Looking for bookrecommendations

January 12, 2012 1:43 AM

Books in the vein of "Intimate Connections"?

I am reading "Intimate Connections" by David Burns now and am finding it helpful. I'm interested in doing more reading on self-confidence and developing relationships with others, as well as dealing with negative thinking and bad moods.

ALSO I am interested to know of others' experience in reading "Intimate Connections": How did you make the most of the book, and how did it help you? Would it be better to read Intimate Connections again rather than to hop into different, though related,books immediately?

As far as further book recommedations,I'm open to self-help, psychology, spirituality, philosophy, non fiction anecdotes. Ideally, the book should be available through kindle but I am open to really good books not available on kindle (I don't have access to a brick-and-mortar English bookstore currently).

Thanks!

posted by bearette to Media & Arts (4 answers total)

I'm not a big fan of self-help stuff generally (too vain, proud and arrogant) but did find Burns helpful. I read it casually, when I felt like it, never did an exercise from it, but found it improved my attitude and my understanding of human relationships--in general, helped me become better and happier. Small incremental improvement, maybe, and if I'd been more serious about it, possibly could have done a lot better. But it's useful even on the trivial level I used it, very rich in insights that now seem pretty obvious.
John Gottman's books on marriage and relationships are useful, too, because they're based (somewhat, and imperfectly) on empirical data. Good luck.
posted by fivesavagepalms at 6:22 AM on January 12, 2012

That book is awesome. DO THE EXERCISES! That's how it really, really works.
posted by Ironmouth at 8:33 AM on January 12, 2012 [1 favorite]

You might like this guy on YouTube. I recently found him and he has many videos. They are pretty entertaining and informative.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4GojBehRQc&feature=related
posted by Fairchild at 10:02 AM on January 12, 2012

I also liked Intimate Connections. The Happiness Trap is a science-based book that helped me.
posted by cogat at 11:06 AM on January 12, 2012