Book Recommendations for Anxiety & OCD

Books can be an incredible resource! Here are some of my favorite books that I often recommend to clients who are struggling with anxiety or OCD. Recommendations are divided into self-help books for anxiety, self-help books for OCD, and book recommendations for parents of children with anxiety or OCD.

Self-Help Books for Anxiety:

• Dare: The New Way to End Anxiety and Stop Panic Attacks Fast by Barry McDonagh

  • In this book, Barry McDonagh presents the DARE response (“Defuse, Allow, Run Toward, Engage”) as a step-by-step process for overcoming anxiety, based in mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT).

• Anxiety Relief for Teens by Regine Galanti, PhD

  • This book is designed to help adolescents to help manage anxiety, based in CBT strategies. Chapters are divided into first getting a better understanding of your anxiety symptoms, strategies to help settle your body, ways to manage difficult emotions, change your thoughts, and challenge your behaviors. This book is a really fast yet informative read, with a lot of practical and concrete interventions.

• The Worry Trick by David Carbonell, PhD

  • This self-help book provides valuable insight into anxiety, worry, and what keeps worry going. If you’re looking for concrete strategies for how to reduce the frequency and intensity of worrying, this book is a great starting point!

Self-Help Books for OCD:

• The OCD Workbook, Third Edition by Bruce M. Hyman, PhD and Cherry Pedrick, RN

  • This workbook covers a wide-range of topics, including how to do a self-assessment of your OCD symptoms, how to engage in ERP (exposure and response prevention), and acceptance and mindfulness approaches to OCD.

• Overcoming Obsessive Thoughts by Christine Purdon, PhD and David A. Clark, PhD

  • This book focuses on education and strategies for coping effectively with obsessive thoughts. This book also addresses compulsions, to some extent. This book specifically focuses on obsessive thoughts that individuals interpret as violent, disgusting, or blasphemous.

• Overcoming Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts by Sally M. Winston, PsyD and Martin N. Seif, PhD

  • This book provides information about what intrusive thoughts are and why they can get stuck. This book gives concrete ideas, based in CBT, for how to cope with intrusive thoughts. I highly recommend this to any individual who is struggling with intrusive thoughts!

Books for Parents of Children with Anxiety or OCD:

• Breaking Free of Child Anxiety & OCD by Eli Lebowitz, PhD

  • If you’ve heard about the SPACE (Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions) program, this book is essentially a self-help book for parents that utilizes the concepts of SPACE, developed by the author (Dr. Lebowitz). This book includes practical templates that families can use, and focuses on ways for parents to reduce the accommodations that they’re making that ultimately are keeping their child’s anxiety or OCD symptoms going.

• Freeing Your Child from Anxiety and Freeing Your Child from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder by Tamar Chansky, PhD

  • These two books by Tamar Chansky are incredible resources for parents of children with anxiety or OCD. They are pretty dense and full of a ton of information, so I’d recommend bookmarking pages or taking notes as you read! Dr. Chansky provides critical information to parents about anxiety and OCD and ways that parents can best support their kids.

• Anxious Kids, Anxious Parents by Reid Wilson, PhD & Lynn Lyons, LICSW

  • This is an easy-to-read book that provides a wealth of helpful information about childhood anxiety. This book helps parents better understand their child’s anxiety and ways to respond in a way that ultimately will help their child feel less anxious in the long-term.