Books like The Compassionate Mind

01

The Mindful Way Through Depression

Mark Williams · Health

The Mindful Way Through Depression is a clinical self-help book by four researchers — Mark Williams, John Teasdale, Zindel Segal, and Jon Kabat-Zinn — who developed Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, a treatment program with strong evidence for reducing depression relapse.

Both dig into emotional regulation.

02

The Noonday Demon

Andrew Solomon · Health

The Noonday Demon is Andrew Solomon's exhaustive, literary account of depression — his own experience of it, its science and treatment history, its cultural and political dimensions, and the lives of people living with it across the world.

Both dig into mental health.

03

The Upside of Stress

Kelly McGonigal · Health

The Upside of Stress is Kelly McGonigal's evidence-based argument that the harm of stress is mediated less by stress itself than by the belief that stress is harmful.

A kindred psychology read.

04

Why Buddhism Is True

Robert Wright · Religion & Spirituality

Why Buddhism Is True is Robert Wright's argument that modern evolutionary psychology and neuroscience provide independent confirmation for core Buddhist claims about the mind, suffering, and the nature of the self.

Both dig into evolutionary psychology.

05

Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry

Randolph M. Nesse · Psychology

Randolph Nesse spent forty years as a psychiatrist and evolutionary biologist asking a question most of his colleagues found strange: why did natural selection leave us so vulnerable to anxiety, depression, and other forms of suffering?

Shares evolutionary psychology and mental health with The Compassionate Mind.

06

The Perfection Trap

Thomas Curran · Psychology

The Perfection Trap is a social psychologist's case that perfectionism isn't a personality quirk or an asset but a cultural epidemic — and that rates of perfectionism have risen sharply over the past three decades, driven by specific social and economic forces.

Shares self-compassion and mental health with The Compassionate Mind.

07

Radical Acceptance

Tara Brach · Religion & Spirituality

Tara Brach, a psychologist and Buddhist meditation teacher, wrote Radical Acceptance as a response to what she calls the trance of unworthiness — the pervasive background feeling that something is fundamentally wrong with us, that we are not enough.

Shares self-compassion and shame with The Compassionate Mind.

08

The Gifts of Imperfection

Brené Brown · Self-help

The Gifts of Imperfection is Brené Brown's attempt to translate a decade of qualitative research on shame, vulnerability, and belonging into practical guidance for everyday life.

Shares self-compassion and shame with The Compassionate Mind.

09

An Unquiet Mind

Kay Redfield Jamison · Psychology

Kay Redfield Jamison is a psychiatrist and professor who has manic-depressive illness.

Both dig into mental health.

10

Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It

Ethan Kross · Psychology

Humans talk to themselves more or less constantly.

Both dig into emotional regulation.

11

Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

Becky Kennedy · Psychology

Good Inside is clinical psychologist Becky Kennedy's guide to a parenting philosophy built around one central premise: children are fundamentally good inside, and difficult behaviors are not character flaws or manipulation but signals of unmet needs or underdeveloped skills.

Both dig into emotional regulation.

12

I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn't)

Brené Brown · Psychology

I Thought It Was Just Me is Brené Brown's first major book, written from her research on shame as a social scientist.

Both dig into shame.