The Stress-Proof Brain – by Dr. Melanie Greenberg

The premise of the book is as stated in the subtitle: using mindfulness and neuroplasticity to manage our stress response.

As such, it’s divided into three parts:

1. Understanding your stress (and different types of stressors)
2. Calming your amygdalae (thus, dealing with your stress response while the stressor is stressing you)
3. Moving forward with your prefrontal cortex (and thus, gradually improving automatic stress responses over time, as we learn new, better responses to do automatically)

The content ranges from the neurophysiological to “therapist’s couch” stuff; Dr. Greenberg having her PhD in psychology has prepared her to write both of those different-but-touching fields with equal competence. In-line citations are given throughout, for those who want to look up studies.

The style is direct and informative, with little to no attention given to making it an entertaining read. As a result, it’s information dense (which is good), and/but not necessarily a “couldn’t put it down” page-turner.

Bottom line: if you’d like to improve your ability to deal with stress, this book is as good as any.

Click here to check out The Stress-Proof Brain, and stress-proof yours!