Therapy or self help books

[PLbee29]

For improving self esteem and healing from having an emotionally absent mother. NHS waiting list for therapy is long in my area and I cannot afford to go private, money is very tight. AIBU to ask if highly recommended self help books could also benefit me...
Thank you

I am using ‘the mindful self- compassion workbook’ which is excellent.
I also rate anything by Brene Browne and a lovely book called ‘15 minutes to happiness’ by Richard Nichols. I have these as audiobooks and use them when commuting.

Thank you, I will look in to those books :) I have bought Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers. Also meant to be V good

I would recommend Feeling Good. The book is about £7. You can check out the podcast too, it is phenomenal! There are some live therapy sessions which are profoundly insightful. Episodes 5 and 78 specifically mention self esteem

feelinggood.com/list-of-feeling-good-podcasts/

OP, Feel the Fear is excellent.

Therapist here. Reinventing Your Life by Young might be worth a look. As I recall it’s schema therapy based, so good cognitive therapy credentials. I also think Toxic Parents Overcoming their hurtful legacy and rebuilding your life is Eye opening on a personal level.

Whatever you read, apply yourself to it, put aside specific time to do the reading and then apply yourself to the understanding and change work based on your goals. Give yourself time to examine and feel the hurt and don’t put yourself under pressure to move on. Acceptance is hard to get and it’s the basis for the next step. Warn the people closest to you that you might have some bad days, and build in some activities to look after yourself. This is well worth it, you deserve to repair from your childhood.

Nhs therapy is very limited to few sessions anyway. Stay on the waiting list but dont hold your breath and do a lot of diy therapy with audio books, work books, online sources etc.

Bless you, OP ❤️

I read a lot of self-help books because I find the NHS therapy appointments are during work time, or too far for public transport, and private therapy, while a bit more flexible, is expensive :-(

Still, I would like to have some therapy in future. A friend of mine has Parks Inner Child Therapy (I think it is free and interestingly is in the evenings) and highly recommends it. That may be worth looking into. If I could get there I’d go for it!

Books:

In terms of self-esteem, these helped me:
‘The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem’ & ‘How to Raise Your Self Esteem’ by Dr Nathaniel Branden

I’m currently reading ‘Reinventing Your Life’ by Jeffrey Young & Janet Klosko and ‘The Body Keeps Score’ by Bessel Van Der Kouk and finding them really helpful.

I read ‘You Can Heal Your Life’ by Louise Hay... - this book is often recommended and there were a couple of interesting nuggets but her fundamental approach didn’t sit well with me.

In future I intend to read ‘Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents’ by Lindsay Gibson, amongst some others.

The great thing with these books is you can get the kindle app for free and download free samples of the books on Amazon to see which ones resonate with you.

Might be worth getting on the waiting list and reading some books in the meantime.

Good luck!

Toxic Parents by Susan Forward

Depression: The Way Out Of Your Prison by Dorothy Rowe (all of her books are excellent)

I’d read up on attachment theory. I don’t have a book to recommend as I’ve just started exploring this myself.

The subtle art of not giving a fuck.
It will give you quite a good perspective when it comes to many smaller things (and some big ones) so you can free up your mind to deal with issues around your mother.

Thanks everyone ❤