I love books and often suggest them to people I’m working with in therapy. Books can be so helpful in getting through difficult times. Here are some of my favorites.
Click on the links indicated below to browse books in each category:
Ellen’s Library
ELLEN’S COUCH
Suffering & Healing: Opportunities for Growth
Addiction & Recovery
Trauma & Recovery
Relationships
Parenting Adopted Children
Step Families
Kids, Learning & Growing Up
For your teens
Novels about Therapy
Memoirs we can Learn From
Work & Career
Financial Peace & Freedom
Loss of a Pet
Suffering & Healing: Opportunities for Growth
To Begin Again: The Journey Toward Comfort, Strength and Faith in Difficult Times | Naomi Levy
A New Earth: Awakening to your Life’s Purpose | Eckhart Tolle
Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life | Gail Sheehy
When Bad Things Happen to Good People | Harold Kushner
Going to Pieces without Falling Apart | Mark Epstein, M.D.
Going on Being: Buddhism and the Way of Change | Mark Epstein, M.D.
When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times | Pema Chodron
Addiction and Recovery
Healing the Shame that Binds You | John Bradshaw
The Language of Letting Go | Melodie Beattie
Trauma and Recovery
Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence From Domestic Violence to Political Terror | Judith Lewis Herman, M.D.
It Could Happen to Anyone: Why Battered Women Stay | Ola W. Barnett and Alyce La Violette
Next time She’ll Be Dead: Battery and How to Stop It | Ann Jones
Betrayal and Trauma: The Logic of Forgetting Childhood Abuse | Jennifer J. Freyd
Unchained Memories: True Stories of Traumatic Memories, Lost and Found | Lenore Terr
Getting Through the Day: Strategies for Adults Hurt as Children | Nancy Napier
Growing Beyond Survival: A Self-Help Toolkit for Managing Traumatic Stress | Elizabeth G. Vermilyea, MA
In Love and Danger: A Teen’s Guide to Breaking Free of Abusive Relationships | Barrie Levy
What Parents Need to Know About Dating Violence | Barrie Levy and Patricia Occhiuzzo Giggans
Outgrowing the Pain: A Book for Adults Abused as Children | Eliana Gil, Ph.D.
Outgrowing the Pain Together: A Book for Spouses & Partners of Adults Abused as Children | Eliana Gil, Ph.D.
The Courage to Heal | Ellen Bass and Laura Davis
Heal Your Body: The Mental Causes for Physical illness & the Metaphysical Way to Overcome Them | Louise Hay
Relationships
The Hard Questions: 100 Essential Questions to Ask Before You Say I Do | Susan Piver
The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work | John Gottman and Nan Silver
The Dance of Anger | Harriet G. Lerner, Ph.D.
The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self | Alice Miller
When Difficult Relatives Happen to Good People: Surviving Your Family & Keeping your Sanity | Leonard Felder, Ph.D.
Somatic Experiencing / Body Oriented Psychotherapy
Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma | Peter Levine
Crash Course | Larry Heller and Diane Poole Heller
Trauma Through A Child’s Eye:
Awakening the Ordinary Miracle of Healing, Infancy through Adolescence | Peter Levine and Maggie Kline
Parenting
The Blessings of a Skinned Knee: Using Jewish Teaching to Raise Self Reliant Children | Wendy Mogel, Ph.D.
Parenting from the Inside Out: How a Deeper Self-Understanding Can Help You Raise Children Who Thrive | Daniel J. Siegel, M.D. & Mary Hartzell, M.Ed.
The Gesell Institute of Human Development Series: Your One-year Old up through Your Ten to-Fourteen-Year Old | Ames, Ilg & Haber
The Emotional Life of the Toddler | Alicia F. Lieberman
You’re Wearing That? Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation | Deborah Tannen
Your Guide to a Happier Family: Liberated Parents, Liberated Children | Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish
How to Talk so Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk | Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish
Between Parent and Child | Dr. Haim G. Ginott
Transforming the Difficult Child | Howard Glasser, MA and Jennifer Easley, MA
Breaking the Code: Two Teens Reveal the Secrets to Better Parent-Child Communication | Lara Fox & Hilary Frankel
Parenting Adopted Children
Real Parents, Real Children: Parenting the Adopted Child | Holly Van Gulden and Lisa M. Bartels-Rabb
Talking with Young Children about Adoption | Mary Watkins and Susan Fisher
Being Adopted: The Lifelong Search for Self | David Brodzinsky, Ph.D., Marshall D. Schecter, M.D. & Robin Henig
Step Families
The Wedding was Great--But When Does Chuck Leave? | Charles Lund
Stepchildren Speak | Susan Phillips
You’re Not My Mom | Kali and Elizabeth Schnieders
Women and Stepfamilies: Voices of Anger and Love | edited by Nan Bauer Maglin and Nancy Schneidewind
The Stepmom’s Guide to Simplifying Your Life | Karen Phillips Goodman
The Courage to be a Stepmom | Dawn Miller
Keys to Successful Stepfathering | Carl E. Pickhardt
Stepdads: Stories of Love, Hope and Repair | William Marsiglio
Lesbian Step Families | Janet M. Wright
Becoming a Step Family: Patterns of Developement in Remarried Families | Patricia L. Papernow
Kids and Learning and Growing Up
A Mind at a Time | Mel Levine, M.D.
The Myth of Laziness | Mel Levine, M.D.
Ready or Not, Here Life Comes | Mel Levine, M.D.
Taking Our Places: The Buddhist Path of Truly Growing Up | Norman Fischer
Spiritual Searching and Finding
With Roots in Heaven: One Woman’s Passionate Journey into the Heart of her Faith | Tirzah Firestone
A Gradual Awakening | Stephen Levine
A Path With Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life | Jack Kornfield
Still Here: Embracing Aging, Changing and Dying | Ram Dass
Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life | Byron Katie with Stephen Mitchell
Zen Gifts to Christians | Robert Kennedy
Nothing Special: Living Zen | Charlotte Joko Beck
Novels about Therapy
Love’s Executioner | Irvin Yalom
Lying on the Couch | Irvin Yalom
When Nietzche Wept | Irvin Yalom
The Schopenhauer Cure | Irvin Yalom
Memoirs We Can Learn From
Undercurrents: A Life Beneath the Surface (descent into and out of the hell of depression) | Martha Manning
An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness | Kay Redfield Jamison
Conquering the Beast Within: How I fought depression and how you can too. One teenager tells her inspiring story | Cait Irwin
Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and Transcendence | Mathew Sanford
Poster Child: A Memoir | Emily Rapp
Work/Career
I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was | Barbara Sher
Financial Peace and Freedom
The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom | Suze Orman
True Self, True Wealth: A Pathway to Prosperity | Peter Cole & Daisy Reese
How to Get Out of Debt, Stay Out of Debt and Live Prosperously | Jerrold Mundis
Loss of a Pet
The Guide to Loss of a Pet | Wallace Sife, Ph.D.
Dogs Never Lie About Love: Reflection on the Emotional World of Dogs | Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
ELLEN’S BOOK OF THE MONTH
Dreams from my Father:
A Story of Race & Inheritance
by Barack Obama
My Name is You
How Our Children Lose Their Smiles
by Mark Brady
The Committed Parent Blog
January 18 & 25, 2009
ARTICLES OF THE MONTH
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