Recommended Reading & Resources

Therapy doesn’t end when the session does.

The books and articles below are resources I sometimes recommend to clients who want to better understand the ideas we discuss in therapy, practice skills between sessions, or simply think more deeply about how they want to live.

You do not need to read any of these books to benefit from therapy, and not every resource will fit every person. Think of this list as a library rather than an assignment: take what is useful, question what isn’t, and bring your reactions into therapy.

Start Here

The Happiness Trap – Russ Harris

Best for: Anxiety, depression, overthinking, avoidance, difficult emotions, and values-based living.

One of the most accessible introductions to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). Rather than promising that difficult thoughts and emotions will disappear, Harris focuses on changing our relationship with them so they have less control over what we do. A particularly good choice if you find yourself thinking, “I’ll start living the way I want once I finally feel better.”

Mind Over Mood – Dennis Greenberger & Christine A. Padesky

Best for: Anxiety, depression, automatic thoughts, core beliefs, and understanding the connection between thoughts, emotions, and behavior.

This is a practical Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) workbook. It provides exercises for identifying patterns in thinking, examining the evidence for our interpretations, and developing more useful ways of responding. If we are doing thought records or examining recurring beliefs in therapy, this can be an excellent companion.

Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life – Steven C. Hayes & Spencer Smith

Best for: Feeling stuck, experiential avoidance, anxiety, depression, values, and psychological flexibility.

A workbook based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. It explores the surprising ways our attempts to control thoughts and emotions can sometimes make life smaller and how acceptance, mindfulness, values, and committed action can help us move forward.

Trauma & PTSD

Getting Unstuck from PTSD – Patricia A. Resick, Shannon Wiltsey Stirman & Stefanie T. LoSavio

Best for: PTSD, trauma-related guilt, shame, self-blame, trust, safety, control, esteem, and intimacy.

This book is based on Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), an evidence-based treatment for PTSD. It is especially useful for understanding what CPT calls “stuck points” – beliefs that can develop or become reinforced following traumatic experiences and keep us trapped long after the danger itself has ended.

Important: Trauma-focused work can bring up strong emotional reactions. You do not need to work through trauma material on your own. Consider discussing this book with your therapist before using it as a workbook.

Once a Warrior, Always a Warrior – Charles W. Hoge, MD

Best for: Veterans, service members, combat veterans, military families, and the transition from military to civilian life.

Written specifically with military experience in mind, this book examines combat stress, PTSD, reintegration, and some of the difficulties that can occur when behaviors and ways of thinking that were adaptive in the military no longer fit civilian life in quite the same way.

Meaning, Identity & Life Transitions

Man’s Search for Meaning – Viktor E. Frankl

Best for: Meaning, suffering, purpose, identity, grief, major life changes, and existential questions.

Frankl’s work is not a therapy workbook. It is a reflection on suffering, meaning, responsibility, and the human ability to choose how we respond to circumstances we did not choose. I often find the central question more useful than any particular answer:

  • “Given the reality I am facing, what kind of person do I want to be within it?“

That question fits closely with both existential therapy and values-based work.

Faith, Belief & Religious Transition

When Religion Hurts You – Laura E. Anderson

Best for: Religious trauma, high-control religious environments, changing beliefs, shame, fear, and rebuilding identity.

For some people, changing religious beliefs involves much more than changing an opinion. It can affect family relationships, community, identity, morality, belonging, meaning, and even one’s sense of personal safety. This resource may be particularly relevant for people whose religious experience involved fear, coercion, control, or trauma. It is not intended to tell someone whether they should remain religious, change their beliefs, or leave a faith tradition. Therapy should provide room to examine those questions without predetermined conclusions.

Philosophy Behind the Work

Psychotherapy did not invent every idea it uses. Long before CBT, ACT, or modern psychology existed, philosophers were asking many of the same questions:

  • What is within my control?
  • How much of my suffering comes from what happens to me, and how much comes from how I interpret it?
  • How should I live when I cannot control the outcome?
  • What makes a life meaningful?
  • What responsibility do I have for the person I become?

Modern psychotherapy approaches such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and Existential Therapy approach these questions scientifically and clinically. But many of the underlying ideas have deep philosophical roots. The books below are original philosophical works rather than modern reinterpretations.

