Books and Articles to Support You in Your Healing Journey
For some, coming to therapy is about starting, or continuing, to learn how to better manage chronic illness or issues that keep you stuck. Part of healing involves understanding more about the root of the issues you are dealing with. Knowledge allows us better understand these sources of our distress so that we can then focus our energy on identifying and utilizing effective individualized strategies to reduce that distress and reclaim our sense of self, and our lives.
The books and articles below were written to support individuals on their healing journey.
Books to Support Healing...
A Survival Guide
for Those With PTSD
A Workbook for Those who Suffer with Depression
For more than a decade I searched for an easy-to-read book that I could give to my clients - to use between our sessions - to help them to understand and cope with their PTSD symptoms.
I wanted to find a book that would take into account the fact that trauma survivors who are dealing with severe PTSD symptoms needed straight-forward and non-triggering information that would:
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Increase their understanding of PTSD
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Show them the stages of trauma healing
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Reduce fear, anxiety, and panic
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Give reassurance and normalize symptoms
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Provide simple but effective coping strategies.
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When I couldn't find what I was looking for, I started to create handouts for my clients. Over time, the handouts became this book, a resource that has helped so many handle and heal their trauma.
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Using a compassionate lens, this book takes a holistic approach to assess how depression is impacting one's mind, body, and spirit.
The exercises within help create a space between the illness and the individual - to help them remember who they are separate from their illness. Effective and practical cognitive, somatic/polyvagal, and behavioral strategies are used to decrease distress and allow for reclaiming of the self and power in the areas of life where one has some influence. (Spiritual exercises are also available for those for whom that is a fit). Radical acceptance skills are taught for the areas of life that one does not have any control over.
Overall, this book reflects my in-session work with clients - not just those who are dealing with depression - but with any client who needs to remember who they are separate from chronic illness, stress or pain, so that they can begin to reclaim themselves and their lives.​
A Comprehensive Guide For Therapists:
Understanding and Effectively Treating PTSD
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Treating PTSD: A Compassion-Focused CBT Approach
I wrote this book to provide therapists with the evidence-based information needed to understand trauma’s effects on the mind and body - as well as the phases of healing.
This book offers practical tools and interventions therapists can use with clients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms to both reduce ongoing feelings of distress and increase their sense of safety. A compassion-focused approach to processing trauma through mind, body, and spirit is explained, with step-by-step instruction.​​​
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