Managing Stress and Anxiety: Books That Have Helped - Part 2

Hi All! So a while back I did a post about managing stress and anxiety and I shared some books with you that really helped me deal with my stress and anxiety. You can revisit that post here! I mention books that I still use daily there and even some colouring book recommendations!

 

I have since found some more books that have really helped me to manage stress and anxiety. I thought with school starting up again soon, that this would be a good time to share this with you all. School can be such a great time, but also an incredibly stress-inducing time.

 

IMAGE FROM PINTEREST

I am lucky to have an office space at both my jobs, so I am able to bring books to read during my break. In addition to my books, I have a happiness kit/self-soothing kit. If you look on pinterest, there are tons of inspirational examples that you can follow. To give you an idea of mine, I have a stress-ball, some lavender hand lotion, some candy, a plush toy and more. I also make sure it all sits in a nice little bag.

 

The brings me to the point of this post and that is to share small "pocket-sized" books that can fit in your happiness kit or your daily bag that you can easily take out when you want some stress relief.

 

I want to be calm and I want to sleep by Harriet Griffey - are both good pocket-sized books that are so detailed and offer a lot of tips on how to be calm and how to sleep better. I particularly love that the I want to be calm book offers places where you can be calm in!

 

Two more recommendations for pocket-sized books that have really helped is The Little Book of Mindfulness and Everything is going to be OK. The LBOM is my favorite and I carry it in my purse with me all the time. It offers tips on how to reduce stress regardless of where you are. It introduces the reader to mindfulness and my favorite part is tips on mindful eating. Everything is going to be ok is something different and has really lovely images with quotes that instantly make you feel better when you aren't having the greatest day.

 I will have another post up in this series where I will feature my favorite adult colouring books which have really helped me with stress and anxiety! So be on the lookout for that.

 

I hope that this post has helped in some way. Please leave your own recommendations for books that have helped you manage stress and anxiety in the comments below. And please let me know if you check out any of the books I mentioned!

 

Be well! xxx

Managing Stress and Anxiety: Books That Have Helped.

Hi everyone! I hope that you are all doing well. Today's post will be something a little bit different. Think of it was a semi-book review but also along with personal bookish thoughts. I wanted to talk to you all about managing stress and anxiety with the help of books. Dealing with stress and anxiety is quite a personal topic for me and while I can write blog posts that go on forever about my personal issues, I'd rather share with you all some books that have really helped me. 

Photo from weheartit. 

I've learned that reading just simply "self-help" books about how to remove stress and anxiety from your life were not particular helpful (in my case). Anxiety, more particularly, is an on-going process. There will be days where it seems easier and some days where it is a downright uphill climb. I've found books that help "soothe" the mind in a way have been really helpful. It helps change perspective and offers a more positive outlook. So as opposed to finding one-set-cure that will end all stress and anxiety, I've found books that are helpful in managing stress and anxiety in the moments that they appear and slowly overtime, I've found that the stress panic moments have been a little less frequent and easier to manage. 

One of the first books that I picked up that has been really helpful with shifting perspectives when some days feel quite negative is Barbara Ann Kipfer's 14,000 Things to be Happy About. This book literally lists 14,000 things to be happy about. It is written in a simplistic style of lists of things that make one happy in the moment. I found that going with a highlighter and working on 2-3 pages daily have really been helpful. I started to highlight the things that I know personally make me happy and the ones that are left blank, I will eventually discover. Another book that has been just a treat daily is Demi Lovato's Staying Strong - 365 Days a Year. I'm not a big Demi fan myself, not really knowing much about her music. But a friend of mine had picked this book up and I decided to take a look. It includes daily affirmations and mini little challenges or tips that you can take up. I really enjoy reading each of these each morning before I start my day. It honestly makes a world of a difference. Lastly, with getting into yoga, I've started to get into the practice of mindfulness. I honestly used to think that it was a gimmick and that is mainly because I simply did not understand it at all. Thich Nhat Hanh's The Miracle of Mindfulness has been a great introductory book into understanding mindfulness. 

Another thing that I want to quickly touch on is how the current trend of Adult colouring books has really been helpful. I ended up buying a bunch of adult coloring books because I found it to be incredibly soothing to take some time during stressful moments to just focus on coloring and kind of take your mind away from the situation. I've found that these two colouring books in particular have been super helpful. Lisa Currie's The Scribble Diary is more than a coloring book and is organized as a type of diary that has questions and you can adapt to it daily. You can literally turn to any page of the book and work on it. I've been loving using it. The Mindfulness Coloring book: Anti-Stress Art Therapy for Busy People is just a perfect book with really calming images that you can focus on. I've been working on this one slowly, but the good thing about it is, it is quite small that it can fit in your bag so that you can work on it on the go. I have quite a few more coloring books and I've been thinking about reviewing them more frequently on the blog, so please let me know if you'd like to see that. 

