How to Keep House While Drowning
by KC Davis
This book is a quiet, compassionate gut-check for anyone who has ever felt ashamed about dishes, laundry, clutter, or “falling behind” at life. How to Keep House While Drowning reframes care tasks not as moral obligations, but as neutral activities that exist to support your well-being not define your worth.
KC Davis writes from a trauma-informed, neurodivergent-affirming lens that resonates deeply with ADHD folks, depressed brains, caregivers, and anyone living under chronic stress or burnout. Her central message is deceptively radical: you are not lazy, broken, or failing—systems and expectations often are.
Rather than offering rigid routines, Davis provides permission-giving frameworks: care tasks can be done “good enough,” modified, outsourced, or skipped altogether. The book normalizes executive dysfunction, grief, and survival mode while offering practical, flexible strategies that actually meet people where they are.
Clinically, this book pairs beautifully with work around shame, internalized ableism, ADHD, depression, and trauma. It’s especially helpful for clients who feel stuck in cycles of self-criticism tied to productivity or housekeeping.
Bottom line: This isn’t a cleaning book it’s a book about dignity. Gentle, validating, and deeply humane, How to Keep House While Drowning belongs on every therapist’s shelf and in the hands of anyone who has ever felt overwhelmed by “basic” tasks.
Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe is an affirming graphic memoir that explores gender identity, asexuality, and the process of finding language for one’s lived experience. Through an accessible and deeply personal narrative, the book validates uncertainty, curiosity, and exploration without pushing readers toward quick answers or fixed labels. Gender Queer is especially meaningful for people questioning their gender, as well as for parents, partners, and allies seeking a compassionate, human understanding of gender diversity.
Dissociation Made Simple
I’ll be honest: I’ve been a fan of Dr. Jamie Marich for years. Her EMDR textbook shaped my training, and her CE courses were some of the first times I felt a presenter show up as a real, complicated human instead of a polished “expert.” As far as famous therapists go, she’s one of the few who consistently leads with humility, honesty, and lived experience.
What I appreciate most especially as a neurodiversity-affirming clinician is Jamie’s openness about her own dissociative experiences. I remember when i saw her speak in promotion of this book she joked about being one criteria away from DID in the DSM V. She’s long been public about identifying with a dissociative disorder, and that candidness helps chip away at the shame and confusion so many neurodivergent folks face around dissociation.
Her books, including Dissociation Made Simple, blend grounded clinical insight with accessible self-help. They’re written for clinicians and everyday people alike anyone trying to understand their mind with more compassion and less pathologizing. That’s exactly the kind of resource we value at Small Works.
-Norman LISW
ADHD 2.0
This book should honestly come stapled to every first prescription for ADHD medication. It’s one of those reads I wish I had found earlier in life much like my diagnosis and treatment. ADHD 2.0 does a beautiful job of destigmatizing and normalizing the experiences so many of us grew up thinking were personal flaws.
It’s accessible, compassionate, and incredibly validating for ADHD folks whether formally diagnosed, self-diagnosed, or still figuring things out. It’s also a fantastic resource for our families and the people who want to understand us better.
A genuinely life-changing read. Highly recommended.
-Norman LISW
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents
Clients often ask about their relationships with parents and family, specifically when to work on connection, when to set firmer boundaries, and when limited or no contact might be healthiest. These are deeply personal, individualized decisions with no universal “right” answer.
What this book does beautifully is help readers understand the complexity behind those choices. Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents offers a compassionate, accessible framework for recognizing emotional immaturity, identifying its impact, and beginning to separate your sense of self from old family dynamics.
Gibson’s writing is validating without being prescriptive. Instead of telling you what to do, she helps you make sense of the patterns you’ve lived through, often for decades. Readers gain language, clarity, and grounding so that any decisions about connection, distance, or boundaries come from a place of understanding, not guilt or pressure.
This is a helpful resource for anyone exploring family-of-origin work in therapy, navigating complicated parent relationships, or trying to break cycles of emotional neglect and enmeshment. It meets clients where they are and empowers them to move forward in ways that honor both their history and their healing.
-Norman LISW