fbpx

Recommended Books

We encourage you to shop with Amazon Smile. When you select Healing TREE as your charity to support, Amazon gives a portion of the cost to us at no additional cost to you, which helps us further our mission. You can get started at smile.amazon.com and can learn more here.

The Betrayal Bond

Patrick J. Carnes, Ph.D.
The Betrayal Bond book cover

Exploitive relationships can create trauma bonds–chains that link a victim to someone who is dangerous to them. Divorce, employee relations, litigation of any type, incest and child abuse, family and marital systems, domestic violence, hostage negotiations, kidnapping, professional exploitation and religious abuse are all areas of trauma bonding. All these relationships share one thing: they are situations of incredible intensity or importance where there is an exploitation of trust or power.

In The Betrayal Bond Patrick Carnes presents an in-depth study of these relationships, why they form, who is most susceptible, and how they become so powerful. He shows how to recognize when traumatic bonding has occurred and gives a checklist for examining relationships. He then provides steps to safely extricate from these relationships.

This is a book you will turn to again and again for inspiration and insight, while professionals will find it an invaluable reference work. Buy Now

The Body Keeps the Score

Bessel van der Kolk, M.D.
The Body Keeps Score book cover

Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world’s foremost experts on trauma, has spent over three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, 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—from neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga—that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain’s natural neuroplasticity. Based on Dr. van der Kolk’s own research and that of other leading specialists, The Body Keeps the Score exposes the tremendous power of our relationships both to hurt and to heal—and offers new hope for reclaiming lives. Buy Now

The Body Never Lies

Alice Miller, Ph.D.
The Body Never Lies book cover

Never before has world-renowned psychoanalyst Alice Miller examined so persuasively the long-range consequences of childhood abuse on the body. Using the experiences of her patients along with the biographical stories of literary giants such as Virginia Woolf, Franz Kafka, and Marcel Proust, Miller shows how a child’s humiliation, impotence, and bottled rage will manifest itself as adult illness―be it cancer, stroke, or other debilitating diseases. Never one to shy away from controversy, Miller urges society as a whole to jettison its belief in the Fourth Commandment and not to extend forgiveness to parents whose tyrannical childrearing methods have resulted in unhappy, and often ruined, adult lives. In this empowering work, writes Rutgers professor Philip Greven, “readers will learn how to confront the overt and covert traumas of their own childhoods with the enlightened guidance of Alice Miller.” Buy Now

Brainspotting

David Grand, Ph.D.
Brainspotting Book Cover

Brain-based therapy is the fastest-growing area in the field of psychological health because it has proven that it can immediately address issues that talk therapy can take years to heal. Now Dr. David Grand presents the next leap forward in psychological care—combining the strengths of brain-based and talk therapies into a powerful technique he calls Brainspotting. In Brainspotting, Dr. Grand reveals the key insight that allowed him to develop this revolutionary therapeutic tool: that where we look reveals critical information about what’s going on in our brain. Buy Now

The Brain That Changes Itself

Norman Doidge, M.D.
The Brain That Changes Itself book cover

An astonishing new science called “neuroplasticity” is overthrowing the centuries-old notion that the human brain is immutable. In this revolutionary look at the brain, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Norman Doidge, M.D., provides an introduction to both the brilliant scientists championing neuroplasticity and the people whose lives they’ve transformed. From stroke patients learning to speak again to the remarkable case of a woman born with half a brain that rewired itself to work as a whole, The Brain That Changes Itself will permanently alter the way we look at our brains, human nature, and human potential. Buy Now

The Curious Voyage: A Rule-Breaking Guidebook to Authenticity

Cynthia Schwartzberg, LCSW 

If you are a seeker, feeling lost or confused, wanting deeper relationships and/or wanting greater peace and joy, this book can answer your call. It is a self-help guidebook filled with exercises to bring you to a sense of your authentic self. This book will guide you to living beyond the “supposed to’s” and living a creative life no matter what your outer vocation may be. It is set up as a voyage. You are the Captain of your Ship of Life. How you chart the course has to do with how you experience life. Throughout this voyage, you will be evaluating the rulebook of your life. Our rulebook is made up of the things we were taught, our family, community, and society at large, traditions, ways we were taught to treat people, values, priorities, and collective attitudes and beliefs. This book suggests you get to know how you respond to life on automatic pilot and how your response may contrast with your personal truth and authentic self. You are guided to become aware, evaluate, edit, and in some cases re-write your book. We will discover, as we follow our hearts, our true nature with love and care for all living beings, that we do not need to have rules. We connect to a deeper truth that is beyond all rules. Enjoy the journey. Buy Now

Dancing Mindfulness: A Creative Path to Healing and Transformation

Jamie Marich, PhD, LPCC-S
Dancing Mindfulness book cover

Experiment. Explore. Awaken your potential for wellness through meditative movement.

