Best 10 Books For Healing Trauma

1. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

By Bessel van der Kolk

Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world’s foremost experts on trauma, offers a bold new paradigm for healing in this New York Times bestseller.

In this book, you’ll discover the tremendous power of our relationships both to hurt and to heal—and offers new hope for reclaiming lives.

2. What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing

By Bruce D. Perry , Oprah Winfrey

Through deeply personal conversations, Oprah Winfrey and renowned brain and trauma expert Dr. Bruce Perry offer a groundbreaking and profound shift from asking “What’s wrong with you?” to “What happened to you?”

It’s a subtle but profound shift in our approach to trauma, and it’s one that allows us to understand our pasts in order to clear a path to our future – opening the door to resilience and healing in a proven, powerful way.

3. Coping with Trauma-Related Dissociation: Skills Training for Patients and Therapists

By Onno van der Hart , Kathy Steele , Suzette Boon

This training manual for patients who have a trauma-related dissociative disorder offers short educational pieces, homework sheets, and exercises that address ways in which dissociation interferes with essential emotional and life skills, and support inner communication and collaboration with dissociative parts of the personality.

4. Widen the Window: Training Your Brain and Body to Thrive During Stress and Recover from Trauma

By Elizabeth A. Stanley

Dr. Elizabeth Stanley, a pioneering researcher, explains the significance of the trauma continuum, how it affects our resilience in the face of challenge, and why an event that’s stressful for one person can be traumatizing for another.

With stories from men and women Dr. Stanley gives readers hands-on strategies they can use themselves, whether they want to perform under pressure or heal from traumatic experience, while at the same time pointing our understanding in a new direction.

5. Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness: Practices for Safe and Transformative Healing

By David A. Treleaven

Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness explains how we can minimize the potential dangers of mindfulness for trauma survivors while leveraging its powerful benefits.

The book illustrates the ways mindfulness can help—or hinder—trauma recovery and offers a groundbreaking and practical approach that empowers those looking to practice mindfulness in a safe, transformative way.

6. Healing Sex: A Mind-Body Approach to Healing Sexual Trauma

By Staci K. Haines , Traci Odom

This is the first encouraging, sex-positive guide for all women survivors of sexual assault — heterosexual, bisexual, lesbian, coupled, and single — who want to reclaim their sex lives.

Healing Sex encourages women to learn how to say “yes” — to their own desires and on their own terms and offers a mind-body approach to healing from sexual trauma.

7. Flying on the Inside: A Memoir of Trauma and Recovery

By Rachel Gotto

This is the remarkable true story of one woman’s journey back from the brink. Newly widowed and faced with a deadly brain tumour, she was given two years to live. She wanted more…

This gripping and inspiring memoir about overcoming tragedy and trauma charts one tenacious woman’s incredible fight to find light in the darkest of journeys. It is a life-affirming tale of positivity and hope in the face of the most difficult of human experiences.

8. Transforming The Living Legacy of Trauma: A Workbook for Survivors and Therapists

By Janina Fisher

Dr. Janina Fisher, international expert on trauma, has spent over 40 years working with survivors, helping them to navigate their journey. In Transforming the Living Legacy of Trauma, she shows how the legacy of symptoms helped them survive and offers:

• Step-by-step strategies that can be used on their own or in collaboration with a therapist
• Simple diagrams that make sense of the confusing feelings and physical reactions survivors experience
• Worksheets to practice the skills that bring relief and ultimately rejuvenation

9. Life After Trauma: A Workbook for Healing

By Dena Rosenbloom , Mary Beth Williams , Barbara E. Watkins

This supportive workbook helps trauma survivors find and use crucial skills for coping, self-understanding, and self-care.

Filled with comforting activities, relaxation techniques, self-evaluation questionnaires, and exercises, the workbook explains how and why trauma can throw you for a loop and what survivors can do now to cope.

10. Healing Sexual Trauma Workbook

By Erika Shershun

Drawing on the powerful mind-body techniques of somatic therapy, The Healing Sexual Trauma Workbook is a step-by-step guide to overcoming the psychological effects of sexual trauma, and increasing positive body awareness and vitality.