Resources

Recommended Books

These are books that we have read and found to be very helpful. Some are more accessible than others, but all provided valuable insight. Workbooks are underlined.

Trauma & Neurobiological Resources

• The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk

• Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma by Peter Levine 
• Mending the Soul: Understanding and Healing Abuse by Steven R. Tracy

• Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence–From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror by Judith L. Herman

• Growing Beyond Survival: A Self-Help Toolkit for Managing Traumatic Stress by Elizabeth G. Vermilyea

• The Developing Mind, Third Edition: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are by Daniel J. Siegel M.D., Fred Stella, et al.

• It Didn’t Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle by Mark Wolynn

• Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation by Daniel J. Siegel 

• Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Overcoming Internal Self-Alienation by Janina Fisher

• The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation by Stephen W. Porges, Joe Hempel, et al.

Vital Research Studies

• The ACE Study – important because it demonstrated the impact of adverse childhood experiences on later health outcomes.

   

• Total Social Isolation in Monkeys–important because it demonstrated the significant role early attachment played in the development of mammals.

   

• Childhood Trauma, the Neurobiology of Adaptation, and “Use-dependent” Development of the Brain: How “States” Become “Traits”– important because it demonstrated that chronic stress due to trauma physically altered the development of a child’s brain in a maladpative manner.