“This … is an invitation and a portal into the practice of dance and movement as meditation. All bodies are welcome and all abilities. Anyone can dance, although many of us hold back because we don’t look like dancers or because we have physical limitations. But I am willing to bet that most of you holding this book have touched a moment of transcendence or freedom in an experience of dance that leads you to explore deeper. You have a worthy guide in your hands.”
―from the Foreword

Using theory and step-by-step exercises, dancer and clinical counselor Dr. Jamie Marich expertly guides you through seven primary elements of mindfulness in motion: breath, sound, body, story, mind, spirit and fusion. By dancing through these seven elements, either in personal practice or in a group, you will be better able to:

• Access your body’s own healing resources through informal dance
• Realize the transformative power of your personal creativity
• Strengthen your abilities to exercise non-judgment, patience, a sense of play, trust, acceptance and letting go
• Practice mindfulness even if you have struggled with traditional sitting meditation
•. Share healing dances with others to build on your own strengths, resources and experiences. Buy Now

The Deepest Well

Dr. Nadine Burke Harris

When a young boy walked into Dr Nadine Burke Harris’s clinic he looked healthy for a preschooler. But he was seven, and hadn’t grown a centimetre since a traumatic event when he was four. At that moment Dr Burke Harris knew that her gut feeling about a connection between childhood stress and future ill health was more than just a hunch – and she began her journey into groundbreaking research with stunning results.

Two thirds of us have experienced at least one adverse childhood experience, from the likes of bereavement and divorce to abuse and neglect. In The Deepest Well Dr Burke Harris reveals the science behind childhood adversity and offers a new way of understanding the adverse events that affect us throughout our lifetime. Based on her own groundbreaking clinical work and public leadership, Dr Burke Harris shows us how we can disrupt this cycle through interventions that help retrain the brain and body, foster resilience, and help children, families, and adults live healthier, happier lives.

Like the classic Silent Spring, this book helps readers see a problem hiding in plain sight that impacts us all. By looking at the widespread crisis of childhood adversity through the objective lens of science and medicine, this book provides a roadmap for deeper understanding and change. Buy Now

Dissociation Made Simple

Jamie Marich, PhD

Guided by psychologist Jamie Marich–a trauma-informed clinician living with a dissociative disorder herself–this book tells you everything you need to know about dissociation…but were too afraid to ask.
    Here, you’ll learn:
  What dissociation is–and why it’s a natural response to trauma
  How to understand and work with your “parts”–the unique emotional and behavioral profiles that can develop from personality fragmentation
  There’s nothing shameful about dissociating–that, in fact, we can all dissociate
  Skills and strategies for living your best, authentic, and most fulfilled life
  What to look for in a therapist: choosing a healer who sees you and gets it
  Foundational elements of healing from trauma, including PTSD and C-PTSD
    With practical guided exercises like “The Dissociative Profile” and “Parts Mapping,” this book is written for those diagnosed with dissociative disorders, clinicians and therapists who treat trauma and dissociation, and readers who are exploring whether they may have dissociative symptoms or a condition like dissociative identity disorder (DID). Dissociation Made Simple breaks it all down accessibly and comprehensively, with empowerment and support–and without stigma, judgment, or shame. Buy Now

The Drama of the Gifted Child

Alice Miller, Ph.D.
The Drama of the Gifted Child book cover

Why are many of the most successful people plagued by feelings of emptiness and alienation? This wise and profound book has provided thousands of readers with an answer—and has helped them to apply it to their own lives. Far too many of us had to learn as children to hide our own feelings, needs, and memories skillfully in order to meet our parents’ expectations and win their “love”. Alice Miller writes,  “When I used the word ‘gifted’ in the title, I had in mind neither children who receive high grades in school nor children talented in a special way. I simply meant all of us who have survived an abusive childhood thanks to an ability to adapt even to unspeakable cruelty by becoming numb… Without this ‘gift’ offered us by nature, we would not have survived.” But merely surviving is not enough. The Drama of the Gifted Child helps us to reclaim our life by discovering our own crucial needs and our own truth. Buy Now

EMDR: The breakthrough “eye movement” therapy for overcoming stress, anxiety, and trauma.

