Laziness Does Not Exist, by Devon Price (author), Em Grosland (narrator)

Simon & Schuster Audio, ISBN 9781797120591, January 2021

Devon Price is a social psychologist with a strong emphasis on the practical--what works for individuals, and the importance of recognizing and respecting self-care and your own values.

In this book, their emphasis is on the importance on not valuing yourself solely on your productivity for others. If you are struggling to make deadlines, always exhausted, and on the edge of burning out, you're probably doing something wrong. And the problem isn't "laziness." It's defining your value by how productive you are for others, while setting your own needs, and often health, aside.

Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity, by Devon Price

Penguin Random House Audio, ISBN 9780593507353, April 2022

This is an insightful book about about being autistic, masking (bluntly, pretending to be neurotypical as well as one can), the important reasons to stop masking, and the risks and benefits of starting to unmask.

Dr. Devon Price is a social psychologist, a professor at Loyola University, and his work is published in peer-reviewed journals in the field. He's also autistic and transgender, and can fairly be said to have a deep personal understanding of the issues of difference, alienation, isolation, and denial of self that he discusses here, along with a professional, scholarly understanding of them that's surprisingly rare in psychological and psychiatric professionals. Autism has mostly been defined as a medical problem to be solved, by getting autistics to behave like neurotypicals, rather than helping autistics to understand and use our differences, and prompting the neurotypical world to make room for our differences and our strengths.

Understanding the Mysteries of Human Behavior, by Mark Leary (author, narrator)

The Great Courses, July 2013

Most of us want to understand human behavior, but it's often a puzzle. Why do siblings, born and raised in the same family, turn out so different? Why do identical twins have noticeably different personalities--and yet, also share some personality traits and preferences, even if they were adopted out and raised in different families? How different are men and women really? Why do we have behaviors that, in modern society, seem wildly maladaptive?

Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are, by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz (author), Tim Andrés Pabon (narrator)

HarperAudio, May 2017

An ongoing problem in research in psychology, political polling, and many other areas that rely on asking people questions about their views, activities, and experiences, is that people lie. Sometimes because the topic is a sensitive one, sometimes because they don't like pollsters, sometimes simply as a joke. Whatever the reason, a significant percentage of the people responding to any survey, will lie, and undermine the value of the data you think you're gathering.

This audiobook is about what you can find when you look at the the sources of data where people don't lie, because it would defeat their purpose rather than yours.

First, We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Journey Through Anxiety, by Sarah Wilson (author, narrator)

HarperAudio, ISBN 9780062847270, April 2018

This is a really excellent book about living with anxiety.

The author is not a psychologist, a psychiatrist, or any other kind of medical professional. She's an author and journalist, and a woman who lives with chronic anxiety. Over a lifetime of dealing with it, she became interested in understanding what it is, where it comes from, and history of treatment for it, including the fads and fashions that affect medical treatment.

Some of what she has to say may strike some as borderline woo-woo, but she's very clear about talking to medical professionals knowledgeable on the subject to ensure that known of her advice is safe, and the importance of medical support when you're going off medication.

Why You Are Who You Are: Investigations into Human Personality, by Mark Leary (author, narrator)

The Great Courses, February 2018

Many of us want to understand personality, our own and other people's better, and in this Great Courses set of lectures, Mark Leary presents the current state of knowledge in psychology, neuroscience, and genetics, as it applies to human personality, how it develops, how it affects our choices and our relationships with others, and how much we can affect our own personalities so that we can improve those things if we're not satisfied currently.

This isn't a self-help book. It's not a handbook to fixing yourself. It's intended to expand your knowledge and understanding, and I found that it does that.

Molecules of Emotion: Why You Feel the Way You Feel, by Candace B. Pert (author, narrator)

Simon & Schuster Audio, ISBN 9780743541398, September 1997

Candace Pert, a neuroscientist and discoveror of the opiate receptor, recounts both the intricate relationship between mind, body, and emotions, and her own career uncovering those connections and the neurochemical basis of them. Beginning her career in the early 1970s, gender was an even bigger obstacle than it is now, which no cultural or legal expectation that it shouldn't be. Sometimes she had to fight for recognition of her contributions; other times she had to fight to be able to do the work at all.

But along the way, she made major discoveries, and had life-changing experiences. The mind-body dichotomy was still unquestioned scientific orthodoxy in her early days. She doesn't say, but I will: Rene Descartes has a lot to answer for. Pert's work with neuropeptides and their receptors helps to rebuild the essential unity of the person, mind, body, and emotions, and uncover the connections between our emotional health and our physical health.

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind & Body in the Healing of Trauma, by Bessel van der Kolk, MD (author), Sean Pratt (narrator)

Gildan Media, October 2014

This was in many ways a tough listen for me, but a good one. Van der Kolk is a psychiatrist who has worked extensively with trauma survivors. This book is about the ways traumatic experiences permanently affect us.

Trauma isn't just something that happens to our bodies, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder isn't just something that happens in our brains.

It doesn't take combat, terrifying accidents, or obvious child abuse to cause PTSD. Obviously they all can, and do, and are the most easily recognized causes. But other events, that may not even be recognized as trauma, can also be traumatic, and have lasting effects.

The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You, by Elaine N. Aron

Citadel, November 2013 (original publication 1996)

Everyone feels overwhelmed sometimes. Too much is happening, too much information is incoming, you just can't cope. It happens to everyone.