This isn't all the tools that I've been using to help manage stress and anxiety, but this is a small look into what books have been really helping me as of late. I wanted to share this all with you and if you'd like this to become a regular series on the blog, please let me know because I would love to keep talking about and sharing things that have been helpful when it comes to managing stress and anxiety. It is easy enough to turn to a fiction/non-fiction read that will let you escape for a few hours, but I've found that turning to these books in particular have shaped my perspective as of late to be a more positive outlook on things. It is less "escapism" from stress and anxiety, and more so, ways to cope and change. I hope that you will give these books a look next time you are perusing the book store, they might be helpful :) 

Please let me know in the comments what books help you manage stress and anxiety. 

Be well - xx. 

Subject Matter | Bookish Thoughts

Hi everyone! I hope that you are all doing well. I am swamped in course work at the moment, but I promise I will have my wrap-up post soon for #boutofbooks12, my apologies for being so late with it.

Anyways, I wanted to perhaps start a new segment on my blog called Bookish Thoughts and every now and then, you can read my ramblings about certain topics. I wrote a post about Audiobooks a while back which you can read about here and I really enjoyed that. I want to be able to express opinions and thoughts on certain topics, even those that are controversial and possibly hear from you guys and your thoughts on the matter as well.

So for today, I thought I would talk about Subject Matter in quite a broad sense and choices in that regard. This may even be a longer post or a series of post on this, so we shall see. I've been seeing quite a few posts on blogger, goodreads reviews and on twitter that have been quite negative and judgemental in terms of "WHAT" people are choosing to read. I just want to say first that at the end of the day, everyone has the right to read whatever they like and it is not fair that we should ask another person to not read what they want based on our own personal interests. It is not fair that a person should have to explain their choices in reading what they want.

There are two kinds of subject matter which I want to touch on today: New Adult and Erotica/Adult novels.

The emergence of New Adult has come up in the past year, and from what I can understand, it is different from Young Adult, because it is situated more in the college/university years and can sometimes have explicit sex scenes within the writing. They are more for the 18-25 age group according to resources online such as St. Martin's Press. I think that this new emergence is AWESOME. There shouldn't be "picking" of sides or a type of superiority that happens within these genres. One is not better than the other, or less than the other. It should not be viewed in those terms. I think it is quite interesting to have novels that go beyond the highschool scenarios and move towards the university setting. There are problems of course of perhaps heightened realities in the university setting - like fraternities, sororities, parties, etc. But who knows, everyone has a different university/college experience depending on where they go and who they actually are and I believe that the author tries their best to convey what THEY believe is an experience they want to talk about.

The notion of explicit sex scenes is kind of a segway into erotica/adult novels because NA, different from YA, will have scenes that are "older" and "mature" subject matter. I have reviewed a more adult book in the past (see my review here of Barbara Palmer's Claudine) and I really don't have a problem with reading books with more mature subject matter. I think it is simply a matter of personal preference. What is considered perhaps "raw and real" to the author, may be interpreted differently by the reader. At the end of the day, when we come to a text, we come to it not empty-handed but with our own set of values and ideas. Who we are as individuals will affect how we interpret a text. A person may view a text as demoralizing individuals and fetishizing abusive relationships, whereas another person may view the text simply as a means of entertainment and not see those components and the biggest message I want to drive home from this post is that: IT IS OKAY. We all have different ideas of what is appropriate and what is not, but I think the biggest thing that kind of spurred this post to begin with, is the judgements that are coming out of the bookish community from the choices that we make when it comes to reading.

If an individual wishes to read a NA novel, or a novel with erotica/adult themes, that is THEIR choice and it is not right that it automatically labels the person as something negative. There should be less emphasis on "attacking" or "breaking down" a person's reading choices due to the subject matter and more emphasis on simply the fact that they are reading and possibly enjoying what they are reading.

I want to compare it to seeing a bad movie. There are rating systems with critic's reviews available for films as there are for books, but despite how "bad" you might think a movie is, many people still go watch it and enjoy it. The numbers don't lie. However, if you know a movie is bad, you most likely won't go see it again. If your friend however, enjoys it and wishes to buy a copy for home perhaps, is it right to just not speak to him/her again because they enjoy what you don't like? It is all about personal preference and learning to respect each other's choices in that.

At the end of day, everyone has their own views on what they consider as "good" and "bad" and just because you may like something that I don't, does not mean I should try and force you to not like it. There should be less judgement due to subject matter within the book community because it only builds negativity and animosity.

On the flip side of this to wrap up (I am wrapping up for now, because it is rambling to the point where there isn't a clear trajectory of where this post is going) - if you are reading something that is NA or Adult/Erotica, you should not have to try and hide that you are reading it. If you enjoy it, you enjoy it and you should not feel embarrassed or ashamed because you enjoy it. More power to you! To conclude, try to avoid negative judgements when it comes to picking what books you are choosing to read. Simply, read. READ JUST BECAUSE YOU WANT TO.

Well that is it from me for now. Let me know what you think on the matter and let me know in the comments below if there are any other topics you want me to touch upon. I was thinking about speaking about fanfiction at some point. I hope that you enjoyed my first bookish thoughts/bookish ramblings and I will see you in my next post! :D