Hacker News Books

The Trauma of Everyday Life - Mark Epstein

Mindsight - Dan Siegel

Conflict Communications - Rory Miller

Mindsight by Dan Siegel is one I would recommend too

Have you tried meditation? One way of looking at it is as a 2,000+ year old tradition of attention training. I highly recommend Googling "pragmatic Buddhism", "Mindfulness in Plain English", and "Mindsight" by Dan Siegel. But the most important thing is to spend a little time practicing every day.

It's not a fast or easy solution, but I've found meditation actually works.

The most awesome book I'm currently reading is "Custard, Cakes and Category Theory" by Eugenia Cheng [1]. It's already bringing some much needed back ground, some "why", to my much neglected maths education.

On a more spiritual note, I'd also recommend Mindsight by Dan Siegel [2]. An excellent book for getting some intuition into how people's past experiences shape them. The Trauma of Everyday life by Mark Epstien [3] blends teachings of Buddhism and mindfulness with the life long lessons of a Psychotherapist.

[1] http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cakes-Custard-Category-Theory-unders...

[2] http://www.drdansiegel.com/books/mindsight/2/

[3] http://markepsteinmd.com/

Great book, by the father (to most at least) of PTSD and CPTSD. Has revealed for me the role of trauma in my life, and those of basically everyone around me.

But after reading it, i felt a little... lost. I knew a lot about the problem space, and some solutions outlined, but it wasn't integrated within me, and all i had was a few therapies I could try out and hope the best for.

Luckily, the next book I picked up was Mindsight by Dr. Daniel Siegel, and that has helped immensely in applying the knowledge of The Body Keeps Score, to bring about a shift in focus and presence in our bodies.

One thing he talked about that i found of interest is a column of neurons, only 6 deep, that make up our perceptions of reality. the top 3, take on a top down approach from the cortex downwards; while the bottom 3 come up from the limbic area of our sensory inputs - and it is in the middle of space of the column that reality appears - a mix of our past perceptions and preferences, with what we are observing in the here and now.

So, What happens with PTSD? There is a shift towards the top-down thinking, and a muting (or overriding) of limbic signals. In the tug of war of 6 neurons, the top down wins out over our perceptions - allowing people to experience and truly relive flashbacks of traumas like war in their bedroom - they are detached from their limbic signaling.

Which is why - mindfulness, meditation, and being more present in your body matter so much. What you pay attention to matters - and allows us to hone/reshape firing patterns.

https://www.amazon.com/Mindsight-New-Science-Personal-Transf...

For those who want to get started on developing their own, here are some resources that have really helped me:

"Nonviolent Communication" - Marshall Rosenberg

"Mindsight" - Daniel Siegel

I've also been working on a new mathematical model (rooted in category theory) for how our brains, bodies, and minds work together with the goal of developing a natural language based way to generate practices for the sake of improving myself in targeted ways. I only just finished reading Mindsight & have been practicing some of the techniques in the book by accident for months prior after coming up with the practices myself through my model. I've found my other attempts at programming myself using the model also develop my ability to focus & direct my attention, as well. As a result, I've had initial successes with learning echolocation and learning a form of synesthesia I haven't heard of (seeing a stick figure that moves with my body), both in under 10 minutes of my first attempts.

I'm not an expert in any of this stuff. I'm an information addict in recovery who saw connections among various recent research findings in different fields and started making connections. If love to collaborate with any Neuroscientists or Category Theorists. My contact info is in my profile.