(Part 2) Best products from r/TalkTherapy

A General Theory of Love

https://www.amazon.com/Science-Psychotherapy-Norton-Interpersonal-Neurobiology/dp/0393706648/

This book

You are not the cause of his panic attacks, if it wasn't you he'd be having them over something else eventually.

Generally speaking, you don't owe someone a relationship at your expense. If you don't want to be with him then don't. He will be fine eventually if he seeks out help for his panic attacks which is his responsibility. It is not your responsibility to be with him so he doesn't have panic attacks.

If you want to help, get him a book on managing anxiety. My therapist recommended me this one and I found it helpful.

IBS is a diagnosis of exclusion, so not really a diagnosis at all since it doesn't say what you have as much as it says what is happening. IBS has historically and still is often seen by well-meaning physicians as 80% psychological. What were starting to understand is that there's a much higher chance that the anxiety and depression that are associated with IBS are probably caused by the same disorder that causes IBS and this changes gut Flora. IANAD buttttttt Drs are horrible at doing the differential Dx for this.

Look at Mark Pimentel's book

A New IBS Solution: Bacteria-The Missing Link in Treating Irritable Bowel Syndrome https://www.amazon.com/dp/0977435601/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_7jXRDbBT923K8

Also. I'm serious. I've had IBS for 14 years. The food diary along with a structured food elimination diet may change things. Oh and a fecal transplant. Sounds gross because it is, but it's the #1 cure for C-diff according to best practices. It's just never done because it makes people go eww.

There are many scientists who believe therapy is basically a scam and doesn't help in the majority of cases.

https://www.amazon.com/Therapy-Industry-Irresistible-Talking-Doesnt/dp/074532987X

I like to work with a definition of trauma that I read once, which is severe emotional pain that doesn't find a relational home. A key aspect of what has happened to us is that we experienced pain, and nobody really "witnessed" it, at least not in a way that helped.

You want to show him the tangible evidence of how much pain you're in, because somehow you feel like he's not seeing it. That's a real need whether or not it's okay to act on. I personally don't think he needs to see that evidence to make you feel heard and understood on this. But he does need to understand what you wanted and how you feel now.

I'd imagine things suck a lot right now. These sessions hurt. Hang in there.

Bad Therapy: Master Therapists Share Their Worst Failures

https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Therapy-Master-Therapists-Failures/dp/0415933234

Bad Therapy offers a rare glimpse into the hearts and mind's of the profession's most famous authors, thinkers, and leaders when things aren't going so well. Jeffrey Kottler and Jon Carlson, who include their own therapy mishaps, interview twenty of the world's most famous practitioners who discuss their mistakes, misjudgements, and miscalculations on working with clients. Told through narratives, the failures are related with candor to expose the human side of leading therapists. Each therapist shares with regrets, what they learned from the experience, what others can learn from their mistakes, and the benefits of speaking openly about bad therapy.

I totally agree with suicide being a response to feeling trapped. I also remember it starting early (around 11-12 for me), and with me it has always been...not a desire to die, but the belief that dying would be better than remaining trapped in whatever situation I felt would never get better.

David Foster Wallace (who killed himself later in life) has the most accurate quote about suicide I have ever read:

”The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness,’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise.

Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”

Edit: Also, u/okergeel, I find a good way of understanding more about suicide is to look at the interpersonal theory of suicide. It breaks the complex notion of suicide into categories and explains why each category makes a person more vulnerable to it. It’s a relatively new theory, but it has a growing evidence base, and it seeks to explain why some people die from suicide, others only attempt it, and others never even experience ideation. If you find the wikipedia article intriguing, the creator of the theory wrote a book (aptly titled “Why People Die By Suicide”) which I highly recommend.