It happens to some of us far more often than it does to most people. We are more sensitive--to sound, to lights, to activity, to voices, to some or all of them, and we need the time and space to process what we're taking in.

This is often described as "shyness," or "over-sensitivity," or "introversion," and in western culture is often considered a flaw. Confident, active extroversion is valued and admired. The lower level of sensitivity to stimulation is more common, more typical of most people.

Those of us who have the greater sensitivity may start getting negative messages very early. "You're too sensitive." "Don't let it get to you." "You're over-reacting." Too much of this, too early, can lead to life-long anxiety and depression. Yet this is not inevitable, and this greater sensitivity has advantages as well as disadvantages.

The Sociopath Next Door, by Martha Stout (author), Shelly Frasier (narrator)

Tantor Audio, July 2005 (original publication January 2005)

The sociopaths who come to public attention are often violent criminals, but sociopaths are 4% of the population overall, and most of them aren't violent criminals.

That doesn't mean that they're nice or even non-harmful people to be around. Or that you're not likely to meet any. 4% of the population means roughly one in every twenty-five people you know will be a sociopath. They'll all be equally ruthless in pursuing what they want, but sociopaths differ as much in goals, drives, and intelligence as anyone else. They don't all want to be dictator of small nations, or captains of industry. Stout talks about the sociopaths we're likely to meet in our everyday lives, how we can recognize them, and how to defend ourselves.

Animal Madness: How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots, Gorillas on Drugs, and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Ourselves, by Laurel Braitman (author), Madeleine Maby (narrator)

Simon & Schuster Audio, ISBN 9781442371354, June 2014

Braitman and her husband Jude adopted a four-year-old Bernese Mountain  Dog  named Oliver, who was being rehomed through his breeder for reasons that they didn't ask enough questions about. Oliver proved to be a sweet, loving, friendly, devoted dog who suffered from serious insecurity and separation anxiety.

The next few years grew increasingly difficult, as they struggled to help Oliver be more secure, and Braitman became interested not just in her own dog's problems, but the larger question of mental health and emotional balance in animals, domestic, wild, and captive, what that can teach us about human mental health.

The Future of the Mind:The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind, by Michio Kaku

Doubleday Books, ISBN 9780385530835, February 2014

Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist with a love of science fiction and of explaining science to non-scientists as well as of physics, once again takes a big, broad subject area that people are fascinated by, and  explores what we know and  can do now, what we can expect in the near future, and what the next century or two might bring us.

This is a readable, fascinating introduction to what we know about the workings of the human brain, and how the mind emerges from it, as well as the current state and realistic prospects for artificial intelligence.

Survival of the Nicest:How Altruism Made Us Human and Why It Pays to Get Along, by Stefan Klein

The Experiment, ISBN 9781615190904, January 2014

"If you want to be egoist, at least be a smart egoist, and share."

So says science journalist Stefan Klein, in his TEDx talk on this book. Why? Isn't it smarter to look out for our own self-interest, put our own needs first, compete ruthlessly for the greatest advantage for yourself and, by extension, your offspring? Don't altruists give away their advantages to others, and make their altruist genes less successful?

Perhaps surprisingly, the answer is no. Klein gathers together the evidence from history, biology, anthropology, psychology, economics: Those who share, who have a strong sense of fairness, justice, and compassion, are overall happier and more successful in the long run. Social groups in which fairness and generosity are valued and widely practiced are more successful than groups which are more "everyone for themselves."

Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement, by Kathryn Joyce

Beacon Press, ISBN 9780807010709, March 2009

Kathryn Joyce takes us on an alarming, enlightening, startling journey through an American subculture most of us are unaware of. Most of us are aware of the influence of the "Christian right" in Republican politics. What's less obvious is that a significant part of that "Christian right" are not our run of the mill evangelical Christians, people who may be more supportive of morality- based laws, and less supportive of sex education, contraception, and teaching the facts of evolution, but who aren't all that different from the mainstream, especially the mainline Protestant mainstream. That's not the "Christian right" that Ms. Joyce is writing about.

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, by Stephen Pinker

Penguin/Viking, ISBN 9780670022953, October 2011

This is a fascinating book, and many people will be surprised by what Pinker has to say. We routinely tell ourselves that we live in a violent world, that for all the comforts of civilization wars are more common, more terrible, and more fatal to non-combatants. Anyone who follows the news can cite examples of terrible atrocities that are the basis of our certainty that the human race is demonstrating a destructiveness and depravity towards other human beings unknown in the simpler, gentler past when knights and armsmen fought other knights and armsmen, leaving the civilians largely undisturbed.

Stephen Pinker explains, with examples, details, and cites to original sources and current research, that we have it all wrong, and the past was a far more violent place than we typically imagine, or than we experience day to day in all but the most violent places on Earth now. And those "most violent places" aren't our modern cities in developed countries.

Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change, by Timothy D. Wilson

Little, Brown, and Company, ISBN 9780316051880, September 2011

Wilson gives us a highly readable account of what we do and don't know about psychological and social psychological interventions--what works, what doesn't, why, and how we tell the difference.

A major concern of Wilson's is many popular, widely accepted approaches to solving, reducing, or preventing problems, such as Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD) counseling for police and firefighters after a traumatic on-the-job incident, or popular and widely-respected anti-drug programs for the schools, have been implemented on a large scale without being scientifically tested first. In some cases, once broadly accepted, these approaches remain unchanged even after scientific testing demonstrates that they are ineffective or even counter-productive.