MY FAVORITE SELF-HELP, PHILOSOPHY, AND PSYCHOLOGY BOOKS.
Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma
Peter A. Levine
An alternative to the academic textbook The Body Keeps the Score, Levine walks us through the ways trauma rewires our nervous systems to sense threats. Using our animal cousins as a template, Levine teaches us how to heal from trauma by meeting our physiological needs.
Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving
Pete Walker
A must-read manual for complex trauma, Pete Walker unturns every conceivable stone in his examination of coping with and growing from interpersonal trauma.
The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity
Nadine Burke Harris, MD
Dr. Harris educates readers about the long-term physiological effects of adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs. By taking a public health perspective, she offers validation for adult survivors and warns of the all-too-common phenomenon of the abused becoming the abusers.
TRAUMA
Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself
Nedra Glover Tawwab
Nedra Tawwab has created a solid guide for well-intentioned people-pleasers and those who find themselves manipulated in relationships. She cross-examines the origins of our social anxieties and empowers us to speak up and act in our own best interests.
The Courage to be Disliked: The Japanese Phenomenon That Shows You How to Change Your Life and Achieve Real Happiness
Ichiro Kishimi
Written as a dialogue between pupil and teacher, this hidden gem introduces us to the “separation of tasks”, inviting us to tend our own emotional gardens and not our neighbors’.
RELATIONSHIPS
Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction
David Sheff
This memoir takes a painstaking look at both addiction and what it means to suffer the secondhand trauma of watching a loved one struggle in the grip of a powerful and complicated disease.
Recovery Dharma: How to Use Buddhist Practices and Principles to Heal the Suffering of Addiction
Recovery Dharma
For those seeking a recovery model rooted not in faith or spirituality, but in psychology and self-compassion, this book is for you. Recovery Dharma examines addiction through the Buddhist perspective that suffering is caused by craving and attachment, and serenity is found in the practice of mindfulness and acceptance.
ADDICTION
When Breath Becomes Air
Paul Kalanithi
For those of us who fear death, this memoir paints a portrait of a high-achieving doctor as he leans towards inner peace and acceptance of the inevitable. It offers a gentle exposure to the one aspect of life that most of us cope with by avoidance.
Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
Steven Pinker
For my social justice burnouts, Steven Pinker zooms us out to take in the whole picture of human progress, reminding us that violence is on the decline and liberalism and human welfare is steadily increasing.
The Inner Life of Animals: Love, Grief, and Compassion
Peter Wohlleben
As a vegan, I have to include this beautiful little book that sheds light on the social and emotional intelligence of our fellow animals. You’ll see yourself in their sense of humor, their habits, quirks, and their capacity to think, feel, and love.
EXISTENTIALISM
The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power
Katherine Morgan Schafler
For my high-strung comrades who thrive on excellence and control, this book offers a deep-dive into the types of perfectionism and how to infuse compassion into our process.
An Ordinary Age: Finding Your Way in a World that Expects Exceptional
Rainesford Stauffer
For my fellow Millennials, Stauffer leans into the developmental period of Emerging Adulthood (approximately ages 18-35), redefining “success” while taking into account today’s economic realities. She honors the whole spectrum of achievement and validates the pace each of us takes.
SELF-ACCEPTANCE
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents
Lindsay C. Gibson
This book identifies and validates individuals whose parents were absent, abusive, or neglectful. Gibson helps readers deconstruct family narratives, recognize enmeshed codependence, and learn how to set boundaries and self-nurture.
Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love
Sue Johnson, PhD
By examining romantic relationship through an attachment theory lens, Dr. Johnson clarifies why seemingly small moments of disconnect can pack a powerful emotional punch. With her insights, we come to recognize that the argument is rarely about the topic at hand.
FAMILY DYNAMICS
The Velvet Rage: Overcoming the Pain of Growing up Gay in a Straight Man's World
Alan Downs, PhD
A must-read for gay and bisexual men in America, this book provides cultural context for the internalized homophobia and self-criticism that gay men experience while coming of age. It also provides a blueprint for challenging the unrealistic expectations for success that gay men impress upon themselves and each other.
Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic
Esther Perel
This book examines the uniquely human phenomenon of managing one's expectations around sex while in a monogamous partnership. Perel explores the rewards and challenges of balancing security with sexual fulfillment, and normalizes the idea that sometimes these ideals are mutually exclusive.
SEXUALITY AND GENDER
What Have We Done: The Moral Injury of Our Longest Wars
David Wood
For my fellow veterans, Wood paints a picture of the regret and confusion that awaits some servicemembers as they grapple with the ethics and morals of their wartime actions. Many veterans learn they were sold on some harmful ideas, and find they need to unlearn old belief systems in order to grow as compassionate humans.
Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character
Jonathan Shay
This seminal text explores combat trauma by drawing comparisons to the unraveling of Achilles in Homer's The Iliad. A psychiatrist who treated Vietnam veterans, Shay lays out the psychological and ethical shattering that can occur when veterans remain untreated and unhealed.
MILITARY
Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation
Kristin Kobes Du Mez
Du Mez examines the history and sociology of the power brokership between Ultraconservatism and American Christianity. Scrutinizing the two groups' "you scratch my back, I scratch yours" phenomenon, the author dissects the hypocrisy of Evangelicals who favor the fighting, cussing "man's man" over Jesus, meek and mild.
Letter to a Christian Nation
Sam Harris
With refreshing candor, Sam Harris lays out the many Bible verses used to justify atrocities. By posing an argument that morality is achieved in the process of minimizing suffering, Sam invites us to consider why so many have cherry-picked a God of intolerance and violence.
Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement that Shamed a Generation of Women
Linda Kay Klein
Through interviews and her own firsthand account, Klein exposes the sexual “purity culture” movement that swept American Christianity in the 90’s and 2000’s, and is still at-large in today’s churches.
RELIGION
Breath by Breath: The Liberating Practice of Insight Meditation
Larry Rosenberg
For those who haven’t practiced sitting in silence and noticing their breath, it’s hard to describe the type of insights that are available. Rosenberg artfully invites us to watch the quality, pace, and texture of our breath in a way that teaches us what loving curiosity feels like.
Radical Compassion: Learning to Love Yourself and Your World with the Practice of RAIN
Tara Brach
Tara Brach teaches us the importance of Recognizing, Allowing, Investigating, and Nurturing our inner experiences. This book helps us learn to ground ourselves during panic attacks, emotional flashbacks, social anxiety, and other intense emotional experiences.