 What is up everybody? This is Chris from The Rewired Soul, where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. And if you're new to my channel, my channel's all about mental health. So if you're somebody like me who is actively trying to improve your mental and emotional well-being, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. And you know why you wanna be part of the Rewired Soul Notification Squad because today is Easter Sunday. And if you check it out in time, I'm giving away my book Rewire Your Anxiety for Free. It is in both ebook and audiobook format. And it is free all day today. That is my Easter gift to you. So check out the description down below. Use code Easter. You get the ebook and audiobook for free. Tell a friend. But it's just today. Today on Easter Sunday, all right? So make sure that you have the notification bell turned on. Be one of the first to watch it because I might do more stuff like this in the future. All right? But speaking of books, this is something that I've wanted to talk about for a very long time, a very, very long time. Like the word self-help, when it comes to books, it has this, yeah, this weird like taste that you get in your mouth. And as somebody who writes, and you know, I'm a fan of just like vocabulary and all that kind of stuff, I hate that there's certain words that aren't specific enough. Let me give you an example, all right? This is a way off example, but it's the only thing I could think of. So I hate the word overdose, all right? So as many of you know, not only am I sober for over seven years, but I worked in the drug and alcohol rehab for a little over three years. So in my lifetime, my span of sobriety, I have known many, many drug addicts and alcoholics and the word overdose is always just, you know, in my face, okay? So anyways, the word overdose, God, it puts you in such an awkward position because when you hear someone overdose, then you gotta ask the weird awkward question of did they survive, all right? In just, you know, a little over three years of working at the treatment center, I had over 70 people die of overdose, right? But I had hundreds of people survive from overdose because an overdose does not mean that the person died, all right? So I wish there was some kind of different words that you can use when it comes to overdose, but it's the same thing when it comes to self-help books. When we hear of self-help books, we think of just this kind of like crazy, you know, just I don't even know the words for it, but it has a bad taste. And I think it starts off with books like The Secret. So in this video, I'm gonna break down a few different categories because I love to read and there's so many self-help books out there that you could check out, right? That can actually benefit your mental health. But first, let's talk about this first section, right? This little subcategory. We're gonna call it The Guru's, okay? So this book, The Secret came out a while back, like God, what, 10, 15 years ago? And it's all about manifesting, you know, things that you want, right? And the law of attraction, okay? This gained a ton of traction and Oprah Winfrey herself put her stamp of approval on it. And when Oprah endorses your book, like it is going to take off. That's just how it goes, all right? And like one of my very few gripes with Oprah Winfrey, like I don't know her, I don't got issues with her, but the fact that she endorsed this book, okay? Books like The Secret are what I feel people think of when they hear of self-help books. Like this book and the whole idea behind it is nonsense. One of the reasons is that it has non-falsifiable claims, okay? What does that mean, okay? So if you want something good, you use a law of attraction, you get on the same frequency and all that and it comes to you, boom, it worked. But if you try to manifest something and it doesn't work, well, you just weren't doing it right, all right? You see what I mean? There's no scientific backing because it's non-falsifiable. There's no way to explain why it didn't work when you're living in the mindset of the law of attraction. And I think a lot of people think of self-help books as something like The Secret. So I read this other book, like I never read The Secret. I refuse to read that book. But I read another book. It's a bestseller, it's called You Are a Badass. It's an excellent book. And I could have put it into this next category but I decided not to. But anyways, You Are a Badass, it has some great inspirational and motivational stuff that it talks about. But every now and then, I'd say maybe 15 to 20% of the book, it talks about this law of attraction frequency type stuff and I'm not a fan of that. But the rest of the book is very good and I think you should check it out. Okay, so that first section, that first subcategory was the gurus. Next, let's talk about motivation and inspiration. All right, so check this out. Like sometimes, sometimes we all just need a good kick in the ass, okay? Like not all of us have people in our life who tell us what we need to hear and we'll sit in a pity party or we think about how we can't do anything or there's nothing we can take control of in our lives to make things start going better. And sometimes we get this person who talks a little trash to us or