Here are 100 books that Loving Someone with OCD fans have personally recommended if you like
Loving Someone with OCD.
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I’ve been a practicing clinical psychologist for over thirty years. I’ve seen many patients who have suffered from OCD – some to the point of being debilitated by their symptoms. Few things are as gratifying as helping someone overcome OCD and live a normal life. While the disorder can be confusing, once people understand what OCD is and how to treat it, they can literally change their lives for the better. This is why I went into this field to begin with, and after thirty years, I still feel privileged and grateful when I can help someone escape the prison of OCD symptoms.
I frequently recommend this book to people who suffer from intrusive thoughts. Most people who suffer from intrusive thoughts try to “not think” them, which ultimately makes them stronger and more frequent. This book helps people understand the nature of intrusive thoughts and offers very practical and empirically demonstrated effective strategies for dealing with them.
You are not your thoughts! In this powerful book, two anxiety experts offer proven-effective cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) skills to help you get unstuck from disturbing thoughts, overcome the shame these thoughts can bring, and reduce your anxiety.
If you suffer from unwanted, intrusive, frightening, or even disturbing thoughts, you might worry about what these thoughts mean about you. Thoughts can seem like messages-are they trying to tell you something? But the truth is that they are just thoughts, and they don't necessarily mean anything. Sane and good people have them. If you are someone who is plagued by thoughts…
I’ve been a practicing clinical psychologist for over thirty years. I’ve seen many patients who have suffered from OCD – some to the point of being debilitated by their symptoms. Few things are as gratifying as helping someone overcome OCD and live a normal life. While the disorder can be confusing, once people understand what OCD is and how to treat it, they can literally change their lives for the better. This is why I went into this field to begin with, and after thirty years, I still feel privileged and grateful when I can help someone escape the prison of OCD symptoms.
The OCD Workbook is a classic in my field. It is probably the best practical workbook to help people understand the various ways that OCD can affect someone, and offers practical and effective tools for overcoming your symptoms. It is probably the resource I most frequently recommend when helping someone with OCD.
If you have obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), chances are that your persistent obsessive thoughts and time-consuming compulsions keep you from enjoying life to the fullest. But when you are in the habit of avoiding the things you fear, the idea of facing them head-on can feel frightening and overwhelming. This book can help.
The OCD Workbook has helped thousands of people with OCD break the bonds of troubling OCD symptoms and regain the hope of a productive life. Endorsed and used in hospitals and clinics the world over, this valuable resource is now fully revised and updated with the latest evidence-based…
I’ve been a practicing clinical psychologist for over thirty years. I’ve seen many patients who have suffered from OCD – some to the point of being debilitated by their symptoms. Few things are as gratifying as helping someone overcome OCD and live a normal life. While the disorder can be confusing, once people understand what OCD is and how to treat it, they can literally change their lives for the better. This is why I went into this field to begin with, and after thirty years, I still feel privileged and grateful when I can help someone escape the prison of OCD symptoms.
If you have a child who suffers from OCD, this is the only book you really need. Dr. Chansky is one of the nation’s experts in pediatric OCD, and this book is the most informative and practical book I have read on the subject. This book with help you understand OCD (how it presents, what causes it) and how to help your child overcome this disorder.
If you're a parent of one of the more than one million children in this country with obsessive-compulsive disorder, you know how confusing, even frightening, the symptoms of OCD can be. You're terrified of losing your child and angry about the havoc this disorder has wreaked in your family. More than anything, you want to be able to unlock the secrets of OCD, understand the cause of your child's bizarre symptoms, and help your child break free of these disruptive, relentless thoughts and actions.
In her landmark book, Freeing Your Child from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Dr. Tamar E. Chansky creates a…
I’ve been a practicing clinical psychologist for over thirty years. I’ve seen many patients who have suffered from OCD – some to the point of being debilitated by their symptoms. Few things are as gratifying as helping someone overcome OCD and live a normal life. While the disorder can be confusing, once people understand what OCD is and how to treat it, they can literally change their lives for the better. This is why I went into this field to begin with, and after thirty years, I still feel privileged and grateful when I can help someone escape the prison of OCD symptoms.
Most people who suffer from OCD also suffer from anxiety in general. Anxiety is the most common mental health disorder that we see. This book is a great resource to help you understand the nature of anxiety. It also offers practical and well-researched techniques and tools to help you manage anxiety more effectively in order to help you minimize the impact of anxiety and worry on your life.
