This book takes a trauma-informed care approach, which is relatively novel in the mental health field and it’s quickly becoming the industry standard because of its effectiveness.

The basic premise of trauma-informed care is that you had a bad experience (possibly even more than one—what a thought!) and that things that remind you of that will tend to prompt reactivity from you in a way that probably isn’t healthy. By identifying each part of that process, we can then interrupt it, much like we might with CBT (the main difference being that CBT, for all its effectiveness, tends to assume that the things that are bothering you are not true, while TIC acknowledges that they might well be, and that especially historically, they probably were).

A word of warning: if something that triggers a trauma-based reactivity response in you is people swearing, then this book will either cure you by exposure therapy or leave you a nervous wreck, because it’s not just the title; Dr. Harper barely gets through a sentence without swearing. It’s a lot, even by this (European) reviewer’s standards (we’re a lot more relaxed about swearing over here, than people tend to be in America).

On the other hand, something that Dr. Harper excels at is actually explaining stuff very well. So while it sometimes seems like she’s “trying too hard” style-wise in terms of being “not like other therapists”, in her defence she’s nevertheless a very good writer; she knows her stuff, and knows how to communicate it clearly.

Bottom line: if you don’t mind a writer who swears more than 99% of soldiers, then this book is an excellent how-to guide for self-administered trauma-informed care.

Click here to check out Unfuck Your Brain, and indeed unfuck it!

As we discussed in our article “Stop Sabotaging Your Gut”, there is indeed merit to living a little dirty, in particular when it comes to what we put in our mouths. Having the space of an entire book rather than a small article, Dr. Shetreat-Klein expands on this in great detail.

The subtitle mentions “growing healthy kids with food straight from the soil”; it’s worth noting that all the information here (with the exception of concerning breastfeeding etc) is equally applicable to adults too—so if it’s your own health you’re focused on rather than that of kids or grandkids, then that’s fine too.

You may be wondering: what more is there to say than “don’t scrub your vegetables as though you’re about to perform surgery with them”?

There’s a lot of background information on what things help or harm our bodies in the first place, most notably via our gut, and as an important extra consideration, the gut-brain axis. Incidentally, the author is a neurologist by professional background.

Then she gets more specific, into “include and exclude” recommendations. In this matter we have one criticism: she does recommend raw milk over pasteurized, and that is, by overwhelming scientific consensus, a terrible idea. Raw milk is an abundant source of pathogens and a breeding ground for even more. There is “living dirty” and there is “living dangerously”, and drinking raw milk is the latter. See also: Pasteurization: What It Does And Doesn’t Do

However, for the most part, the rest of her advice is sound, and there’s even a recipes section too.

The style is something of a polemic throughout, but the extensive venting does not take away from there being a lot of genuine information in here too.

Bottom line: please skip the raw milk, but aside from that, if you’d like to improve your diet to improve your gut and immune health, then this book can help with that.

Click here to check out The Dirt Cure, and dirty it up!

Worry is a time-sink that rarely does us any good, and often does us harm. Many books have been written on how to fight anxiety… That’s not what this book’s about.

Dr. David Carbonell, in contrast, encourages the reader to stop trying to avoid/resist anxiety, and instead, lean into it in a way that detoothes it.

He offers various ways of doing this, from scheduling time to worry, to substituting “what if…” with “let’s pretend…”, and guides the reader through exercises to bring about a sort of worry-desensitization.

The style throughout is very much pop-psychology and is very readable.

If the book has a weak point, it’s that it tends to focus on worrying less about unlikely outcomes, rather than tackling worry that occurs relating to outcomes that are likely, or even known in advance. However, some of the techniques will work for such also! That’s when Dr. Carbonell draws from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).

Bottom line: if you would like to lose less time and energy to worrying, then this is a fine book for you.

Click here to check out The Worry Trick, and repurpose your energy reserves!