We all need help sometimes, especially if we have past traumas and old wounds to deal with. At such times, it’s important to talk to someone, whether it’s a trusted friend or a professional therapist.
However, books can also offer countless healing insights from experts and people who have experience dealing with trauma.
Books About Trauma
Below are 10 books about trauma that can help you begin to heal from past pain.
1. The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
Dr. Bessel van der Kolk uses scientific research to show how trauma reshapes the body and brain, affecting our capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust.
From generational trauma to PTSD, this book explores innovative treatment options that can activate the brain’s natural neuroplasticity, as well as the power of relationships to both hurt and heal.
2. What Happened to You? by Bruce D. Perry and Oprah Winfrey
This book seeks to change the way we view trauma by asking not “What’s wrong with you?” but instead, “What happened to you?”
Co-author Oprah Winfrey shares traumas from her own past, while Dr. Perry shows us how understanding our pasts and no longer blaming ourselves can clear a path to a better future.
3. It Didn’t Start with You by Mark Wolynn
Mark Wolynn explores the concept and consequences of inherited trauma, an idea that’s still relatively new, even though many of us have lived with its effects for generations.
This book explains how even if the person who suffered the original trauma has died, hidden emotional legacies become hidden and encoded in our gene expression and can take a toll on our emotional and physical health.
Wolynn offers a prescriptive approach that includes visualization, active imagination, and direct dialogue to create pathways to reconnection and better health.
4. Getting Past Your Past by Francine Shapiro
Francine Shapiro is the creator of EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapy, which is used to treat emotional symptoms that follow trauma.
In this book, Shapiro uses detailed examples and exercises to show you how our personalities develop and why we become trapped into feeling, believing and acting in ways that don’t serve us.
5. Waking the Tiger by Peter A. Levine
Why do wild animals rarely experience trauma, despite routinely facing life-threatening danger? That’s the question posed and answered by Waking the Tiger.
Peter A. Levine explains the dynamics that make wild animals virtually immune to traumatic symptoms, and seeks to normalize our own symptoms as well as the steps needed to heal them.
Through a series of exercises you’ll learn to focus on bodily sensations and build a heightened awareness of your own trauma so you can begin to heal.
6. Happy Days by Gabrielle Bernstein
Author and spiritual leader Gabrielle Bernstein dares you to imagine who you could be if you were free of fear.
In Happy Days, Gabby shows readers how to get unstuck from those patterns that make them unhappy, plus 9 transformational techniques for serenity and genuine happiness, including “reparenting” strategies and bodywork practices.
7. Forgiving What You Can’t Forget by Lysa TerKeurst
Forgiving can be hard, even more so when the person who’s hurt you has no intention of saying sorry. But as Lysa TerKeurst shows in this book, you deserve to stop suffering for what other people have done.
You’ll learn how to move on even when the other person refuses to change, free yourself from the pain of your past, and restore your trust and vulnerability so you don’t keep yourself from being happy and present in your current relationships.
8. The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook by Matthew McKay
This workbook offers step-by-step exercises that will help you build skills in distress tolerance, mindfulness, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness.
These four areas are key to effective dialectical behavior therapy, which can help you manage overwhelming emotions and handle a number of other mental health problems.
9. Trauma and Recovery by Judith Lewis Herman
In Trauma and Recovery, Judith Lewis Herman delivers her own cutting-edge research to demonstrate the parallels between private terrors, such as rape or domestic abuse, and public traumas, such as terrorism.
Ultimately, Herman argues that psychological trauma can be understood only in a social context.
10. Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker
Author Pete Walker has complex PTSD, but over the years, he’s discovered many silver linings on the road to recovery and has managed to reduce his symptoms.
He explores emotional flashbacks, the four different types of trauma survivors, how to differentiate the outer critic from the inner critic, and much more to help you in your ow healing journey.
Reading Books for Trauma
Reading books about trauma, in addition to professional guidance if needed, can give you the knowledge and power to reclaim your strength.
You may also want to check out our lists of books on mental health and books about depression for more support and insights from experts.
Did you find this post helpful? Let us know in the comments below!
If you enjoyed this post, then you might also like:
- How Writing Can Heal Trauma, Abuse and Emotional Pain with Elizabeth Garrison
- 10 Books Like Sharp Objects That Deliver Psychological Thrills
- 21 Helpful Books About Depression that Offer Support
- The Tortured Artist: Is There Really a Link Between Depression and Creativity?
As a blog writer for TCK Publishing, Kaelyn loves crafting fun and helpful content for writers, readers, and creative minds alike. She has a degree in International Affairs with a minor in Italian Studies, but her true passion has always been writing. Working remotely allows her to do even more of the things she loves, like traveling, cooking, and spending time with her family.
Great selection to read about the topic. Well done Kaelyn.
Thanks Pamela, I’m glad you like the list! Hope you enjoy reading some of these. :) I personally found The Body Keeps the Score to be very eye-opening.