Trauma / Abuse Books

Trauma recovery self help books chosen by our therapists.

The Verbally Abusive Relationship, Expanded Third Edition: How to recognize it and how to respond

Author: Patricia Evans


Surviving a Borderline Parent - How to Heal your Childhood Wounds and Build Trust, Boundaries

Author: Janet Wirth-Cauchon

Surviving a Borderline Parent is the first step-by-step guide for adult children of parents with borderline personality disorder.

Between 6 and 10 million people in the US suffer from borderline personality disorder. This book teaches adult children how to overcome the devastating effects of growing up with a parent who suffers from BPD.


Cutting: Understanding and Overcoming Self-Mutilation

Author: Steven Levenkron

Nearly a decade ago, Cutting boldly addressed a traumatic psychological disorder now affecting as many as two million Americans and one in fifty adolescents. More than that, it revealed self-mutilation as a comprehensible, treatable disorder, no longer to be evaded by the public and neglected by professionals. Using copious examples from his practice, Steven Levenkron traces the factors that predispose a personality to self-mutilation: genetics, family experience, childhood trauma, and parental behavior. Written for sufferers, parents, friends, and therapists, Cutting explains why the disorder manifests in self-harming behaviors and describes how patients can be helped.


Beyond the Trauma Vortex Into the Healing Vortex: A Guide for You

Author: Gina Ross

This book is written for the general public to help alleviate suffering and despair due to traumatic experiences. It informs about trauma’s nature and characteristics, introduces theories that will help understand it, and provide healing methods to prevent personal and collective trauma.


Getting Past Your Past: Take Control of Your Life with Self-Help Techniques from EMDR Therapy

Author: Francine Shapiro

Whether we’ve experienced small setbacks or major traumas, we are all influenced by memories and experiences we may not remember or don’t fully understand. Getting Past Your Past offers practical procedures that demystify the human condition and empower readers looking to achieve real change.

Shapiro, the creator of EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), explains how our personalities develop and why we become trapped into feeling, believing and acting in ways that don’t serve us. Through detailed examples and exercises readers will learn to understand themselves, and why the people in their lives act the way they do. Most importantly, readers will also learn techniques to improve their relationships, break through emotional barriers, overcome limitations and excel in ways taught to Olympic athletes, successful executives and performers.


Small Wonders: Healing Childhood Trauma With EMDR

Author: Joan Lovett, M.D.

Childhood can be an exciting time, full of joyous exploration, new skills, friends, and imaginative play. It can also be very frightening, especially when children have experiences that threaten their feelings of safety and well-being. Even common traumatic childhood events can deeply affect children’s normal healthy development, their self-esteem, and their families. Many behavioral problems stemming from common traumatic events could require years of psychotherapy or medication. That is, they did—until the advent of EMDR. Developed by psychologist Francine Shapiro in the late 1980s, EMDR had already helped thousands of adult clients when Joan Lovett experienced its healing power firsthand.
Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is a comprehensive therapeutic approach that helps patients release disturbing thoughts and emotions that originate in traumatic experiences. Experiences can be traumatic in the commonly accepted sense—abuse, disasters, violence—but children may also perceive and respond to more ordinary events as very threatening. A playground accident, the loss of a loved one, school problems, or choking on a piece of popcorn can be a part of growing up. They can also be critical incidents that cause a child to view him- or herself as helpless or powerless, to become fearful, and to develop debilitating behavioral problems.


Trauma Through a Child's Eyes: Awakening the Ordinary Miracle of Healing

Author: Peter A. Levine Ph.D., and Maggie Kline

An essential guide for recognizing, preventing, and healing childhood trauma, from infancy through adolescence—what parents, educators, and health professionals can do.

Trauma can result not only from catastrophic events such as abuse, violence, or loss of loved ones, but from natural disasters and everyday incidents such as auto accidents, medical procedures, divorce, or even falling off a bicycle. At the core of this book is the understanding of how trauma is imprinted on the body, brain, and spirit, resulting in anxiety, nightmares, depression, physical illnesses, addictions, hyperactivity, and aggression. Rich with case studies and hands-on activities, Trauma Through A Child’s Eyes gives insight into children’s innate ability to rebound with the appropriate support, and provides their caregivers with tools to overcome and prevent trauma


Getting past your past

Author: Francine Shapiro

A totally accessible user’s guide from the creator of a scientifically proven form of psychotherapy that has successfully treated millions of people worldwide.

Whether we’ve experienced small setbacks or major traumas, we are all influenced by memories and experiences we may not remember or don’t fully understand. Getting Past Your Past offers practical procedures that demystify the human condition and empower readers looking to achieve real change.

Shapiro, the creator of EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), explains how our personalities develop and why we become trapped into feeling, believing and acting in ways that don’t serve us. Through detailed examples and exercises readers will learn to understand themselves, and why the people in their lives act the way they do. Most importantly, readers will also learn techniques to improve their relationships, break through emotional barriers, overcome limitations and excel in ways taught to Olympic athletes, successful executives and performers.

An easy conversational style, humor and fascinating real life stories make it simple to understand the brain science, why we get stuck in various ways and what to do about it. Don’t let yourself be run by unconscious and automatic reactions. Read the reviews below from award winners, researchers, academics and best selling authors to learn how to take control of your life.


Tapping In: A Step-by-Step Guide to Activating Your Healing Resources Through Bilateral Stimulation

Author: Laurael Parnell


The Revolutionary Trauma Release Process

Author: David Berceli

When we experience stressful or traumatic events, the body records and stores this information with great accuracy. Each trauma leaves its mark, etched into both our psyche and our physical makeup. The chronic muscle tension patterns we accumulate affect how well we function, preventing us from accessing our most alive state.

In addition to explaining how stress, anxiety, and trauma affect our mental wellbeing and physical health, The Revolutionary Trauma Release Process draws on the body’s amazingly precise record of our histories to provide a simple yet powerful way to access and release our tension. By reestablishing our equilibrium, stabilizing our lives, and returning us to emotional health, it allows us to enjoy a vibrant state of being.

The magic of David Berceli s revolutionary Trauma Release Process is, because it functions equally well as a stand-alone program or in conjunction with other modalities, that it can be used by individuals to heal their personal trauma, groups such as first responders in a situation like 9/11, and large populations in the wake of disasters on the scale of a tsunami or earthquake.


Trauma through a Child’s Eyes

Author: Peter A. Levine Ph.D. and Maggie Kline

An essential guide for recognizing, preventing, and healing childhood trauma, from infancy through adolescence—what parents, educators, and health professionals can do.

Trauma can result not only from catastrophic events such as abuse, violence, or loss of loved ones, but from natural disasters and everyday incidents such as auto accidents, medical procedures, divorce, or even falling off a bicycle. At the core of this book is the understanding of how trauma is imprinted on the body, brain, and spirit, resulting in anxiety, nightmares, depression, physical illnesses, addictions, hyperactivity, and aggression. Rich with case studies and hands-on activities, Trauma Through A Child’s Eyes gives insight into children’s innate ability to rebound with the appropriate support, and provides their caregivers with tools to overcome and prevent trauma.