Stoicism: Judgment, Control & Response

Stoic philosophy is particularly relevant to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

The Stoics repeatedly distinguished between external events and our judgments about those events. That does not mean that circumstances do not matter or that painful experiences are imaginary. Rather, Stoicism asks us to examine what is actually within our control and how our interpretations influence our emotional and behavioral responses. This resembles an important principle in CBT:

Event → Interpretation → Emotional/Behavioral Response

Stoicism should not be confused with suppressing emotion or simply “toughing things out.” Classical Stoicism is much more concerned with judgment, character, values, self-command, and living deliberately.

Epictetus — The Enchiridion

Best for: Control, anxiety, frustration, acceptance, responsibility, and perspective.

The Enchiridion is one of the clearest places to begin with Stoicism. Epictetus opens with a fundamental distinction between things that are within our control and things that are not. Much of his philosophy follows from learning to invest our effort in our judgments, choices, and actions rather than demanding control over outcomes that ultimately belong to the world. For therapy, a useful question inspired by Epictetus is:

  • What part of this situation is actually mine to work on?

Epictetus — Discourses

Best for: Deeper exploration of belief, judgment, emotional reactions, character, and personal responsibility.

The Discourses provide the fuller philosophical system behind the much shorter Enchiridion. Epictetus repeatedly examines the connection between events, beliefs, expectations, and distress. Readers interested in the philosophical roots of examining one’s interpretations may find substantial overlap with themes that later appear in cognitive therapy. This is a more demanding read than the Enchiridion, but considerably richer.

Marcus Aurelius — Meditations

Best for: Perspective, mortality, adversity, self-discipline, values, leadership, and living according to one’s principles.

Marcus Aurelius wrote these reflections primarily for himself. The result is an unusually personal record of someone repeatedly reminding himself how he wanted to respond to irritation, loss, disappointment, responsibility, mortality, and difficult people. Rather than asking, “How do I make the world cooperate with me?” Marcus repeatedly returns to a different question:

  • “Given what is happening, how do I want to conduct myself?”

That question fits naturally with both Stoicism and values-based therapy.

Seneca — Letters from a Stoic / Moral Letters to Lucilius

Best for: Anxiety, adversity, grief, mortality, anger, friendship, wealth, purpose, and the use of time.

Seneca’s letters are conversational and cover an enormous range of psychological and existential topics. His writing frequently addresses anticipatory anxiety, fear of loss, our relationship with discomfort, and the tendency to postpone living while waiting for conditions to become ideal. For clients interested in both Stoicism and practical psychology, Seneca is particularly accessible.

Existential Philosophy: Meaning, Freedom & Responsibility

Existential therapy draws from a much broader philosophical tradition. Existential thinkers disagree with one another—sometimes profoundly—but repeatedly return to questions involving:

  • Freedom.
  • Responsibility.
  • Anxiety.
  • Death.
  • Meaning.
  • Identity.
  • Isolation.
  • Choice.
  • Authenticity.
  • The life we create through our actions.

Existential philosophy can be especially meaningful during major transitions, loss of identity, military transition, faith transition, grief, or periods when someone is asking not simply “How do I feel better?” but:

  • “What do I believe now, and how do I want to live?”

Søren Kierkegaard — The Concept of Anxiety

Best for: Anxiety, freedom, uncertainty, responsibility, and major life choices.

Kierkegaard treats anxiety not merely as a symptom to eliminate but as something deeply connected with human freedom. When we recognize that our lives contain real possibilities—and that we must choose among them—anxiety naturally follows. This can be particularly relevant during life transitions when there is no obviously correct path.

Søren Kierkegaard — The Sickness Unto Death

Best for: Identity, despair, authenticity, self-relationship, and existential struggle.

Kierkegaard explores despair as a disruption in the relationship a person has with themselves. Although explicitly grounded in his Christian philosophy, the psychological questions extend beyond religious belief:

  • “What happens when I cannot accept who I am?“
  • “What happens when I desperately try to become someone I am not?“
  • “What does it mean to become a self?“

Readers undergoing identity or faith transitions may find this work especially challenging and thought-provoking.

Friedrich Nietzsche – Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Best for: Identity, values, transformation, suffering, self-overcoming, and creating a life after inherited assumptions are questioned.