motivates us or inspires us and it gets us to start making new steps forward, right? Now, when it comes to this motivation and inspiration subcategory, I would argue like with all the books that I'm gonna dive into next, like there's some scientific backing behind it. Like there are different studies I could find that say, look, here's what they said here, here's some science that actually proves it, okay? So motivation and inspiration books, like they can definitely help you. So some of my favorite ones are Un-F Yourself by Gary John Bishop, The Subtle Art of Not Giving an F by Mark Manson. Mark Manson, he's a great author. He blends in some psychology, some philosophy like stoicism and things like that. Another one is The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday. Ryan Holiday, he uses a lot of other people's stories from like biographies that he reads and he teaches you about how to improve your own life based on these. And he's also a huge fan of stoic philosophy. Then if you're somebody who's like in the entrepreneurial kind of world or creative world, I highly suggest Crush It or Crushing It by Gary Vaynerchuk. So these are motivational inspirational books. There are books that will give you the kick in the butt that you need, okay? So now let's talk about the main category, scientific self-help, okay? So one of the reasons I wanted to make this video and it's something that I think about a lot is because everything is self-help, okay? Like everything, aside from like taking like antidepressant medications, everything is self-help, like check it out. When you go to therapy, when you go to therapy, the best therapy that you will get is self-help therapy, okay? A therapist is not there to hold your hand for the rest of your life and navigate every single move that you make. Like this is something I learned when I got a sponsor back in 12 step programs, like they weren't there to like make every single choice for me. Their job is to teach you things so you can then help yourself. So that's why it irks me that self-help has kind of got this bad rap because psychology and therapy is self-help, okay? So in this realm of scientific self-help, first we'll talk about education slash science slash research, okay? So these are books where they heavily rely on, you know, research and everything but they're mainly like education. So as some of you know, like I am not a licensed professional. I'm not currently in college but I hope to pursue a psychology degree in the future after I take care of some old student loan stuff and back when I was a drug addict and alcoholic. But anyways, these are, I don't want to use the word textbooks because even the word textbook has a bad connotation to it but they're purely education. Like if you just want to learn about depression or anxiety or how the brain works or trauma or whatever it is, here are some books, okay? One of them is from the Nobel Prize winner, Daniel Kahneman. It's called Thinking Fast and Slow, amazing book from a Nobel Prize winner, so it better be a good book. All right, the next one is Good Reasons for Bad Feelings. This is about evolutionary psychology. Why did we evolve to experience depression to experience anxiety? Why do some people have schizophrenia? Where does bipolar disorder come from? Where do eating disorders come from? What about addictions and all that? This is the evolutionary reason for that. The next one is the Science of Evil and this is a little bit different, okay? Like it's not necessarily about psychology, like it is but I think it helps a lot with empathy. Like it's very easy for us to just believe like, oh, this person's evil, that person's evil. They're just a bad, bad, bad person. But when you read the Science of Evil, you start to understand that it's a lot more nuance than that. It's not just people are good or bad. There are a lot of different reasons for why people are the way they are. Like we often want to be like, oh, that person is a psychopath or a sociopath. Reading this book, we start to say, oh, okay. Maybe this person made bad decisions based on, you know, their emotions in that moment. Maybe it's based on their childhood. You know, it helps us get a reason for it so we don't just automatically hate somebody who's a jerk to us, all right? Then the next portion of Scientific Self-Help is the category of stories, okay? So there are other books where if you're a fan of like fiction or storytelling, these are the books for you. For example, one of the bestselling books of last year into this year is maybe you should talk to someone from the therapist, Lori Gottlieb. She is an amazing storyteller and I love this book because she not only talks about therapy and tells some stories of her own clients, she also shares her story of going to therapy as a therapist but throughout the book, she breaks down different forms of therapy, different therapeutic terminology and she explains them so you're learning about the therapeutic process as you read this incredible story, all right? Then there's another book called The Buddha and the Borderline. This is a woman's story about being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, getting dialectical behavioral therapy. A lot of you know that I highly, highly, highly recommend dialectical behavioral