Books that helped shape how you view people and relationships

August 18, 2024 2:50 PM

I've read a few books that really had an impact on how I viewed my behaviour and the behaviour of others and I'd love to read some more. Books that include anecdotes as examples are best as that helps me put the information into context.

Previous books that I enjoyed:

"Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls" by Mary Pipher Ph.D.

"The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence" by Gavin de Becker

"Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men" by Lundy Bancroft

I also really enjoyed the internet favourite "The Missing Missing Reasons"
https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-missing-reasons.html

I don't have a particular type of behaviour I'm interested in, any book that is well researched and you found insightful. Very much want to avoid sexist or religious texts, if Venus and Mars style books are your jam that probably means our venn diagrams have little overlap.

posted by Dynex to Writing & Language (14 answers total)

It's not a practical book in the sense of explicitly teaching lessons like the examples you listed, but no book has affected the way I view and interact with other people more than Andrew Solomon's Far From the Tree.
posted by telegraph at 3:27 PM on August 18

Janine Driver's You Say More Than You Think (former undercover ATF field agent buying illegal arms). Written with men in mind (she has writren books oriented to females too), really helped me alter how I carry myself (standing, 'loitering' and just looking at ease in difficult situations.
posted by unearthed at 3:28 PM on August 18

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie is a classic which will have you saying everyone's name all the time like a server in a family restaurant (but it works!)

Games People Play by Eric Berne is very 1960s and a bit dated - but still a really interesting look at transactions and competition in human social behaviour. Might be sexist tho, I don't remember clearly enough to vouch for it.

Audition by Michael Shurtleff is the actors' classic, lots of interest about human motivation, great advice for "how actors can be charming and magnetic in auditions" which is extremely transferable to "how people can be charming and magnetic at parties" and a light, fun read.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 4:03 PM on August 18

The Dance of Intimacy by Harrier Lerner.
posted by lulu68 at 4:18 PM on August 18

I'm about to recommend several books, all of which contain several anecdotes, but before I do:

What has helped me the most is reading *good* advice columnists, in particular Carolyn Hax and Sahaj Kaur Kohli. Both of these women have taught me more about how to nurture healthy relationships and communicate honestly and effectively than anything else I've read. And since advice columns are all about people writing in with questions, it's anecdote city!

As far as books...

Melodie Beattie's "Codependent No More," which explores the many different types and iterations of codependent relationships and behaviors (there are so many more than I had realized).

I haven't reread it in a while and there might be some things in there I'd take minor issue with now, but "Pulling Your Own Strings" by Dr. Wayne Dyer taught me how to identify when someone may be trying (whether intentionally or otherwise) to manipulate my emotions, as well as how to set up firm boundaries to help me circumvent those attempts to manipulate my emotions.

If you are interested in understanding how childhood trauma (or any trauma) impacts our development, cognition, and personhood, Bessel van der Kolk's "The Body Keeps the Score" and Pete Walker's "Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving."

These are just off the top of my head, so if think of any more, I'll add another comment later.
posted by nightrecordings at 4:48 PM on August 18

Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find--and Keep-- Love:
by Amir Levine, Rachel Heller You wanna know why the dating pool is so bad? Read this. It's not you, there's just a lot of avoidants always jumping back into the pool.

The Case for Falling in Love: Why We Can't Master the Madness of Love -- and Why That's the Best Part by Mari Ruti. Mari Ruti was excellent in general.
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:19 PM on August 18

I found Deborah Tannen's work to give me a lot of insight. It is about conversational styles as opposed to behavior, but it reveals that sometimes people don't mean what we take them to mean.

You just don't understand
posted by statusquoante at 6:57 PM on August 18

The New Peoplemaking - Virginia Satir

Love Between Equals, How Peer Marriage Really Works - Pepper Schwartz
posted by cocoagirl at 8:41 PM on August 18

Two years ago, when I finally encountered the Quran after several decades of life on the planet, it affirmed and expanded upon what I'd observed of human nature but didn't hear anyone talking about. I certainly hadn't encountered that level of detail in the Old or New Testaments or in any book in any academic discipline.

And each day I find something new in it. Alhamdulillah.
posted by rabia.elizabeth at 10:59 PM on August 18

Mistakes Were Made, but Not by Me: Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts was an eye opener for me at the time.
posted by meijusa at 11:48 PM on August 18

Randy Pausch "The Last Lecture", one of the best books I've read, and the metrics on the book (# translations, sales, etc.) support that. Just two quotes from the book: #1- "Experience is what you got when you didn't get what you wanted." #2- "The brick walls are there for a reason. They're not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something."
posted by forthright at 8:15 AM on August 19

Impro by Keith Johnstone. It's got a lot on social status and the failures of education. You might also be interested in this question I asked previously.
posted by wheatlets at 10:47 AM on August 19

The Gentle Art of Verbal Self Defense, Verbal Judo, and Never Split the Difference are also interesting.
posted by wheatlets at 10:52 AM on August 19

Better than Before by Gretchen Rubin. It's about habit formation, and has the fundamental idea that people are different and so different things work for different people. Which was really refreshing change from the "this is the one true way" that often pervades self help books.
posted by kjs4 at 12:56 AM on August 20