Book Recommendations for Trauma Recovery

The Body Keeps the Score

Bessel van der Kolk's book sits on the shelves of many trauma therapists, and many of us recommend it regularly. It offers an accessible explanation of how trauma can affect the body and, through the body, the mind. By describing the neurological and physiological changes that can follow traumatic experiences, van der Kolk explores how trauma may affect a survivor's capacity for pleasure, relationships, emotion regulation, and trust.

No Bad Parts

Richard Schwartz's book is one I return to often. Trauma can sometimes bring a great deal of shame, and shame can get in the way of healing. Schwartz offers a path through this from an Internal Family Systems (IFS) perspective. IFS invites the reader to meet every part of their identity with compassion and curiosity, including parts they may have walled off because they see them as negative or problematic. The approach rests on the idea that bringing all parts of the personality into relationship with one another, the lighter and the darker, supports emotional well-being.

A Thousand Mornings

This one is not in the self-help category, but I have recommended Mary Oliver's book of poems many times. Mindfulness is a word used so often that it can be hard to remember what it means, and her poems help me remember. By capturing small moments, such as the stirring of a leaf or the coming and going of the tides, she invites the reader to slow down the body and the mind. Slowing down is a practice that is part of many approaches to managing anxiety and PTSD.

Guided Art Therapy Card Deck

This recommendation comes from the art therapist in our group practice. It is not exactly a book, but a self-guided card deck by licensed creative arts therapist Emily Sharp, titled Guided Art Therapy Card Deck: 75 Activities to Explore Your Feelings and Manage Your Emotional Well-Being. We reach for it in our art therapy work with both children and adults. Because trauma is often experienced in the body, language is sometimes not enough. The prompts offer an open space for expressing feelings through art. Research has looked at the role of the creative arts in healing, and the deck makes this kind of work available to people who are not therapists, for use at home.

Truth and Repair

Judith Herman is another major contributor to our professional and public understanding of trauma. In this book, she builds on the research from her earlier work, Trauma and Recovery, to look at how truth-telling and social repair can be part of healing for trauma survivors. The book considers why acknowledging harm matters and how restorative justice might be approached. As awareness of trauma has grown and the topic has become less stigmatized, some readers may find in it a way to connect their own experience to a larger shared one.