We’ve lost the first quarter of 2023 to time, the great gobbler. If like many others your new year’s resolutions have gotten away from you, here’s help and a gentle nudge to get back on track. Whatever you’re struggling with, there’s a book for it. This is not an exhaustive list but here are seven books to start you off. Turn your year around and start living your best life now.
Boundaries
Healthy boundaries. We all know we should have them in order to achieve work/life balance, cope with toxic people, and enjoy rewarding relationships with partners, friends, and family. But what do “healthy boundaries” really mean and how can we successfully express our needs, say “no,” and be assertive without offending others?
Set Boundaries, Find Peace by Nedra Tawwab
Licensed counselor, sought-after relationship expert, and one of the most influential therapists on Instagram Nedra Glover Tawwab demystifies this complex topic for today’s world. In a relatable and inclusive tone, Set Boundaries, Find Peace presents simple-yet-powerful ways to establish healthy boundaries in all aspects of life.
Rooted in the latest research and best practices used in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), these techniques help us identify and express our needs clearly and without apology–and unravel a root problem behind codependency, power struggles, anxiety, depression, burnout, and more
Toxic Family
Do you have a toxic family member? Do you feel like cutting ties with this person—even as painful and scary as that may sound—would dramatically increase your well-being and improve your life? You’re not alone. Severing ties with a family member can be devastating; and cutting this toxic person out of your life may bring up feelings of guilt and uncertainty—especially if you feel judged by others regarding your decision. Fortunately, you can free yourself from this toxic family member in a healthy, responsible, and liberating way.
Adult Survivors of Toxic Family Members by Sherrie Campell
In Adult Survivors of Toxic Family Members, psychologist and toxic-family survivor Sherrie Campbell offers effective strategies for setting strong boundaries after ending contact with a toxic family member, and provides powerful tools to help you heal from shame, self-doubt, and stigma.
You’ll find the validation you need to embrace your decision with pride and acknowledgement of your self-worth. You’ll learn how to let go of negative thoughts and feelings. And finally, you’ll develop the skills needed to rediscover self-care, self-love, self-reliance, and healthy loving relationships.
Whether you’re ready to sever ties with a toxic family member, or already have, this book will help guide you, every step of the way.
Generational / Family of Origin Trauma
Depression. Anxiety. Chronic Pain. Phobias. Obsessive thoughts. The evidence is compelling: the roots of these difficulties may not reside in our immediate life experience or in chemical imbalances in our brains—but in the lives of our parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents. The latest scientific research, now making headlines, supports what many have long intuited—that traumatic experience can be passed down through generations.
It Didn’t Start With You by Mark Wolynn
It Didn’t Start with You builds on the work of leading experts in post-traumatic stress, including Mount Sinai School of Medicine neuroscientist Rachel Yehuda and psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score. Even if the person who suffered the original trauma has died, or the story has been forgotten or silenced, memory and feelings can live on. These emotional legacies are often hidden, encoded in everything from gene expression to everyday language, and they play a far greater role in our emotional and physical health than has ever before been understood.
As a pioneer in the field of inherited family trauma, Mark Wolynn has worked with individuals and groups on a therapeutic level for over twenty years. It Didn’t Start with You offers a pragmatic and prescriptive guide to his method, the Core Language Approach. Diagnostic self-inventories provide a way to uncover the fears and anxieties conveyed through everyday words, behaviors, and physical symptoms. Techniques for developing a genogram or extended family tree create a map of experiences going back through the generations. And visualization, active imagination, and direct dialogue create pathways to reconnection, integration, and reclaiming life and health.
It Didn’t Start With You is a transformative approach to resolving longstanding difficulties that in many cases, traditional therapy, drugs, or other interventions have not had the capacity to touch.
Overthinking
Overthinking is one of the biggest causes of unhappiness. If you’ve spent countless nights grinding your teeth and turning over worst case scenarios in your mind, here’s something you might not believe. It can be stopped! Your mind can absolutely stop being your enemy and great tormentor and become a chill and serene friend. You just need to find the right tools.
Stop Overthinking by Nick Trenton
Overcome negative thought patterns, reduce stress, and live a worry-free life.
Don’t get stuck in a never-ending thought loop. Stay present and keep your mind off things that don’t matter, and never will.
Break free of your self-imposed mental prison.
Stop Overthinking is a book that understands what you’ve been through, the exhausting situation you’ve put yourself into, and how you lose your mind in the trap of anxiety and stress. Acclaimed author Nick Trenton will walk you through the obstacles with detailed and proven techniques to help you rewire your brain, control your thoughts, and change your mental habits. Stop agonizing over the past and trying to predict the future.
Powerful ways to stop ruminating and dwelling on negative thoughts.
How to be aware of your negative spiral triggers, identify and recognize your inner anxieties, how to keep the focus on relaxation and action, proven methods to overcome stress attacks, learn to declutter your mind and find focus.
Unleash your unlimited potential and start living.
No more self-deprecating talk. No more sleepless nights with racing thoughts. Free your mind from overthinking and achieve more, feel better, and unleash your potential. Finally be able to live in the present moment.
People Pleasing
Are You Too Nice? If you find it hard to be assertive, directly ask for what you want, or say “no” to others, then you just might be suffering from too much niceness.
Not Nice. Stop People Pleasing, Staying Silent & Feeling Guilty by Dr. Aziz Gazipura
In this controversial book, world-renowned confidence expert, Dr. Aziz Gazipura, takes an incisive look at the concept of nice.
Through his typical style, Dr. Aziz uses engaging stories, humor, and disarming vulnerability to cut through the nice conditioning and liberate the most bold, expressive, authentic version of you.
You’ll discover how to: Easily say “no” when you want to and need to, confidently and effectively ask for what you want, speak up more freely in all your relationships, and eliminate feelings of guilt, anxiety, and worry about what others will think.
Self-healing
Adverse experiences and trauma in childhood live with us, resulting in whole body dysfunction. They activate harmful stress responses that keep us stuck engaging in patterns of codependency, emotional immaturity, and trauma bonds. Unless addressed, these self-sabotaging behaviors can quickly become cyclical, leaving people feeling unhappy, unfulfilled, and unwell.
How To Do The Work by Dr. Nicole LePera
As a clinical psychologist, Dr. Nicole LePera often found herself frustrated by the limitations of traditional psychotherapy. Wanting more for her patients—and for herself—she began a journey to develop a united philosophy of mental, physical and spiritual wellness that equips people with the interdisciplinary tools necessary to heal themselves. After experiencing the life-changing results herself, she began to share what she’d learned with others—and soon “The Holistic Psychologist” was born.
Now, Dr. LePera is ready to share her much-requested protocol with the world. In How to Do the Work, she offers both a manifesto for self healing as well as an essential guide to creating a more vibrant, authentic, and joyful life. Drawing on the latest research from a diversity of scientific fields and healing modalities, Dr. LePera offers readers the support and tools that will allow them to break free from destructive behaviors to reclaim and recreate their lives.
Nothing short of a paradigm shift, this is a celebration of empowerment that will forever change the way we approach mental wellness and self-care.
Trauma
Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence.
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D
Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world’s foremost experts on trauma, has spent over three decades working with survivors.
In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers’ capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. He explores innovative treatments—from neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga—that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain’s natural neuroplasticity.
Based on Dr. van der Kolk’s own research and that of other leading specialists, The Body Keeps the Score exposes the tremendous power of our relationships both to hurt and to heal—and offers new hope for reclaiming lives.
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