therapy for a lot of different disorders but specifically borderline personality disorder. This is a first person account of going through that. So anybody with BPD, I think you would enjoy this book. The next one is a book that my girlfriend recommended to me and I still need to finish reading it but it's called The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks. He is an amazing writer. He has been a neuroscientist, neuropsychologist, I think a blend of the two. Anyways, there's a bunch of interesting stories in there and he explains how the brain works and everything. So if you're into a lot of like just the kind of fringe psychological disorders, this is a great book and it helps you learn a little bit about it and understand things a little bit more. All right, so the next one, the next category is mindfulness. So a lot of you know, like I am a dude who won't try anything unless it's backed by science and for a long time I thought meditation and mindfulness, all that stuff was ridiculous until I started learning all the science that backs it, okay? So here are some books where you'll find the scientific evidence that backs mindfulness and meditation, which is something absolutely free that you could start doing that'll help improve your mental health. One of them is The Buddha's Brain. This is about the neuroscience behind meditation as well as Buddhist philosophy. Then there's The Craving Mind by Dr. Justin Brewer. I had him on my podcast a couple of weeks ago if you wanna go check that out. Then there's Mindfulness for Fidgety Skeptics by Dan Harris. He is somebody else who, he was a news anchor and he had a very public panic attack on live television and he found mindfulness and it's helped him a lot. And in this book, like this is a great book for anybody who's skeptical about mindfulness, all right? So then there is self-help psychology, okay? So this dives into different forms of psychology and how you can start improving your life based on different psychological studies and findings and everything like that. One of them is another guy I just had on my podcast, Dr. Alex Korb. He wrote the book The Upward Spiral. This is the neuroscience around depression, a ton of studies in there and different things that you could do to boost different neurotransmitters. Then there's the book The Happiness Advantage by the Harvard positive psychologist, Shawn Aker, amazing book. Then we got redirect, changing the stories we live by. This is a great book for anybody who struggles with trauma. And then the upside of stress from one of my favorite authors, Kelly McGonagall. This is a book that discusses how stress can actually be a good thing. And she is a professor at Stanford and she's done a million studies. So I highly recommend you check this out. Last category is self-help therapy. So if you cannot afford therapy, not only are all these books very beneficial, but these books specifically dive into certain types of therapy. So a therapy that I'm a huge fan of is Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy, REBT by Albert Ellis. He came up with this and he has like 100 books. But my favorite one, the best one for anybody to check out is how to stubbornly refuse to make yourself miserable about anything. All right? The next one is Mindfulness for Borderline Personality Disorder. If you wanna learn more about dialectical behavioral therapy, this is a great book. It has a bunch of practices in there. Then there's a liberated mind. This is from the guy who created Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, ACT. Then also, there's an audio book that I read or listened to. And it's a course from a college professor and it's about cognitive behavioral therapy, okay? And I'll link all of this stuff down below. But anyways, I wanted to make this video because so many people cannot afford therapy. So many people can't afford to see a psychologist. Some people can't get on medications or whatever. There are so many books out there that you could read to start improving your mental health and their self-help books, but they're not all the secret, okay? So all these books will be linked down in the description below. I also wrote a medium article about this whole thing. So if you wanna check that out, all the links are in there as well, all right? But I really needed to talk about this and I hope you liked it. Hopefully it helps some of you who are curious about the self-help realm and realizing it's a little bit more nuanced than some originally thought. All right, there's a bunch of different categories. So again, I will link all this stuff down in the description below. But if you like this video or you like this type of video, give it a thumbs up. Let me know your thoughts down in the comments. And if you have any book recommendations, lay them on me. All right, but anyways, that's all I got for this video. If you liked this video, again, give it a thumbs up. If you're new, subscribe to the notification bell on and don't forget down in the description you can get a link to my book, Rewire Your Anxiety. It's free all day today. And a huge thank you to everybody who supports the channel on Patreon or buying my mental health books or Merch, you're all amazing, all right? Thanks again for watching. I'll see you next time.