Francine Shapiro, PhD & Margot Silk Forrest
EMDR book cover

Hailed as the most important method to emerge in psychotherapy in decades, EMDR has successfully treated psychological problems and illnesses in more than one million sufferers worldwide, with a rapidity that defies belief. In a new introduction, Shapiro presents the new applications of this remarkable therapy and the latest scientific research that demonstrates its efficacy. Buy Now

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

Francine Shapiro
Getting Past Your Past book cover

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.

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

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. Buy Now

Healing the Shame that Binds You

John Bradshaw

“I used to drink,” writes John Bradshaw, “to solve the problems caused by drinking. The more I drank to relieve my shame-based loneliness and hurt, the more I felt ashamed.”

Shame is the motivator behind our toxic behaviors: the compulsion, co-dependency, addiction and drive to superachieve that breaks down the family and destroys personal lives. This book has helped millions identify their personal shame, understand the underlying reasons for it, address these root causes and release themselves from the shame that binds them to their past failures. 

Key Features

• This is not just a recovery book. Among other things, it is a classic book on identifying and working through unresolved family issues.
• Includes affirmations, visualizations, inner voice and feeling exercises.
• Strong supporting studies make this a popular book with counselors and other professionals.
• Completely updated and revised.

Buy Now

How Are You Feeling Today Baby Bear?: Exploring Big Feelings After Living in a Stormy Home

Jane Evans, Illustrated by Lawrence Johnson
How Are You Feeling Today Baby Bear?

Baby Bear lives in a home with the Big Bears, and loves to chase butterflies and make mud pies – they make Baby Bear’s tummy fill with sunshine. Then, one night, Baby Bear hears a big storm downstairs in the house and in the morning, Baby Bear’s tummy starts to feel grey and rainy. How will such a small bear cope with these big new feelings?

This sensitive, charming storybook is written to help children who have lived with violence at home to begin to explore and name their feelings. Accompanied by notes for adults on how to use each page of the story to start conversations, it also features fun games and activities to help to understand and express difficult emotions. It will be a useful book for social workers, counsellors, domestic violence workers and all grown-ups working with children. Buy Now

I Love a Man in Uniform: A memoir of love, war, and other battles

Lily Burana
I Love a Man in Uniform

In this brave, eloquent, and funny memoir, critically acclaimed author Lily Burana writes about love and self-discovery with an honesty few writers would dare. 

A former stripper with a penchant for fishnets and anarchist politics, Lily’s lacerating wit and rebellious past never would have suggested a marriage into the military. But then she met Major Mike, a Military Intelligence officer and professor at West Point, and fell hopelessly in love, resulting in a most unorthodox fairytale romance – poignant, sometimes painful, and utterly unpredictable. 

After Lily and Mike tied the knot, life as an Army wife proved to be a rough adjustment for authority-averse Lily. When Mike was deployed in the War on Terror, Lily was suddenly left to endure his absence alone, with no friends, no support system, and no knowledge of the vast and confusing military world into which she had married. 

Upon Mike’s return from the war, the couple moved to historic West Point. With the support of the other military wives, Lily worked through the daily struggle to find her way and came to know and love a group of unlikely friends. Together, Mike and Lily suffered through the nightmare of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, while Lily suffered bouts of depression that nearly ended their marriage. Through it all, Lily struggled with her preconceptions about the military and coped with being married to a good soldier fighting a brutal war. Buy Now

No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model 

Richard Schwartz, Ph.D., Introduction by Alanis Morissette

Discover an empowering new way of understanding your multifaceted mind―and healing the many parts that make you who you are.

