100 books like The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control

I first learned about Logan Ury listening to the podcast This is Dating. While I was waiting on the second season to drop, I learned about Dr. Ury’s book.

I’m not trying to be ageist, but it was refreshing to hear dating advice from a professional that isn’t older and hasn’t been married for decades. Ury’s dating years being more recent meant she gets the landscape modern daters are struggling to find love in. Her perspective was instantly more relevant to me.

There were also several knowledge gems that she dropped throughout her book that I’d already learned the hard way, which gave me more confidence in giving the new-to-me information she presented a shot.

I read this book in grad school while I was working on an essay for the Los Angeles Review of Books about choosing to be child-free.

Sometimes, you just need some real talk and a reminder that the deck really is stacked against you when it comes to dating. This book helped provide some much-needed perspective so that I could understand that there’s only so much control I have over my own singleness and that there are cultural factors at play. 

A lot of people know Rachel Cargle because of her activism and her community building. But her life story shows how sometimes you have to let go of what you’ve been taught to want so you’re free to go after what you really want.

Rachel wasn’t satisfied being a well-loved, stay-at-home wife in a small Ohio town. But it was hard for her to exit her marriage because we’ve all been taught to find a good man and hang on tight. Rachel did manage to leave and step onto a radically different life path. She’s open in the book about fluidity around her sexuality and exploring non-monogamy.

I contributed an essay to this collection and there’s quite a few writers I admire in this book, as well.

It’s refreshing to see other people’s perspective on what can feel like an albatross around your neck. Some of the essays are humorous, others are more poignant, but they all work together to show that a single life can look and feel a bazillion different ways—yours will be what you make it.

I love books with sardonic humor, especially those that poke fun at psychologists and other mental health professionals. I do it in my own novels.

Most clinicians are earnest, compassionate, and ethical. But like every other profession, we have some bad apples who give psychology a bad name and deserve all the jokes and cartoons and late-night comedy sketches we get.

Shapiro’s book is about a neurotic writer with a weight problem who searches for a new therapist after her long-time clinician leaves town. Applying speed dating to her protagonist’s search for a shrink was the perfect vehicle for taking jabs at my profession.

I laughed more than I cringed. It was, for me, an opportunity to look at myself and my colleagues from the client’s point of view. 

This book is a fabulous read, as I am incredibly interested and passionate about understanding spirituality and psychology for leadership and living in the modern day. I also love a book that invites the reader to reflect and delve into self-awareness, which is the most powerful way we find our base and can begin to work with our own internal narratives and behaviours.

As a high-performing human being, this book highlights again the incredible importance of mindfulness, with practical tools for healing in this fast-paced world we live in. I can never get enough of this practice, and this book was a great and empowering read for me, adding to my own personal roadmap for life.

DeSanctis is a witty and lyrical writer, and she observes the world with astonishing acuity and insight.

I read this at a moment of feeling unbearably stuck emotionally and I was transported to a worldly sense of fresh possibilities and rich adventures. Restlessness can be a superpower and finally I got validation for being a restless psychotherapist (a profession that prides itself on patience).

This book made me come alive and it bolstered me psychologically in a way that felt incidental and not forced the way self-help books might. It sparked my appreciation for oddities and eccentricities and I urge anyone looking for mischief to start reading this immediately. 

This book, and a couple of seminars with Byron Katie, really did change my life! I was stuck in negative thinking and couldn’t seem to get out of it. She offers a straightforward method to challenge your thoughts and turn them around to other possibilities. It‘s almost magical how your hurtful beliefs can be changed into accepting “the way it is” without the hurt.

Get this book and get some relief from whatever is bothering you. Truly.

In a no-nonsense way, the author points out humans’ flawed thinking and ego-driven way of life proving that changes need to happen to find true happiness. She offers simple steps to recognize and deal with these flaws—acknowledging that it won't be easy. 

Because of this book, I’m interacting differently with other people! I’m trying to be grateful for everyday things, listen actively, be curious instead of reacting, and look inward when I feel triggered. This book will help you work toward empathy with people different from you, which is so important in this divisive world.

This book is a series of short essays, each of which can be a prayer or affirmation itself. They read like perfect affirmations: “Let the Goodness of God Take Over,” “God’s Abundance Is Yours Now!” “Choose to Believe the Best,” “There Is Nothing to Fear!” Several months ago, I was feeling extremely lonely. At random, I opened to Kupferle’s essay “God’s Abundance is Yours Now!” and read, “God is the infinite source of your supply.” I kept repeating this affirmation. Two weeks later in the gym, another woman greeted me, reminding me that we’d met in the gym many months earlier. We quickly discovered much in common, as well as a wonderful mutual admiration. Since then, we’ve gotten together many times and continue to enjoy and help each other. Kuperfle works!