My paper and e-book libraries look respectable to my own eyes. I come off as someone with a full personality: romance novels, literary novels, classic sci-fi, animal biology, early human history, non-fiction on hosting or education, litRPG.
My audible library looks like it belongs to someone with multiple mental disorders, who has made no progress on managing them in the past few years. The book on time management is the most respectable of the bunch. (Respectable meaning someone you can trust to come to a meeting on time or handle a mild setback graciously.) I have books on dialectical behavior therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, binge eating, soft Buddhism, and a Mormon guy telling me to just be a good person. Thanks to all the mindfulness techniques I learned from these books, I can catch and defuse the sense of ego dystonia that washes over me when I glance through my library. Usually.
The divide is simple: I don’t want to read therapy books during the day, when I can think of dozens of things I could do that seem better uses of time. On the other hand, when I’m trying to fall asleep, I can’t afford to wind myself up with something intellectually stimulating. I mustn’t fall into the just-one-more-chapter trap. But I’m not good at taming my internal narration and getting to sleep on purpose, so listening to someone else’s thoughts is good. Therapy audiobooks ended up filling the niche.
And they fill it well. When I’m trying to sleep, I am less impatient than I am during the day, since there’s no sense that I could be doing something more important. The sleepiness makes me a little more suggestible, and more tolerant of the slightly cloying tone that permeates therapy books by default. The books usually tell me things I benefit from hearing. Listening to 15-30 minutes every night feels like running a detox cycle on my psyche.
I don’t think I have unusual problems, and I’m writing this post because I think other people who don’t have unusual problems but have racing-brain-at-bedtime could benefit from this. Examples of detox are:
- I snapped at my partner over some childcare scheduling, and felt residually guilty in a way that I pushed to the back of my mind until bedtime. Something in the audiobook – maybe just the word ‘guilt’ – brings back the exchange. I review it, and either decide my snappiness was fine and feel better, or decide it was not fine and pledge to apologize in the morning.
- I felt so harried and frustrated that I didn’t feel like the day was a real improvement over being unconscious. But when I review what happened, I notice I spent quality time with my baby, or I got some little bit of cleaning done that I’ve been putting off for a while. I recategorize the day as meaningful and my life satisfaction increases.
- I was shoving away twinges of humiliation over some old faux pas throughout the day. I realize belatedly I was shoving them away, and do a few coherence therapy exercises.
- I was ambiently but wordlessly stressed throughout the day, so I do a bit of Sarah Constantin’s metta meditation, which makes me feel loosened up and loved by myself.
Clearing out small stuff nightly feels good and I’m glad it’s a part of my life.
The following is a list of every audiobook I’ve tried, including the ones I gave up on immediately because the narrator’s voice or the content displeased me. The better ones are bolded.
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (Hayes) – 6/10. Polarizing ‘conversational style’ narration by the author, the developer of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. It’s good but only because I find ACT good. The narration is off-putting and the writing is usually merely fine, with a regular enough drip of well-phrased instructions or reframings that overall it polls well with me.
- (ACT is radical acceptance of unpleasant thoughts and emotions, plus a pivot towards specific action informed by the values. I think.)
- A Liberated Mind (Hayes) – 5/10. Also ACT. More professional narration. I found the writing high variance. At one point he suggests a type of simple logic puzzle is good for therapeutic purposes, which seems plausible but so unjustified I got grumpy.
- 168 Hours (Vanderkam) – 3/10. Time management. I have not retained anything specific enough to tell you about.
- Decisive (Heath) – 4/10. Decisionmaking. I’m torn on this one. Nothing in it feels new, yet heeding it would have precluded most of the major mistakes I’ve made in the past decade. I suppose (1) it’s good to be told basic things over and over again, (2) that’s the big takeaway of this whole post.
- Bonds That Make Us Free (Warner) – 7/10, and I’m bewildered it’s that good. A Mormon guy tells you that you should be more generous of heart. No advice on how to balance competing needs, guard against social defection, avoid being taken advantage of, or manage the resentment yoyo when you go too far in trying to follow his advice to be generous of heart. But effective if your problem is, in fact, often that you are not generous of heart. Only recommended for mildly evil people.
- DBT Workbook for Emotional Eating (Huang) – 3/10. Hated the narration and the content wasn’t good enough to save it.
- You Are the One You’ve Been Waiting For (Schwartz) – 3/10. Internal Family Systems. It had too many anecdotes, most of which caused me suffering. The narration rubbed me the wrong way – breathy and plummy voice.
- The Cognitive Behavioral Workbook for Anxiety (Knaus). I don’t remember anything about this. I’m guessing 2/10.
- Mindfulness for Borderline Personality Disorder (Aguirre) – 7/10. Firm-voiced female narrator who emotes a little more than average, but I kind of liked it. I’ve listened to this book more than most of the others listed, but most of the listening was concentrated in the longest chapter, on “the how and what of mindfulness”. I didn’t like any of the other chapters. Almost all of the anecdotes made me suffer (oh, the woman who ruins a dinner party by yelling about Israel/Palestine… I know to bolt for the fast forward button three words into that one), but they’re short. Most of the content is on the mental motions.
- Radical Compassion (Brach) – I don’t quite remember; I’d guess 6/10. I like Brach. She does normie-friendly American Buddhism and does it well; she is justifiably famous. I read her Radical Acceptance in e-book form and liked it a lot. Radical Compassion covers RAIN meditation. I have listened to the linked 10-minute meditation more than all other guided meditations combined. If you like the linked meditation, you’ll probably like the book.
- Anxiety Therapy (Siegler) – I don’t remember anything about this. I’m guessing 2/10.