Is there just one “you”? We’ve been taught to believe we have a single identity, and to feel fear or shame when we can’t control the inner voices that don’t match the ideal of who we think we should be. Yet Dr. Richard Schwartz’s research now challenges this “mono-mind” theory. “All of us are born with many sub-minds―or parts,” says Dr. Schwartz. “These parts are not imaginary or symbolic. They are individuals who exist as an internal family within us―and the key to health and happiness is to honor, understand, and love every part.”

Dr. Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems (IFS) model has been transforming psychology for decades. With No Bad Parts, you’ll learn why IFS has been so effective in areas such as trauma recovery, addiction therapy, and depression treatment―and how this new understanding of consciousness has the potential to radically change our lives. Here you’ll explore:

• 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.” Buy Now

Overcoming Trauma through Yoga

David Emerson and Elizabeth Hopper, Ph.D.

Survivors of trauma—whether abuse, accidents, or war—can end up profoundly wounded, betrayed by their bodies that failed to get them to safety and that are a source of pain. In order to fully heal from trauma, a connection must be made with oneself, including one’s body. The trauma-sensitive yoga described in this book moves beyond traditional talk therapies that focus on the mind, by bringing the body actively into the healing process. This allows trauma survivors to cultivate a more positive relationship to their body through gentle breath, mindfulness, and movement practices.

Overcoming Trauma through Yoga 
is a book for survivors, clinicians, and yoga instructors who are interested in mind/body healing. It introduces trauma-sensitive yoga, a modified approach to yoga developed in collaboration between yoga teachers and clinicians at the Trauma Center at Justice Resource Institute, led by yoga teacher David Emerson, along with medical doctor Bessel van der Kolk. The book begins with an in-depth description of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), including a description of how trauma is held in the body and the need for body-based treatment. It offers a brief history of yoga, describes various styles of yoga commonly found in Western practice, and identifies four key themes of trauma-sensitive yoga. Chair-based exercises are described that can be incorporated into individual or group therapy, targeting specific treatment goals, and modifications are offered for mat-based yoga classes. Each exercise includes trauma-sensitive language to introduce the practice, as well as photographs to illustrate the poses. The practices have been offered to a wide range of individuals and groups, including men and women, teens, returning veterans, and others. Rounded out by valuable quotes and case stories, the book presents mindfulness, breathing, and yoga exercises that can be used by home practitioners, yoga teachers, and therapists as a way to cultivate awareness, tolerance, and an increased acceptance of the self. Buy Now

Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome: One Woman’s Desperate, Funny, and Healing Journey to Explore 30 Religions by Her 30th Birthday

Reba Riley
Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome book cover

An important inspirational debut, Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome is much more than a memoir about reclaiming faith and overcoming chronic illness. Written with humor and personality, it tackles the universal struggle to heal what life has broken. This is a book for questioners, doubters, misfits, and seekers of all faiths; for the spiritual, the religious, and the curious.

Reba Riley’s twenty-ninth year was a terrible time to undertake a spiritual quest. But when untreatable chronic illness forced her to her metaphorical (and physical) derriere on her birthday, Reba realized that even if she couldn’t fix her body, she might be able to heal her injured spirit. Buy Now

Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing (PTSS)

Dr. Joy DeGruy

In the 16th century, the beginning of African enslavement in the Americas until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment and emancipation in 1865, Africans were hunted like animals, captured, sold, tortured, and raped. They experienced the worst kind of physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual abuse. Given such history, isn’t it likely that many of the enslaved were severely traumatized? And did the trauma and the effects of such horrific abuse end with the abolition of slavery?

Emancipation was followed by one hundred more years of institutionalized subjugation through the enactment of Black Codes and Jim Crow laws, peonage, convict leasing, domestic terrorism and lynching. Today the violations continue, and when combined with the crimes of the past, they result in yet unmeasured injury. What do repeated traumas, endured generation after generation by a people produce? What impact have these ordeals had on African Americans today?

Dr. Joy DeGruy, answers these questions and more. With over thirty years of practical experience as a professional in the mental health field, Dr. DeGruy encourages African Americans to view their attitudes, assumptions, and behaviors through the lens of history and so gain a greater understanding of how centuries of slavery and oppression have impacted people of African descent in America.

Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome helps to lay the necessary foundation to ensure the well-being and sustained health of future generations and provides a rare glimpse into the evolution of society’s beliefs, feelings, attitudes and behavior concerning race in America. Buy Now

So You Want to Talk About Race

Ijeoma Oluo

Widespread reporting on aspects of white supremacy — from police brutality to the mass incarceration of Black Americans — has put a media spotlight on racism in our society. Still, it is a difficult subject to talk about. How do you tell your roommate her jokes are racist? Why did your sister-in-law take umbrage when you asked to touch her hair — and how do you make it right? How do you explain white privilege to your white, privileged friend?

In So You Want to Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo guides readers of all races through subjects ranging from intersectionality and affirmative action to “model minorities” in an attempt to make the seemingly impossible possible: honest conversations about race and racism, and how they infect almost every aspect of American life. Buy Now

Take Back Your Life

Janja Lalich, Ph.D., and Madeleine Tobias
Take Back Your Life book cover

Cult victims and those who have suffered abusive relationships often suffer from fear, confusion, low self-esteem, and post-traumatic stress. Take Back Your Life explains the seductive draw that leads people into such situations, provides guidelines for assessing what happened, and hands-on tools for getting back on track. Written for victims, their families, and professionals, this book leads readers through the healing process. Buy Now

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

Laurel Parnell

Never has it been so effortless to activate your inner power and resilience than with the remarkable technique known as “resource tapping.” Tapping In makes available for the first time a self-guided program for learning this revolutionary EMDR-related method.

With step-by-step instruction in bilateral stimulation (a core component of EMDR, or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), Tapping In teaches you a clinically recognized system for tapping both sides of the body to overcome trauma, boost confidence, calm the body on a deep, physiological level, and to respond better to stress.

Join world-renowned EMDR expert Dr. Laurel Parnell as she shares a series of easy-to-learn exercises to access your “latent positive resources”―your neurological foundation for internal resilience and stability. Buy Now

Transforming Trauma with Jiu-Jitsu: A Guide for Survivors, Therapists, and Jiu-Jitsu Practitioners to Facilitate Embodied Recovery (Available for pre-order on Amazon. Release date: March 15, 2022)

Judith Herman, M.D.

Heal from trauma and PTSD with the martial art of jiu-jitsu–written for survivors, mental health therapists, and trauma-informed martial arts instructors.

This groundbreaking book introduces jiu-jitsu as a powerful embodied modality for trauma survivors in recovery, and includes 10 grounding practices, self-defense techniques, and 30 instructional photos.

Unhealed trauma–from “little t” traumas to complex PTSD–leaves a lasting imprint on the bodies and minds of survivors. And in the aftermath of trauma, many people experience shifts in how they feel, connect with others, and interact with the world at large. This embodied, whole-person approach will help you heal the wounds of traumatic stress and how it shows up within yourself and your relationships, from disembodiment and numbness to anger, fear, anxiety, confusion, and dissociation.

As part of a martial arts trauma recovery program, you’ll learn about:

   • Trauma, embodiment, and the transformative power of jiu-jitsu
   • Self-defense skills that can help survivors of violence define boundaries and feel safe, secure, powerful, and at home in their bodies 
   • Creating a welcoming, responsive practice space as a studio owner
   • Integrating jiu-jitsu practice into a safe, accessible recovery protocol for survivors–and how therapists can recommend them to clients or build them into a treatment plan

Written for trauma survivors, mental health clinicians, and martial arts practitioners and studio owners who want to create a safe, empowering, and trauma-sensitive space, Transforming Trauma with Jiu-Jitsu is a unique and vital guide to healing trauma’s invisible wounds. 

Audiobook narration by Healing TREE Founder, Executive + Artistic Director, Marissa Ghavami. Listen to a sample and get this book on Audible here. 

Trauma and Recovery

Judith Herman, M.D.
Trauma and Recovery book cover

When Trauma and Recovery was first published in 1992, it was hailed as a groundbreaking work. In the intervening years, Herman’s volume has changed the way we think about and treat traumatic events and trauma victims. In a new afterword, Herman chronicles the incredible response the book has elicited and explains how the issues surrounding the topic have shifted within the clinical community and the culture at large. Trauma and Recovery brings a new level of understanding to a set of problems usually considered individually. Herman draws on her own cutting-edge research in domestic violence as well as on the vast literature of combat veterans and victims of political terror, to show the parallels between private terrors such as rape and public traumas such as terrorism. The book puts individual experience in a broader political frame, arguing that psychological trauma can be understood only in a social context. Meticulously documented and frequently using the victims’ own words as well as those from classic literary works and prison diaries, Trauma and Recovery is a powerful work that will continue to profoundly impact our thinking. Buy Now

Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy

Pat Ogden, Kekuni Minton, Clare Pain, Forewords by Daniel J. Siegel, M.D. and Bessel Van der Kolk, M.D.