Nietzsche is not a therapist, and this is not a self-help book. He challenges inherited values and asks what happens when traditional sources of certainty lose their authority. That makes his work especially relevant to questions of identity and value reconstruction. A useful therapeutic question inspired by Nietzsche is:

  • “If I no longer accept the values I inherited, what values am I choosing—and what kind of person do those values ask me to become?“

Jean-Paul Sartre – Existentialism Is a Humanism

Best for: Freedom, responsibility, choice, identity, and personal agency.

This is one of the most accessible primary texts in existential philosophy. Sartre argues that we are not simply born with a fixed essence that determines who we must become. We continually define ourselves through our choices and actions. That can be both liberating and uncomfortable. Freedom brings possibility, but also responsibility.

Jean-Paul Sartre – Being and Nothingness

Best for: Advanced readers interested in freedom, consciousness, identity, self-deception, and authenticity.

This is a substantially more difficult philosophical work. One particularly influential idea is bad faith: the ways people can avoid acknowledging their own freedom or responsibility by convincing themselves that they simply have no choice. In therapy, that does not mean blaming people for circumstances outside their control. Rather, it raises an important question:

  • “Within the constraints that genuinely exist, where does choice still remain?“

Albert Camus – The Myth of Sisyphus

Best for: Meaning, absurdity, suffering, mortality, and continuing to live when life does not provide easy answers.

Camus begins with one of philosophy’s most difficult questions: how should we respond when we cannot find an ultimate explanation or guaranteed meaning for existence? His answer is not passive resignation. He explores how a person might continue living fully even when certainty is unavailable. This can resonate strongly during periods of grief, disillusionment, faith transition, or major changes in worldview.

Meaning Under Extreme Conditions

Viktor E. Frankl – Man’s Search for Meaning

Best for: Meaning, suffering, trauma, responsibility, purpose, and existential resilience.

Frankl was both a psychiatrist and a survivor of Nazi concentration camps. His work contributed to the development of logotherapy, an explicitly meaning-centered form of psychotherapy. One of the central themes in Frankl’s writing is that human beings often cannot choose their circumstances, but may still retain some capacity to choose how they orient themselves toward those circumstances. This does not mean suffering is good or that every tragedy needs to be turned into a lesson. It means that even in circumstances we did not choose, the question of how we want to live may remain.

How These Ideas Connect to Therapy

Different traditions use different language, but there are striking points of contact.

Stoicism asks:
What is within my control, and what judgment am I making about what happened?

CBT asks:
What happened, what did I tell myself it meant, and how did that interpretation affect what I felt and did?

ACT asks:
Can I make room for difficult internal experiences, step back from my thoughts, identify what matters, and act accordingly?

Existential philosophy asks:
Given freedom, uncertainty, mortality, and responsibility, what kind of life am I choosing to create?

Together, these approaches point toward something larger than symptom reduction:

  • Understand your thinking.
  • Accept what cannot simply be eliminated.
  • Examine the beliefs that guide you.
  • Decide what matters.
  • Then act accordingly.

A Note for Readers

These philosophers often disagree with one another. That is part of the point. You do not need to accept Stoicism, existentialism, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Sartre, Camus, Frankl or any other philosophical system wholesale. Read critically. Ask:

  • What do I agree with?
  • What do I reject?
  • Why does this idea bother me?
  • What does it reveal about what I value?
  • If I actually believed this, how would I live differently?

Those questions can make philosophy useful in therapy without turning therapy into a philosophy class.

A Few Ideas Worth Remembering

Across many of these books, you will encounter different versions of several themes that frequently appear in therapy:

  • Thoughts are important, but a thought is not automatically a fact.
  • Avoiding discomfort can provide relief today while making life smaller tomorrow.
  • We can examine whether a belief is accurate without demanding absolute certainty.
  • Not every painful emotion needs to be eliminated before we act.
  • Our experiences influence us, but they do not have to dictate our next action.
  • Values are not goals we finish, they are directions we repeatedly choose.
  • The goal of therapy isn’t simply to feel better. It is also to become better able to live the life that matters to you.

A Note About Self-Help Resources

Books can provide language, ideas, exercises, and new ways of looking at an old problem. They are not replacements for individualized assessment or psychotherapy. You may also disagree with parts of a book I recommend. That’s okay. In fact, disagreement can sometimes be clinically useful.

Bring it to therapy: What resonated? What didn’t? What made you uncomfortable? What challenged something you believed? What seems useful enough to try?

Those questions are often more important than finishing the book.