Do you worry that you'll say the wrong thing, wear the wrong outfit, or look out of place? Or maybe that you'll make a mistake at work, disappoint your partner, or overlook a serious health problem? Or perhaps you just worry too much - constantly running what-if scenarios through your head? Of course you do - we all do. Worry is a central issue in many people's lives; 38% of people say they worry every day. In this groundbreaking book, Dr Robert Leahy offers new insight, advice and practical techniques for everyone who has ever had a sleepless night. Using…
I have always referred to myself as “obsessive-compulsive delightful,” but who knew I could turn that lifelong trait into a booming business? While working as a personal assistant, I discovered I had the ability to see through any mess and clearly envision a clutter-free space. Coupled with keen time-management and organizational skills, I soon found more and more people were asking me for help. Before I knew it, my company, dClutterfly was born. Twelve years and thousands of decluttered homes later, I knew it was time to take what I had learned working with my clients and write a book to help others dealing with clutter. Making Space, Clutter Free is a bestseller and continues to help people change their relationship to their stuff.
As a child of an extreme hoarder, this book helped me realize the extent of and truly understand my father’s disorder. The authors do an amazing job of explaining a very difficult and painful mental disorder and offering real treatments that work. If you or someone you love is afflicted with hoarding disorder, this book is a must-read.
While most people find it relatively easy to manage their possessions, some find it extremely difficult. If you have a problem resisting the urge to acquire and you find your home cluttered and filled to capacity with items many people would find useless and unnecessary, you may suffer from a condition known as hoarding disorder.
Hoarding is a behavioral problem consisting of clutter, difficulty discarding items, and excessive buying or acquiring. Hoarding is often associated with significant reduction in quality of life, and in extreme cases, it can pose serious health risks. If you or a loved one has hoarding…
I love romantic comedies with an emphasis on comedy. I’m not in love with sugary-sweet romance because I don’t think it’s true to life. I know that I laugh daily because my life is very 'Bridget Jones'. You know a book genre is strong when you can describe yourself as a character written in the late nineties. My own books are full of awkward moments, endearing observations, and humour that pushes the boundaries. Why? Because what are we if we are not fallible and vulnerable to whatever life throws at us?
I picked this book up as I suffer with OCD and welcomed a genuine account of the effects it has on day-to-day life.
This, however, was just that but also gloriously uplifting and funny. I both cried and laughed, and sometimes a mixture! So, although this is non-fiction it follows Bryony’s journey as if following a protagonist in a novel, making it compelling and heart-wrenching.
A new Sunday Times bestseller from Bryony Gordon, Telegraph columnist and author of the bestselling The Wrong Knickers. For readers who enjoyed Matt Haig's Reasons to Stay Alive and Ruby Wax's Sane New World, Mad Girl is a shocking, funny, unpredictable, heart-wrenching, raw and jaw-droppingly truthful celebration of life with mental illness.
'I loved it. A brilliant fast and funny and frank look at something that absolutely needs to be talked about in this way' Matt Haig
Bryony Gordon has OCD.
It's the snake in her brain that has told her ever since she was a teenager that her world…
I’m a humor writer and stand-up comedian. I spend much of my time trying to get my comedy into the shortest form possible so it can “go viral,” but I’d rather work on projects that have space to breathe, like books. I don’t think enough people appreciate how funny books can be. Often, humor seems like the purview of more visual mediums. However, while books are quieter than TV shows and live performances, they have just as much capacity for humor. When a book truly makes me laugh out loud, I want to tell everyone. And the following five books do.
Katzenstein cleverly uses cartoons to take us into the brain of someone with OCD. This book is laugh-out-loud funny, but also highly educational. I love this book because it uses cartoons to present another way of understanding each other – in its drawings, it’s deeply empathetic. While I don’t have OCD, I do struggle with the feeling that words alone are not enough to convey to others what’s going on inside my brain, and this book made me feel less alone.
“A brilliant, honest, necessary book that exposes the intricacies of the human brain while showing us the way creativity and friendship can anchor us. This is a must-read for anyone who has ever wondered if they see the world a little differently.” –Ada Limón
A New Yorker cartoonist illustrates his lifelong struggle with OCD in cartoon vignettes frank and funny
Jason Adam Katzenstein is just trying to live his life, but he keeps getting sidetracked by his over-active, anxious brain. Mundane events like shaking hands or sharing a drink snowball into absolute catastrophes.…
Until the millennium, I was a features journalist with an abiding fascination in Sixties counter-culture. Being a friend of Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, I heard Syd’s story first-hand.