The body, for a host of reasons, has been left out of the “talking cure.”

Psychotherapists who have been trained in models of psychodynamic, psychoanalytic, or cognitive therapeutic approaches are skilled at listening to the language and affect of the client. They track the clients’ associations, fantasies, and signs of psychic conflict, distress, and defenses. Yet while the majority of therapists are trained to notice the appearance and even the movements of the client’s body, thoughtful engagement with the client’s embodied experience has remained peripheral to traditional therapeutic interventions. Trauma and the Body is a detailed review of research in neuroscience, trauma, dissociation, and attachment theory that points to the need for an integrative mind-body approach to trauma. The premise of this book is that, by adding body-oriented interventions to their repertoire, traditionally trained therapists can increase the depth and efficacy of their clinical work. Sensorimotor psychotherapy is an approach that builds on traditional psychotherapeutic understanding but includes the body as central in the therapeutic field of awareness, using observational skills, theories, and interventions not usually practiced in psychodynamic psychotherapy. By synthesizing bottom-up and top down interventions, the authors combine the best of both worlds to help chronically traumatized clients find resolution and meaning in their lives and develop a new, somatically integrated sense of self.

Topics addressed include: Cognitive, emotional, and sensorimotor dimensions of information processing • modulating arousal • dyadic regulation and the body • the orienting response • defensive subsystems • adaptation and action systems • treatment principles • skills for working with the body in present time • developing somatic resources for stabilization • processing

Buy Now

The Trauma Spectrum: Hidden wounds and human resiliency

Robert Scaer
The Trauma Spectrum book cover

Our experiences of trauma sow the seeds of many persistent and misunderstood medical problems such as chronic fatigue syndrome and various maladies of the immune system. Because of our inadequate understanding of the relationship of mind and body in processing these traumas, many of us suffer needlessly from our exposure to life’s traumas. Robert Scaer offers hope to those who wish to transform trauma and better understand their lives. Buy Now

Trauma and the 12 Steps, Revised and Expanded: An Inclusive Guide to Enhancing Recovery

Judith Herman, M.D.

An inclusive, research-based guide to working the 12 steps: a trauma-informed approach for clinicians, sponsors, and those in recovery.

Step 1: You admit that you’re powerless over your addiction. Now what?

12-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA) have helped countless people on the path to recovery. But many still feel that 12-step programs aren’t for them: that the spiritual emphasis is too narrow, the modality too old-school, the setting too triggering, or the space too exclusive. Some struggle with an addict label that can eclipse the histories, traumas, and experiences that feed into addiction, or dismisses the effects of adverse experiences like trauma in the first place. Advances in addiction medicine, trauma, neuropsychiatry, social theory, and overall strides in inclusivity need to be integrated into modern-day 12-step programs to reflect the latest research and what it means to live with an addiction today.

Dr. Jamie Marich, an addiction and trauma clinician in recovery herself, builds necessary bridges between the 12-step’s core foundations and up-to-date developments in trauma-informed care. Foregrounding the intersections of addiction, trauma, identity, and systems of oppression, Marich’s approach treats the whole person–not just the addiction–to foster healing, transformation, and growth.

Written for clinicians, therapists, sponsors, and those in recovery, Marich provides an extensive toolkit of trauma-informed skills that:
  •  Explains how trauma impacts addiction, recovery, and relapse
  •  Celebrates communities who may feel excluded from the program, like atheists, agnostics, and LGBTQ+ folks
  •  Welcomes outside help from the fields of trauma, dissociation, mindfulness, and addiction research
  •  Explains the differences between being trauma-informed and trauma-sensitive; and
  •  Discusses spiritual abuse as a legitimate form of trauma that can profoundly impede spirituality-based approaches to healing.

