Trauma and the Body

by Pat Ogden, PhD

If you or someone you love experienced something traumatic, this book will give an understanding of what’s happened and may continue to happen … in the one place that the therapy world historically has overlooked … the body.

Pat developed Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (which I’m trained in) to bring the body into therapy to help heal the body from traumatic experiences. Regular talk therapy can’t do that.

This book is one I recommend most to clients. Find it here on Amazon.

Me & White Supremacy

by Layla F. Saad

I read this book in March 2019, convinced that I wasn’t racist or biased. Layla F. Saad’s book showed me otherwise.

As I read through it and completed the exercises, this book let me see things about myself that made me uncomfortable.

And I loved that and still love that … as I continue to do my own work in dismantling white supremacy in my body, heart, and mind.

Buy it here.

Parts Work: An Illustrated Guide To Your Inner Life

by Tom Holmes, Ph.D.

When I first began working with inner parts in therapy — first through ego state therapy and then Internal Family Systems — some clients thought I was telling them that had Multiple Personality Disorder.

Nope. Not even close.

We all have inner parts (me too).

Have you ever thought when considering a decision, part of me wanted to and part of me did not?

That’s what it’s like to notice your inner family.

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

by Emily Nagoski, Ph.D, and Amelia Nagoski, DMA

This book is trauma book, masquerading as a self-help book.

You think you’re reading about how to prevent burn-out but it’s really a primer on why you need to start focusing on completing the stress cycle and stop focusing on removing the stressor.

This explains why the pandemic has been incredibly difficult for most of us.

The Dance of Anger

By Harriet Lerner, Ph.D.

I used to lend my copy of this to clients.

I’d completely understand when I wouldn’t get it back.

It’s that good.

Harriet Lerner wrote this in 1985, and it quickly became a must read for women (and men).

Harriet talks about the dance moves each partner makes and how anger is used in these moves. It’s fascinating.

The Three Waves of Volunteers to the Earth

by Dolores Cannon

This isn’t a book about therapy or the process of therapy.

Still, I find myself sitting with many clients who resonate with it.

I was at a retreat in Northern California back in 2014, when I first heard about this book. Intrigued, I bought a copy and started reading.

I quickly felt my body relax as I read Dolores’s description of her hypnosis sessions with ordinary people. In these sessions, person after person described a time before being born when they volunteered to come to the Earth to usher in a new way.

I could totally relate to this.

Not only that, the person Dolores was working with talked about how difficult it was to be on Earth and how they missed the togetherness and peace of life beforehand.

Holy smokes — I really related to this, as well.

If you’re intrigued, check it out for yourself and see what you notice.