Self-Study Books
Access Your Inner Powers
Delve into the subconscious mind to shift the mental blocks stopping you from thriving in every area of your life. The following books and study guides are a low-barrier way for you to begin your own self-study into exploring your painful thoughts, feelings, or memories and start working to overcome them.
The General Roadmap:
You will Learn How Trauma is Defined
The Ripple Effect Symptoms Of Trauma
Dissociation, Overwhelm, and Avoidance
Your Autonomic Nervous System
The Window Of Tolerance
Identifying Your Triggers
How to Identify Safety
Learning How to Feel & Trust Safety
How to Reconnect with Your Body
How to Reconnect with Your Intuition
Core Beliefs & How to Shift Them
Adult Children Of Previously Traumatized Parents
Reconnection of Your Fragmented Parts
Resilience & Thriving Beyond the Survival Mechanisms
Using Your Authentic Voice
Awareness & Ability to Now Set Healthy Boundaries
Increase Self-Compassion
Learn to Feel Emotion & Self-Regulating Tools
Explore Trauma Therapy Healing Modalities
I am careful about the products or services I recommend and will only share them if I believe that they hold value to you. In efforts to keep the pricing low on my program offerings to be able to reach more people, I am an Amazon Associate and I earn from qualifying purchases.I hope you will find this list helpful.
Here are the top recommended:
The Body Keeps the Score
by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D.
I have been studying this medical doctor for over five years in online classes and reading this book. This was closer to the beginning of the "breakthrough" piece of my journey so it's a great place for you to start understanding how past events become lodged in the reactive animal instincts of the body.
He uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers’ capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. He explores innovative treatments including Internal Family Systems and Hypnotherapy that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain’s natural neuroplasticity to rewire for new experiences.
The Power of Attachment
Diane Poole Heller, PhD
The Power of Attachment: How to Create Deep and Lasting Intimate Relationships
Dr. Diane Poole Heller, a pioneer in attachment theory and trauma resolution, shows how overwhelming experiences can disrupt our most important connections― with the parts of ourselves within, with the physical world around us, and with others.
• Restore the broken connections caused by trauma
• Get embodied and grounded in your body
• Integrate the parts of yourself that feel wounded and fragmented
• Emerge from grief, fear, and powerlessness to regain strength, joy, and resiliency
• Reclaim access to your inner resources and spiritual nature
No Bad Parts; An Overview of Internal Family Systems
Richard Schwartz, PhD
• The IFS revolution―how honoring and communicating with our parts changes our approach to mental wellness
• Overturning the cultural, scientific, and spiritual assumptions that reinforce an outdated mono-mind model
• The ego, the inner critic, the saboteur―making these often-maligned parts into powerful allies
• Burdens―why our parts become distorted and stuck in childhood traumas and cultural beliefs
• How IFS demonstrates human goodness by revealing that there are no bad parts
• The Self―discover your wise, compassionate essence of goodness that is the source of healing and harmony
• Exercises for mapping your parts, accessing the Self, working with a challenging protector, identifying each part’s triggers, and more
IFS is a paradigm-changing model because it gives us a powerful approach for healing ourselves, our culture, and our planet. As Dr. Schwartz teaches, “Our parts can sometimes be disruptive or harmful, but once they’re unburdened, they return to their essential goodness. When we learn to love all our parts, we can learn to love all people―and that will contribute to healing the world.”
The Polyvagal Theory
Stephen Porges, PhD
At its heart, polyvagal theory is about safety. It provides an understanding that feeling safe is dependent on autonomic states, and that our cognitive evaluations of risk in the environment, including identifying potentially dangerous relationships, play a secondary role to our visceral reactions to people and places.
Our reaction to the continuing global pandemic supports one of the central concepts of polyvagal theory: that a desire to connect safely with others is our biological imperative. Indeed, life may be seen as an inherent quest for safety. These ideas, and more, are outlined in chapters on therapeutic presence, group psychotherapy, yoga and music therapy, autism, trauma, date rape, medical trauma, and COVID-19.