Audiobook narration by Healing TREE Founder, Executive + Artistic Director, Marissa Ghavami. Listen to a sample and get this book on Audible here. 

The Trauma Toolkit: Healing trauma from the inside out

Susan Pease Banitt LCSW
Trauma Toolkit book cover

In 2010 the Department of Veterans Affairs cited 171,423 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans diagnosed with PTSD, out of 593,634 total patients treated. That’s almost 30 percent; other statistics show 35 percent. Nor, of course, is PTSD limited to the military. In twenty years as a therapist, Susan Pease Banitt has treated trauma in patients ranging from autistic children to women with breast cancer; from underage sex slaves to adults incapacitated by early childhood abuse. Doctors she interviewed in New York report that, even before 9/11, most of their patients had experienced such extreme stress that they had suffered physical and mental breakdowns. Those doctors agree with Pease Banitt that stress is the disease of our times. At the 2009 Evolution of Psychotherapy conference Jack Kornfield noted, “We need a trauma tool kit.” Here it is. Buy Now

Trauma Made Simple

Jamie Marich PhD
Trauma Made Simple Book Cover

In Trauma Made Simple, trauma expert Dr. Jamie Marich brings her practical style of training to print, using clinical common sense to wade through theory, research, and hype surrounding trauma. Learn about trauma in a way that is relevant to clinical work, including extensive coverage on PTSD and other diagnoses through a bio-psycho-social-spiritual lens. Make clinically informed decisions based on setting, client preparedness, and other contextual variables. Develop strategies for treatment planning based on the best possible treatments in the field today.
Buy Now

Waking The Tiger: Healing Trauma

Peter A. Levine, Ph.D.
Waking the Tiger book cover

Waking the Tiger offers a new and hopeful vision of trauma. It views the human animal as a unique being, endowed with an instinctual capacity. It asks and answers an intriguing question: why are animals in the wild, though threatened routinely, rarely traumatized? By understanding the dynamics that make wild animals virtually immune to traumatic symptoms, the mystery of human trauma is revealed.

Waking the Tiger normalizes the symptoms of trauma and the steps needed to heal them. People are often traumatized by seemingly ordinary experiences. The reader is taken on a guided tour of the subtle, yet powerful impulses that govern our responses to overwhelming life events. To do this, it employs a series of exercises that help us focus on bodily sensations. Through heightened awareness of these sensations trauma can be healed. Buy Now

Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

Lundy Bancroft, Ph.D.

In this groundbreaking bestseller, Lundy Bancroft—a counselor who specializes in working with abusive men—uses his knowledge about how abusers think to help women recognize when they are being controlled or devalued in a relationship, and to find ways to get free of abuse.

He says he loves you. So…why does he do that?

You’ve asked yourself this question again and again. Now you have the chance to see inside the minds of angry and controlling men—and change your life. In Why Does He Do That? you will learn about:

• The early warning signs of abuse
• The nature of abusive thinking
• Myths about abusers
• Ten abusive personality types
• The role of drugs and alcohol
• What you can fix, and what you can’t
• And how to get out of an abusive relationship safely

“This is without a doubt the most informative and useful book yet written on the subject of abusive men. Women who are armed with the insights found in these pages will be on the road to recovering control of their lives.”—Jay G. Silverman, Ph.D., Director, Violence Prevention Programs, Harvard School of Public Health Buy Now Free PDF Version

You Can Help: A Guide for Family & Friends of Survivors of Sexual Abuse and Assault

Rebecca Street

You Can Help offers concrete tools to family and friends who wish to participate in the healing process of someone who has been sexually victimized. In Part One, the author chronicles her own journey to recovery while providing pragmatic advice and essential data from numerous experts in the field. Each chapter is followed by “Five Practical Tips.”

Part Two is comprised of inspirational stories by 19 other survivors of both abuse and assault (8 men and 11 women) who share what was most helpful and hurtful in their own recoveries. Besides empowering family and friends, You Can Help is a valuable asset for arming survivors in their battle against shame and is an important educational resource for professionals who work with trauma.

You Can Help enables readers to:

(1) BREAK THE SILENCE (silence is the biggest obstacle to recovery)

(2) LEARN about the complex consequences of sexual trauma, including PTSD

(3) ASSIST SURVIVORS in regaining trust, confidence, and joy. Buy Now