Resources I Recommend

Already Enough by Lisa Olivera

If you have ever felt like you didn’t belong, or like you weren’t worthy, or like you weren’t enough, just as you are...it might be time for you to rewrite your story, too. Now a therapist herself, Lisa shows you how.

Ted Talk: You aren't at the mercy of your emotions -- your brain creates them by Lisa Feldman Barrett

Can you look at someone's face and know what they're feeling? Does everyone experience happiness, sadness and anxiety the same way? What are emotions anyway? For the past 25 years, psychology professor Lisa Feldman Barrett has mapped facial expressions, scanned brains and analyzed hundreds of physiology studies to understand what emotions really are. She shares the results of her exhaustive research -- and explains how we may have more control over our emotions than we think.

How Emotions are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett

Why do emotions feel automatic and uncontrollable? Does rational thought really control emotion? How does emotion affect disease? How can you make your children more emotionally intelligent? How Emotions Are Made answers these questions and many more, revealing the latest research and intriguing practical applications of the new science of emotion, mind, and brain.

The Five Myths of Self-Compassion by Kristin Neff

Most people don’t have any problem with seeing compassion as a thoroughly commendable quality. It seems to refer to an amalgam of unquestionably good qualities: kindness, mercy, tenderness, benevolence, understanding, empathy, sympathy, and fellow-feeling, along with an impulse to help other living creatures, human or animal, in distress.

But we seem less sure about self-compassion. For many, it carries the whiff of all those other bad “self” terms: self-pity, self-serving, self-indulgent, self-centered, just plain selfish. Even many generations removed from our culture’s Puritan origins, we still seem to believe that if we aren’t blaming and punishing ourselves for something, we risk moral complacency, runaway egotism, and the sin of false pride.

The three secrets of resilient people by Lucy Hone | TEDxChristchurch

Dr. Lucy Hone is a resilience expert who thought she found her calling supporting people to recover following the Christchurch earthquake. She had no idea that her personal journey was about to take her to a far darker place. In this powerful and courageous talk, she shares the three strategies that got her through an unimaginable tragedy⁠—and offers a profound insight on human suffering. Dr Lucy Hone is a director of the New Zealand Institute of Wellbeing & Resilience, a research associate at AUT University, a published academic researcher, best-selling author and contributor to Psychology Today, the Sunday Star Times and Next magazine.

The Power Of Connection by Bea Mackay

In life, there are many things we cannot control, leaving us feeling powerless and defeated. However, what you can control is how you deal with your emotions. In The Power of Connection, psychologist Dr. Bea Mackay explores mental health by teaching you how to process your emotions in your day-to-day life. To process any unpleasant/intense emotion—whether it be fear or stress—the key is to breathe through the sensations of the emotion. Breathing will allow you to synthesize logical thinking and sensory experience, creating new neural pathways, which precipitate new/different sensations that are pleasant, healing, and calming.