Book Reccomendations
Books can supplement your therapy experience. Reading someone’s story can help you feel less alone. You may learn from how someone else approached their own struggles, or gain a new perspective after seeing a situation through someone else’s eyes.
Below is a list of books our therapists personally recommend for various mental health concerns. Books are organized in relevant categories, in no particular order.
Please note that readers may have different perspectives on these books or authors. Your experience reading a book may differ from mine or another reader’s. Please practice caution when reading trauma narratives, especially if you have your own trauma that you are working through. If you are in crisis, please call 988.
Healthy Body Image
*Please note that many of the books in the “Healthy Body Image” section are aimed towards readers who are assigned female at birth.
- Body Positive Power – Megan Jayne Crabbe
- Body Respect – Linda Bacon
- Health at Every Size – Linda Bacon
- Come as You Are – Emily Nagoski
- The Body is Not an Apology – Sonya Renee Taylor
- The Anti-Diet – Christy Harrison
- Women Don’t Owe You Pretty – Florence Given
- The Beauty Myth – Naomi Wolf
- Fearing The Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fatphobia – Sabrina Strings
Anxiety/Depression
- Self-Compassion – Kristin Neff
- The Upward Spiral – David DeVries
- First We Make the Beast Beautiful – Sarah Wilson
- How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy – Jenny Odell
- Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy – David D. Burns
Trauma & Abuse
- Getting Past Your Past – Francine Shapiro
- The Body Keeps the Score – Bessel Van der Kolk
- The Courage to Heal (book and workbook) – Laura Davis
- Life After Trauma – Dena Rosenbloom & Mary Beth Willilams
- It Didn’t Start with You – Mark Wolynn
- Know My Name – Chanel Miller
- Self Therapy – Jay Earley
Relationships
- The Ethical Slut – Janet Hardy
- Daring Greatly – Brene Brown
- Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work – John Gottman
- Eight Dates – John Gottman & Nan Silver
- Secrets of a Passionate Marriage – David Schnarch
- Nonviolent Communication – Marshall Rosenberg
- Say What You Mean – Oren Jay Sofer, Joseph Goldstein
Grief, Loss & Bereavement
- Bearing the Unbearable – Joanne Cacciatore, PhD
Family Members with Mental Health Concerns
- Toxic Parents – Craig Buck & Susan Forward
- Surviving a Borderline Parent – Kimberlee Roth & Freda Friedman
- Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents – Lindsay Gibson
- Borderline Mother – David Lawson
- Stop Walking on Eggshells Workbook – Randi Kreger & James Paul Shirley
Anti-Racism & Lived Experiences of People of Color
- The Color of Law – Richard Rothstein
- So You Want to Talk About Race – Ijeoma Oluo
- Women, Race, and Class – Angela Davis
- Automating Inequality – Virginia Eubanks
- The Distance Between Us – Reyna Grande
- The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down – Anne Fadiman
- Born a Crime – Trevor Noah
- My Grandmother’s Hands – Resmaa Menakem
LGBTQIA+
- Queer InJustice – Ritchie, Mogul & Whitlock
Women's Issues
- Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men – Caroline Criado Perez
Men's Issues
- I Don’t Want to Talk About It – Terrance Real
- The Group: Seven Widowed Fathers Re-Imagine Life – Rosenstein & Yopp