Personal Stories Library

• Healing Painful Sex: A Woman’s Guide to Confronting, Diagnosing and Treating Sexual Pain
  In Healing Painful Sex: A Woman’s Guide to Confronting, Diagnosing, and Treating Sexual Pain, physician Deborah Coady, MD, and psychotherapist Nancy Fish, MSW, MPH, combine their medical and psychological expertise to write a book about ...
• What’s My Zip Code?
  When I first saw this book "What's My Zip Code?" by David Stringer, it was in download format and I wondered what exactly it would be about because it seemed like an odd title to ...
• The Lonely Screams: Understanding the Complex World of the Lonely
  Loneliness is certainly a common human experience; even if you’ve been lucky enough to feel it only briefly, or rarely, you know the misery of it, the actual physical pain of it. Arising from a ...
• The Memory Palace: A Memoir
  We children of schizophrenics are the great secret-keepers, the ones who don’t want you to think anything is wrong (p. 5). Author Mira Bartok has encapsulated in this statement her life as the daughter of mentally ...
• Nothing: A Portrait of Insomnia
  From the first sentence, Blake Butler’s poetic voice is clear. He writes: “Into the version of the sky above my house one afternoon when I was twelve, the nearby high school released a flood of ...
• After Schizophrenia
  I was not sure what to expect when I first opened Margaret Hawkins’ After Schizophrenia. Memoirs about people suffering from mental illness are quite common these days and I was interested to see if the ...
• What a Life Can Be
  In “What a Life Can Be: One Therapist’s Take on Schizo-Affective Disorder,” Carolyn Dobbins, PhD offers an insightful look into the evolution of a successful mental health professional with a challenging diagnosis:  schizo-affective disorder.  In an ...
• Find the Upside of the Down Times
  Some people have all the bad luck, and by any measure Rob Pennington, author of Find the Upside of the Down Times, has had more than his fair share. He was shot in the chest, ...
• Clinicians on the Couch: 10 Questions with Therapist Julie Hanks
  Want to get a glimpse into a therapist’s world? Learn what therapy is really like? And get some wise advice ...
• Brave Girl Eating: A Family’s Struggle with Anorexia
  Between three and six percent of all teens struggle with some type of eating disorder, be it bulimia, binge eating, or anorexia. Because these illnesses involve eating, they seem to take a blow at family ...
• A Cluttered Life: Searching for God, Serenity, and My Missing Keys
  A Cluttered Life: Searching for God, Serenity, and My Missing Keys is written for anyone who has felt the pull between the chaos of everyday living and the longing for a rich spiritual life.  Pesi ...
• Fat People
  For his book Fat People, Bill Schubart has created and gathered a collection of stories that will make you rethink your relationship with food. Schubart is smart, sensitive and unnervingly keen at noticing details.  The ...
• Length of Stay for Residential OCD Treatment
  Toward the end of his freshman year of college, my son Dan’s obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) was so severe that he ...
• Therapists Spill: The Best Advice I’ve Received On Conducting Therapy
  There are certain words of wisdom that stay with you the rest of your life -- especially ...
• You Should Be So Lucky: Dealing with Tragedy
  Katy was diagnosed with a meningioma, a rare operable brain tumor occurring in about 7 in 100,000 people. The ...
• OCD and ADHD: Is There a Connection?
  By the end of his freshman year in college, my son Dan’s obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) was so severe that he ...
• Demons in the Age of Light: A Memoir of Psychosis and Recovery
  From the very first paragraph of Whitney Robinson's first book, Demons in the Age of Light: A Memoir of Psychosis and Recovery, her way with words is not only apparent, but glaringly so.  Reading further, ...
• A Counselor’s Clients Can Make the Best Teachers
  From a reasonably young age, I knew exactly what I wanted to be -- a professional helper. I ...
• Restoring Our Bodies, Reclaiming Our Lives: Recovery from Eating Disorders
  Aimee Liu writes with a gentleness and an understanding that only someone who has been through the painful process of recovery can truly possess: Her 1979 memoir, Solitaire, was the first discussion of anorexia nervosa ...
• From Suicidal To Being in Awe of Life
  I’m 28 years old and for the last four years I haven’t had one suicidal thought or intention because ...
• The Boy from Bothell: Bipolar Vietnam Veteran
  Gene Olson’s The Boy from Bothell: Bipolar Vietnam Veteran gives a memoir of his life, his difficulties with bipolar disorder and his fight for sanity.  As Olson notes, bipolar disorder was first described at the ...
• Sleeping With Gods
  The subject of mental illness has often been explored in works of literature and other media. Michael Fontana’s novel Sleeping With Gods aims to combine a coming-of-age love story with themes of mental health. In ...
• Cry Depression, Celebrate Recovery: My Journey through Mental Illness
  Barbara Altman, a St. Louis, Mo., native, earned her Bachelor of Music degree at Fontbonne University and taught music therapy at St. Louis Institute of Music.  She now teaches piano and guitar in her home ...
• The Sibling Effect: What the Bonds Among Brothers and Sisters Reveal About Us
  I am what science calls a singleton. And according to G. Stanley Hall, a psychologist, professor and the first president of the American Psychological Association, I am without a doubt narcissistic, spoiled and a bumbling ...
• Runaway Mind: My Own Race with Bipolar Disorder
  Runaway Mind by Maggie Reese was a thoroughly enjoyable, engaging and educational book filled with firsthand accounts of what life can be like with bipolar disorder.  Maggie invites us into her life during this very ...