about the therapeutic process as you read this incredible
story alright then there's a another book called the Buddha and the border
border line this is a woman's story about being diagnosed with borderline
personality disorder getting dialectical behavioral therapy a lot of you know
that I highly highly highly recommend dialectical behavioral therapy for a lot
of different disorders but specifically borderline personality disorder this is
a first-person account of going through that so anybody would BPD I think you
would enjoy this book the next one is a book that my girlfriend recommended to
me and I still need to finish reading it but it's called the man who mistook his
wife for a hat by Oliver Sacks he is an amazing writer he has been a neuro
scientist neuropsychologist I think a blend of the two anyways there's a bunch
of interesting stories in there and he explains how the brain works and
everything so if you're into a lot of like just the kind of fringe
psychological disorders this is a great book and it helps you learn a little bit
about it and understand things a little bit more alright so the next one the
next category is mindfulness so a lot of you know like I am a dude who won't try
anything unless his back force by science and for a long time I thought
meditation and mindfulness all that stuff was ridiculous until I started
learning all the science that backs it okay so here are some books where you'll
find the scientific evidence that backs mindfulness and meditation which is
something absolutely freely you could start doing that will help improve your
mental health one of them is the Buddhist brain this is about the
neuroscience behind meditation as well as Boo's philosophy then there's the
craving mind by dr. Judson Brewer I had him on my podcast a couple weeks ago if
you want to go check that out then there's mindfulness for fidgety
skeptics by Dan Harris he is somebody else who he was a news anchor and had a
very public panic panic attack on live television and he found mindfulness and
it's helped him a lot and in this book like this is a great book for anybody
who's skeptical about mindfulness alright so then there is self-help
psychology okay so this dives into different forms of psychology and how
you can start improving their life based on different psychological studies and
findings and everything like that one of them is another guy I just had on my
podcast dr. Alex Korb he wrote the book the upward spiral this is the
neuroscience around depression a ton of studies in there and different things
that you could do to boost different neurotransmitters then there's the book
the Hat happiness advantage by the Harvard positive psychologist
shawn Achor amazing book then we got redirect
changing the stories we live by this is a great book for anybody who struggles
with trauma and the upside of stress from one of my
favorite authors Kelly McGonigal this is a book that discusses how stress can
actually be a good thing and she is a professor at Stanford and she's done a
million studies so I highly recommend you check this out last category is
self-help therapy so if you cannot afford therapy not only are all these
books very beneficial but these books specifically dive into certain types of
therapy so a therapy that I'm a huge fan of is rational emotive behavioral
therapy rebt by Albert Ellis he came up with this and he has like a hundred
books but my favorite one the best one for anybody to check out is how to
stubbornly refuse to make yourself miserable about anything all right the
next one is mindfulness for borderline personality disorder if you want to
learn more about dialectical behavioral therapy this is a great book it has a
bunch of practices in there then there's a liberated mind this is from the guy
who created acceptance and commitment therapy AC T then also there's an audio
book that I read or listened to and it's a course from a college professor and
it's about cognitive behavioral therapy okay and I'll link all of this stuff
down below but anyways I wanted to make this video because so many people cannot
afford therapy so many people can't afford to see a psychologist some people
can't get on medications or whatever there are so many books out there that
you could read to start improving your mental health and their self-help books
but they're not all this secret okay so all these books will be linked down in
the description below I also wrote a medium article about this whole thing
so if you want to check that out all the links are in there as well alright but I
really need to talk about this and I hope you liked it hopefully it helps
some of you who are you know curious about the self-help realm and realizing
it's a little bit more nuanced than some originally thought all right there's a
bunch of different categories so again I will link all this stuff down in the
description below but if you like this video or you like
this type of video give it a thumbs up let me know your
thoughts down in the comments and if you have any book recommendations lay them
on me alright anyways that's all I got for this video if you like this video
again give it a thumbs up if you're new subscribe turn the notification bell on
and don't forget down the description you can get a link to my book rewire
your anxiety it's free all day today and a huge thank you to everybody who
supports the channel on patreon or buy my mental health books or merch you're
all amazing alright thanks again for watching I'll see you next time