The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis
If sexual abuse is part of your history and/or the history of someone you love, then this book will be an invaluable resource for you and those important others in your life. It is a gentle and powerful book about knowing and healing.
The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are by Brené Brown
This book is a gift of kindness for any person who holds themselves to unbearably high standards.
Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brené Brown
Discovering the value of vulnerability in relationships changes them for the better. It is how life becomes a journey of real connections.
For more Brené Brown: https://brenebrown.com/books-audio
Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David D. Burns M.D.
Many of my clients have used this text and the corresponding workbook to discover how change occurs and how they can embrace it for themselves.
The Heart of Addiction: A New Approach to Understanding and Managing Alcoholism and Other Addictive Behaviors
by Lance M. Dodes, M.D.
If you or someone you love is struggling with addictive behaviors, this book’s approach may be helpful. This book looks at addictions as a substitute for feeling forbidden emotions. It identifies how resolving feelings of helplessness when faced with difficult life situations is a significant step in addressing all addictions.
Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, et al.
”If you have never been called a defiant, incorrigible, impossible woman… have faith… there is yet time.”
For more Clarissa Pinkola Estes: https://www.clarissapinkolaestes.com/
Emotional Blackmail: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You
by Susan Forward and Donna Frazier
Understanding emotional blackmail can be difficult without a road map. The case histories in Part I break down the various styles incorporated in emotional binds. Part II provides immediate solutions for those looking to successfully manage difficult relationships and situations now.
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
Resilience is a powerful personal resource. This is one man’s experience of living through impossible times.
The Power of Witnessing: Reflections, Reverberations, and Traces of the Holocaust: Trauma, Psychoanalysis, and the Living Mind by Nancy R. Goodman & Marilyn B. Meyers (Editors)
“The Holocaust is not an easy subject to approach, but the intimate and personal stories included here add up to an act of witnessing in and of itself, combining the past and the present and placing the trauma in the realm of knowing, sharing, and understanding.”
Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma
by Peter A. Levine with Ann Frederick
If panic and stress are constants in your life, this book will help you approach these difficult feelings and understand how to release them.
Conscious Loving: The Journey to Co-Commitment
by Gay Hendricks and Kathlyn Hendricks
I have been using the principles in this book in my work with couples and individual for decades. I highly recommend it for anyone struggling to express their deepest feelings.
The Woman’s Comfort Book: A Self-Nurturing Guide for Restoring Balance in Your Life by Jennifer Louden
If you don’t know how to comfort yourself when overwhelmed by difficult feelings, exhaustion, and life’s challenges, this is a wonderful book for discovering how to compassionately care for yourself.
Will I Ever Be Good Enough?: Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers by Karyl McBride
If you’ve ever asked yourself this question, then this book will help you appreciate the significance of the difficult feelings underlying your despair.
Season of Life: A Football Star, a Boy, a Journey to Manhood by Jeffrey Marx
This book is a powerful book about becoming a gentle man.
The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self, Revised Edition by Alice Miller
This book is a classic thesis on the roots of psychological pain and sorrow. It can be a difficult read since it is translated from German. Alice Miller’s genuine compassion for the human condition makes it empowering and profoundly worthwhile.
Embracing Victory: Life Lessons in Competition and Compassion by Mariah Burton Nelson
This book teaches how competition is about winning—not winning and losing but about winning and winning. Its win/win approach teaches the foundations of success in all aspects of life for women and men.
The Self-Aware Parent: Resolving Conflict and Building a Better Bond with Your Child by Fran Walfish
This is an exceptional book on parenting styles and ways to improve the parent-child relationship. Written in an easy-to-read style by a brilliant and compassionate psychologist, it is appropriate for anyone who is a parent, has a parent, or is striving to better parent.
Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families by Charles Whitfield
This book has helped many of my clients begin to understand how insecurities developed early on can be resolved through caring for the hurt part of the self that hides in shame.
Adult Children of Alcoholics: Expanded Edition by Janet G. Woititz
Growing up amidst addictive behaviors and patterns creates many challenges and the need for coping behaviors that long outlast their purpose. Such coping strategies can interfere with emotional intimacy in future relationships. I recommend this book for those who met these challenges as well as for those who didn’t. This is a classic text on the impact of another’s trauma and pain.
The Owl Was a Baker’s Daughter: Obesity, Anorexia Nervosa, and the Repressed Feminine–A Psychological Study by Marion Woodman
Eye-opening insights into the body as mirror of the psyche in eating disorders and weight disturbances. Case studies and practical procedures emphasize the integration of the body and soul.
For more books by Marion Woodman: https://www.thriftbooks.com/a/marion-woodman/200078/