The following book recommendations are based on titles I have read, enjoyed and feel contribute to my overall notion of psychosis experience. The experience of psychosis is unique to every single person — both diagnosed and undiagnosed — and the way in which we approach it depends on our understanding. To this end, I have endeavoured to include as broad a range of reading that I can. Enjoy!
My Beautiful Psychosis
by Emma Goude
I am halfway through reading this book (as at Friday 13th May, 2022), but so inspired by it. Her story is challenging and yet I managed to laugh-out-loud at a few of the things she describes either saying or doing whilst in psychosis, only because I can relate so well. Very worthwhile book and I am looking forward to reading about the rest of her story.
For more on Emma and her journey, her website is: emmagoude.com.
Description from Amazon:
What if psychosis is really a wake up call? Emma is a twenty-something who likes to party and take drugs until she decides to give them up and that s when the insomnia starts. After five nights without sleep she ends up in A&E. Three questions determine whether she is sane or not. Three questions stand between her and the psychiatric ward. She gets them wrong. Emma is an atheist, a skeptical cynic who chose dope over God, so when she has some spiritual experiences she is not entirely sure if she is delusional. The psychiatric system has forgotten that psyche means soul. All they know about is medication and they have ways of making her take it. It becomes a game she has to play in order to get out. It is also a perception of herself she must do battle with in order to stand strong in her belief that her psychosis is some kind of awakening.
The Tao of Psychology: Syncronicity and the Self
by Jean Shinoda Bolen, MD
I have read this book a few times and loaned it out whenever I find someone interested in the concept of synchronicity. Guaranteed, every time I have read it I have noticed such meaningful coincidences occuring more and more. I love this book.
Description from Amazon:
Who hasn’t experienced that eerie coincidence, that sudden, baffling insight, that occasional flash of extrasensory perception that astonishes? Can these events be dismissed as mere chance, or do they have some deeper significance for us?
The twenty-fifth anniversary edition of this classic explores the inter-relationship between these meaningful coincidences and our intuitive sense that we are part of some deep oneness with the universe — a oneness called Tao in Eastern philosophy and synchronicity in Jungian psychology. By relating the concepts of Tao and synchronicity, Dr. Bolen reveals important links between psychology and mysticism, right brain and left, the individual and the external world. The Tao of Psychology provides the key for each individual to interpret the synchronistic events in his or her life and gives fresh insight into the relationships, dreams, and flashes of perception that transform our existence.
The Bridge Between Two Worlds: A Shaman’s View of Schizophrenia and Acute Sensitivity
by Odette Nightsky
Description from Odette’s website, Contemporary Shaman:
This book was born out of a time of Acute Sensitivity, hearing voices and feeling invaded by entities and thought-forms. It has been reviewed well by Anne Deveson and Australian Journalist that founded SANE and wrote her own account of her son’s mental health issues.
If you are looking for an alternative view with a safe and grounded approach and tools to help navigate the inner terrors, this is the one to purchase. Good for those suffering and those that want to understand what is going on from the inside. It’s very popular with sensitive people regardless of having mental health issues. Its got tips for all levels of sensitivity.
In Case of Spiritual Emergency: Moving Successfully Through Your Awakening
by Catherine G Lucas
Description from Amazon:
Personal stories of spiritual crises are presented alongside practical and effective guidance in this exploration of a fascinating phenomenon. When spiritual emergencies, such as mystical psychosis and dark nights of the soul, are understood, managed, and integrated, they can offer enormous potential for growth and fulfillment, and this book offers three key phases for successful navigation.
Encouraging, supportive, and life-saving, this resource is essential for avoiding the mental, emotional, or spiritual paralysis or exhaustion that can result from underestimating the current age of increased individual and global emergencies.
Kundalini Rising: Exploring the Energy of Awakening
by Various Contributors & Authors
Description from Amazon:
You have within you a latent energy waiting to transform your life. Known as kundalini, this legendary power is believed to catalyze spiritual evolution. But is kundalini real? And if so, how can we engage this energy to awaken our consciousness?
For centuries, the secrets of kundalini have been guarded by masters and buried in esoteric texts around the globe. Kundalini Rising brings together 24 illuminating essays by some of today’s most prominent voices to demystify this mysterious phenomenon.
From personal accounts and yogic practices, to brain research and historical perspectives, this compelling anthology weaves together both the mystical and practical perspectives on the rise of kundalini energy to help support your own spiritual discovery.
Lost Connections: Why You’re Depressed and How to Find Hope
by Johann Hari
Description from Amazon:
The New York Times bestseller from the author of Chasing the Scream, offering a radical new way of thinking about depression and anxiety.
There was a mystery haunting award-winning investigative journalist Johann Hari. He was thirty-nine years old, and almost every year he had been alive, depression and anxiety had increased in Britain and across the Western world. Why?
He had a very personal reason to ask this question. When he was a teenager, he had gone to his doctor and explained that he felt like pain was leaking out of him, and he couldn’t control it or understand it. Some of the solutions his doctor offered had given him some relief-but he remained in deep pain.
So, as an adult, he went on a forty-thousand-mile journey across the world to interview the leading experts about what causes depression and anxiety, and what solves them. He learned there is scientific evidence for nine different causes of depression and anxiety-and that this knowledge leads to a very different set of solutions: ones that offer real hope.