7 Top Books That Will Help You Heal Trauma
Updated May 27, 2023
Reading books on trauma has been a powerful part of my healing process.
They’ve helped me feel:
Understood
Validated
No longer alone
They’ve provided valuable resources and self-help tools I’ve used to heal and grow into my true self.
I’m excited to share them with you.
But before I do, let’s define the term “trauma” because there are different types. You may have been subject to the effects of more than one without fully realizing it.
What Is Trauma?
Trauma is commonly categorized into three types, which I learned from my own work in therapy and from the many trauma books I’ve read:
Shock Trauma — An overwhelming emotional response to a traumatic event like an accident, sexual assault, or natural disaster. Shock trauma sometimes resolves on its own in a few weeks. But it can evolve into Post-Trauma Stress Disorder (PTSD) if symptoms continue for more than a month.
Complex Trauma—Complex Post-Trauma Stress Disorder (C-PTSD) is a subset of PTSD that can occur when a person experiences chronic, long term trauma symptoms resulting from ongoing trauma like abuse, war, or human trafficking.
Developmental Trauma—According to the American Psychological Association, the lesser known Developmental Trauma Disorder (DTD), sometimes called “relational trauma,” develops between conception and age five. It occurs when a child’s developmental needs go unmet. The symptoms are broader in scope and do not qualify for a PTSD diagnosis. Childhood symptoms can continue into adulthood.
Some psychologists believe in our earliest years — from conception to around 5 years of age — all trauma is both “shock” and “developmental” in nature because it affects neural development and a child’s capacity for self-regulation of the nervous system as well as identity formation.
An individual can experience a single form of trauma or all three types.
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1. Healing from Trauma: A Survivor’s Guide to Understanding Your Symptoms and Reclaiming Your Life by Jasmin Lee Cori
A kind, understanding, gentle voice permeates Healing from Trauma. I recommend it highly for that reason especially. Trauma survivors often need to feel that kind of loving attunement.
Jasmin Lee Cori, the author, is a psychotherapist and trauma survivor herself. Her lived experience spills through every word she writes.
Cori says:
“Healing from Trauma is written for people who have been through significant life trauma and want help in understanding trauma and learning what they can do to further their healing.”
This book does not contain trauma stories so may be less likely to trigger the reader.
The first four chapters provide an overview of trauma. The remaining chapters take you through the journey of healing. Each chapter contains exercises for understanding and healing different aspects of trauma and a “ten points to remember” synopsis.
Healing from Trauma offers an in-depth understanding of trauma. It also identifies the tasks of healing, shares self-care tools, and provides guideposts to help you understand where you’re at in the healing process.
Published in 2009, Healing from Trauma is not the most recent book on the topic. But from this survivor’s perspective, it’s one of the best.
2. Healing Developmental Trauma, How Early Trauma Affects Self-Regulation, Self-Image, and the Capacity for Relationship by Laurence Heller, PhD and Aline Lapierre, PsyD.
This book and the next provide brilliant adaptations and modernizations of the “Five Character Structures” originally formulated by Wilhelm Reich, a prominent student of Freud. It specifically addresses developmental trauma.
The personality style or patterns presented in these works represent automatic, body-based reactions — conditioned responses from childhood known as “survival strategies”— which you employ to protect yourself from distress when you feel overwhelmed.
This book is a little more scholarly than the next one and more provides specific context for clinicians. But it is still highly readable for non-professional readers.
Learning about the five different patterns identified in this book was life-changing for me.
3. The Five Personality Patterns, Your Guide to Understanding Yourself and Others and Developing Emotional Maturity by Steven Kessler
This is another remarkable adaptation of Reich’s “Five Character Structures” expressly written for everyday people rather than clinicians.
This book focuses on the kinds of developmental trauma experienced by a huge number of children. Some are affected to a lesser degree and others find their life dominated by unhelpful survival responses.
Children typically carry these patterns into adulthood. So this book is very much for adults. In addition to explaining the patterns in precise detail, it includes multiple suggestions for how to heal each one. At times, it injects a spiritual perspective into the discussion.
Read my full synopsis of the book here: The 5 Personality Patterns: Which One Fits You?
4. In An Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness by Peter A. Levine, PhD
If you’re a nerd like me and want to understand the psychology and science behind trauma, this book is for you.
In An Unspoken Voice is a compendium of Levine’s life-long investigation into body-based trauma therapy and the application of his therapeutic approach called Somatic Experiencing®, which he briefly describes like this:
“Somatic Experiencing® as I call the method, helps to create physiological, sensate and affective states that transform those of fear and helplessness. It does this by accessing various instinctual reaction’s through one’s awareness of physical body sensations.”
Relevant to any type of trauma, Levine’s work helps people listen to the unspoken voice of their own bodies and release blocked energies trapped within the body at the time of trauma.
This book is a mix of psychology, science, and occasional patient stories. It also includes a series of five simple exercises intended to help the reader cultivate awareness, interoception, and embodiment.
Reading this book helped me understand how and why somatic-based therapy works.
5. Healing Trauma, A Pioneering Program for Restoring the Wisdom of Your Body by Peter A. Levine, PhD
This book details Levine’s Twelve-Phase Healing Trauma Program.
It’s a small book, 90 pages in length, that guides you step-by-step through healing exercises like finding your body’s boundaries, grounding, centering, and others.
It includes digital access to 12 guided Somatic Experiencing® exercises.
I found the explanations in this book and the exercises extremely helpful when I first began my healing journey.
6. The Body Keeps the Score, Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel Van Der Kolk, MD
Parts of this book are written in memoir style as leading trauma expert Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk recounts his three decades of experience treating survivors of shock trauma and the research he’s conducted over the years.
Van Der Kolk explains how trauma reshapes your brain and body and thus can limit your capacity for pleasure, engagement, and self-regulation. He shares a variety of healing modalities, including therapies and lifestyle changes like collective movement, music, and ritual that employ neuroplasticity as a means of retraining and regaining brain functions.
This book also appealed to the nerd in me. But, it contains eight chapters on paths to recovery as well. They showed me new possibilities for healing.
7. The Emotionally Absent Mother: How to Recognize and Heal the Invisible Effects of Childhood Emotional Neglect by Jasmin Lee Cori, MS, LPC
Like Cori’s Healing from Trauma, this book is written in a caring, conversational tone.
It’s a self-help guide that examines what a child needs from a mother, what happens when mothering goes wrong, and how to heal the mother wounds. Most chapters contain exercises to help you understand and heal your relationship with your mother and yourself.
The healing practices in this book have helped me tremendously.
Concluding Thoughts
These are some of the most important books in the field of trauma. They are my top picks because they have personally helped me.
If you suffer from trauma, my heart is with you. I hope you’ll feel supported and encouraged to see so many healing resources are now available to trauma survivors.
Trauma is no longer a life-sentence. We all have the innate capacity to heal trauma. Unlike just a few decades ago, we now have far more information, resources and tools to help us do so.
Thank you for your presence, I know your time is precious! Don’t forget to sign up for Wild Arisings, my twice monthly letters from the heart filled with insights, inspiration, and ideas to help you connect with and live from your truest self.
You might also like to check out my Self-Care Shop. May you be happy, well, and safe – always. With love, Sandra
