Follow 20 recipes to find calm, improve self-esteem, and form daily habits—in your very own kitchen!—through mindfulness-based cooking therapy.

COOKING AS THERAPY:
How to Improve Mental Health Through Cooking
by Debra Borden
Alcove Press, November 2025

Follow 20 recipes to find calm, improve self-esteem, and form daily habits—in your very own kitchen!—through mindfulness-based cooking therapy.

In COOKING AS THERAPY, licensed clinical social worker and Sous Therapist Debra Borden provides you with all the tools and techniques to have therapy sessions in the comfort of your own kitchen.

Cooking therapy is an experiential therapy that allows you to conduct a therapy session while you cook a meal. Using cooking processes like chopping, kneading, stirring and more, you’ll develop the skills to recognize limiting patterns and behaviors, improve self-esteem, and form healthy daily habits, and you might even have fun incorporating techniques centered around:

– mindfulness—which develops calm

– metaphor—which creates clarity, and

– mastery—which sparks self-esteem.

Luckily, you don’t have to be a great cook to try cooking therapy—or even like cooking. You only need an interest in self-exploration. Borden will teach you the processes involved in preparing a recipe or meal that trigger awareness and even “aha” moments. Unlike talk therapy, cooking therapy sessions incorporate tangible acts. It is less about what you prepare and more of a guided journey to self-reflection through how you prepare a dish.

Debra Borden is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in NY and NJ and a novelist. Her essays and articles have appeared in Women’s Health Magazine and the New York Times. A pioneer in the field of cooking therapy, Debra is thrilled and grateful to be a part of the creative community of mental health professionals, writers, and foodies.