After having my own breakdown and psychiatric treatment, I decided to apply my experience and interests in writing an account of Syd’s short but sweet creative life.
With Gilmour’s tacit blessing, his contemporaries – including Floyd co-founder Roger Waters – gave me access. And through interviewing them, I came to my own understanding of Barrett: by turns a crazy diamond and a dark globe.
George Boneis a sensitive drunk with a touch of psychosis and a modest private income. Leading a rackety life in pre-war Earls Court, he’s in love with a sponger, a failed actress who wants to exploit him for his connections, and he bears her humiliations without complaint. But sometimes, something clicks in his brain and he imagines killing her and her seedy sidekick and going home to Maidenhead and peace. Boarding houses and bottle parties, blow-outs in the West End and Brighton: Hamilton captures a miserable, boozy, coarse and uptight world, and provides an ending to match.
Set in late 1930s London, Hangover Square is the brilliant and disquieting tale of George Harvey Bone, a perpetual drunk. He suffers from 'dark' moods, which click on and off without warning, as if someone has tripped a switch in his head. On his supposedly better days, George whiles away his time nursing a pint or six and obsessing about the attractive but cruel small-time actress Netta. Disgusted by his own helpless devotion and his increasingly erratic behaviour, George is driven to the edge - culminating in Hangover Square's spectacular and haunting climax. Read by Julian Rhind-Tutt, esteemed actor who…
I didn’t choose clutter as a topic—it chose me. Around the time Marie Kondo became a tidying-up sensation, my mother suffered a breakdown and could no longer live in her dangerously cluttered house. I’m an only child, so it fell to me to figure what to do with it all. So much stuff! It got me wondering: How did clutter get to be such a huge problem for so many people? The books on this list helped answer that question and made me feel less alone in the struggle with stuff. I hope you find them useful too.
Randy Frost and Gail Steketee have done groundbreaking research on hoarding disorder, and their work has helped shift the conversation away from the traditional shame-and-blame approach to the subject. In these case studies, they dig into what drives individuals to accumulate extreme amounts of clutter. Emphasis on individuals—each of these people has a unique, often fascinating story, and Frost and Steketee treat them with compassion and understanding. Stuff helped me understand that forced cleanouts and harsh interventions don’t solve the problem, they only inflict more trauma.
Acclaimed psychologists Randy Frost and Gail Sketetee's groundbreaking study on the compulsion of hoarding, "Stuff invites readers to reevaluate their desire for things” (Boston Globe).
What possesses someone to save every scrap of paper that’s ever come into his home? What compulsions drive a woman like Irene, whose hoarding cost her her marriage? Or Ralph, whose imagined uses for castoff items like leaky old buckets almost lost him his house? Or Jerry and Alvin, wealthy twin bachelors who filled up matching luxury apartments with countless pieces of fine art, not even leaving themselves room to…
I am a Clinical Psychologist and the parent of a once-anxious child who grew up before I developed the expertise I now have, which means I did just about everything wrong. The silver lining, I guess, is that I see anxiety not only from a therapist’s perspective but also through the eyes of a child who is suffering and a parent who has no idea how to help. All of the books I have written, and all that I have recommended, speak respectfully to children and the adults reading with them about real struggles and real solutions. I feel privileged to be able to do this work.
While specific to OCD (versus anxiety more broadly), this is a gem of a book that needed to be included in a best-of listing. Like a really good CBT therapy session, the book walks tween and teen readers through the specifics of OCD including what it is, why it happens, and what to do about it. Exposure and Response Prevention (ER/P), the gold standard in the treatment of OCD, is given ample space here, with clear examples to help readers (with the support of an adult) figure out how to chip away at OCD. Plenty of therapists use this book as a guide, for good reason.
Take Control of OCD: A Kid's Guide to Conquering Anxiety and Managing OCD is a must-have guide for kids and teens ages 10-16 with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder to help them take control and use their strengths to find success in school and in life. This fully updated second edition:
Uses a cognitive-behavioral therapy and exposure/response prevention method to stress gradual exposure to obsessive thinking patterns.
Provides a step-by-step ladder-based process to help readers conquer their fears and demolish their worries.
Helps kids change their obsessive thoughts, tolerate uncertainty, and develop positive self-talk and stress management.
Also helps kids advocate for their…
