100 books like Running Is a Kind of Dreaming

Legions of regular folks have grown up with parents or caretakers who were emotionally immature or unskilled. These family-of-origin deficits may or may not have met the criteria for outright abuse but caused lasting emotional harm to the kids. I love that this book uses clear language and validates the reality of countless readers.

A guide like this book explains unhelpful familial behavior patterns and explores ways to liberate the reader from automatically repeating dysfunctional history. Book clubs are springing up worldwide about this book. It’s also valuable to me in defining emotionally immature parents not as bad people but as people who lack the insight and skills to provide an emotionally supportive and healthy home.

Changing maladaptive family-of-origin patterns is incredibly hard work, and this gentle guide is a great intro to understanding the past to evolve an emotionally healthier present and future.

Every therapy session should be like what you can find in this book! The therapist authors model being candid and vulnerable, as well as historically educated and connected with others, as avenues to healing from trauma. They cite research articles and channel expertise from years of clinical practice at Yellow Chair Collective yet avoid psychological jargon. Soo Jin and Linda have a warm and practical approach to writing that makes for an easy, thought-provoking read.

The diverse range of personal healing stories will be relatable, and the exercises and reflections will be useful and accessible. I like mental health books where the authors are honest about their own struggles and foibles alongside their expertise, so you can really feel like they’re on this journey with you rather than talking at you. Obviously targeted for Asian Americans (or Asian Canadians, Asian Australians, Asian Brits…) but has useful content here for all… show more.

My biggest problem with old-school PTSD books is that they are uni-dimensional and focus on a single big trauma. However, both as a therapist and just as a human, I understand that trauma is a multi-dimensional experience. There are different sizes and impacts, and it lasts from inter-generational trauma to systemic, ongoing trauma to inter-group and familial, as well as personal and current trauma. I’m on a big reading kick for Complex PTSD resources.

There’s also a dearth of culturally integrated and informed mental health books. Natalie’s book is fantastic because she has the knowledge and experience as a licensed mental health professional and the roots and wisdom of how to use reflection, narratives, and ceremony to de-program shame, imposter phenomenon, and all the baggage that weighs down historically marginalized readers. There’s a damn good reason Natalie has thousands of Instagram followers- she is relatable, bold, wise, and a kind… show more.

The joke (but truth) is that people go to therapy because of the people in their lives who refuse to go to therapy. “It’s Not You” is an ideal guide for people who are emotionally beaten down, self-questioning, and depleted from narcissistic abuse. Dr. Ramani provides knowledge so that one can identify the patterns and tactics of narcissistic abuse. This is super important to heal from self-blame and also to prevent falling for future manipulations.

Like my other recommendations- this book is fabulous because it comes from an expert who can channel research and knowledge into understandable terms and blend in relatable narratives from other people. It’s also a book that makes space for grieving dreams and hopes of even toxic relationships. I especially love the advice on how to work on becoming more “narcissist resistant” so that the next time a charming manipulator shows up, you’ll see the red… show more.

I might call Donald Porter’s Inner Running a forgotten classic if I could tell that it had ever been known. Running’s answer to Timothy Gallwey’s The Inner Game of Tennis, it emerges from the human-potential movement of the nineteen sixties and seventies, with the tube socks and tracksuits to prove it. Porter’s promotion of slow, meditative, and inward-focused style of running offers an antidote to the hyper-competitive, results-obsessed attitudes that tend to rule running. You’ll feel grounded just by reading it and especially if you put it into practice.

Murphy writes about the early years of women’s distance running as women discover their desire and ability to run long, and push for acceptance to participate. It traces the experience of the first competitive female long-distance runners who laid the groundwork for the next generation of girls and women runners to begin to experience the benefits.

What really fascinates me about Haruki Murakami is not his body of work per se, but the process through which he rose from anonymity and became a world-renowned author. Until he was 29, he’d never imagined he had the talent to write a novel. Before his rise to fame, novelists were known to live a wild and intemperate existence, drinking lots of alcohol into the wee hours and getting started on their manuscript past deadline. Murakami, however, broke this stereotype as someone who wakes up early, works out every day, and has run multiple full marathons. I have no doubt it was the power of his habits that made him a world-famous author. He even says his motto is to turn himself into “a creature of habits.”

There has never been (nor will there likely be) a runner like Emil Zatopek. His crowning achievement, a gold medal in the 5000m, 10000m, and the marathon in a single Olympics, has never been equaled, before or since. Yet the “greatest runner of all time” was more than just medals. Besides his Rocky Balboa-esque training regimen, Zapotek stood up to Soviet tanks during the Prague Spring. For this action, the runner was punished for years with a string of humiliating and strenuous jobs, before finally having his image rehabilitated in 1989. Known for his pithy quotes, the title of the book comes from a line he is said to have expressed to his fellow competitors before a race. 

Deena Kastor is a phenom that holds American records in every distance from the 5K to the marathon. Let Your Mind Run is a fascinating peek into the mindset of an elite athlete.

Few races match the majesty of the Boston Marathon, often called the “People’s Olympics” for giving everyone who can qualify the chance to compete alongside the sport’s best. Few runnings of the Boston Marathon can compare to the 1982 race, which concluded with a down-to-the-wire finish that separated the first and second finishers by only two seconds. The book profiles both of those runners, Alberto Salazar and Dick Beardsley, their build-up to the race, the back-and-forth of race day, and how the careers of each of those runners fell apart after the race. Dual in the Sun is one of the rare books that makes a two-hour race feel like an edge-of-your-seat sprint.