Literature is a dynamic resource, one that is filled with countless voices which bring us hope, inspiration, and clarity into our own experiences and challenges. Although reading on therapeutic themes (called bibliotherapy) cannot replace a therapeutic relationship, literature is an excellent supplement to any well-engaged therapy work. Here is a handful of resources my clients and myself have found helpful to assist in articulating one's concerns, supporting personal growth, and giving evidence to not being alone in human hardship. While no one book can represent a catch-all for any single topic, these moving reads offer companionship with the realities of gender, race, sex, love, death, art, acceptance, trauma, life purpose, grief, faith, society and more:

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• Managing Traumatic Stress Through Art: Drawing from the Center

• The Body Keeps The Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

• What Happened To You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing

• The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief

• Our Polyvagal World: How Safety and Trauma Change Us

• Self-Therapy: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Inner Wholeness Using IFS

• Waking The Tiger: Healing Trauma

• The Hero with a Thousand Faces

• The Four Agreements: A Toltec Wisdom Book

• Man's Search For Meaning

• When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

• Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love and Liberation

• Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation

• The Art of Loving: An Inquiry Into the Nature of Love

• Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma, and Consensual Nonmonogamy

• You and Your Gender Identity: A Guide to Discovery

• Being With Dying: Cultivating Compassion and Fearlessness in the Presence of Death

• All About Love: New Visions

• Standing At The Edge: Finding Freedom Where Fear and Courage Meet

• Siddhartha

• The Velvet Rage: Overcoming the Pain of Growing Up Gay in a Straight Man's World

• Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

• What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma

• Trauma & Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence

• The Complex PTSD Workbook: A Mind-Body Approach to Regaining Emotional Control & Becoming Whole

• The Sacred Cauldron: Psychotherapy as a Spiritual Practice

• The Gift of Therapy: An Open Letter to a New Generation of Therapists & Their Patients 

• The Ethical Slut: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships & Other Adventures

• Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment

•  In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction

• The Language of Emotions: What Your Feelings Are Trying To Tell You

• Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto

• Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good

• My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies

• The Book of Symbols, from the Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism

• Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences

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  How I Stayed Alive When My Brain Was Trying To Kill Me: One Person's Guide to Suicide Prevention

• Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents 

• The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living

• Sacred Medicine: Exploring the Psychedelic Hero's Journey

• The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When The World Overwhelms You

• Darkness Before Dawn: Redefining the Journey Through Depression

• The Body Is Not An Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

• Healing Rage​: Women Making Inner Peace Possible

• The Four Pivots: Reimagining Justice, Reimagining Ourselves

• EMDR Essentials: A Guide for Clients and Therapists

• Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

• Queering Psychedelics: From Oppression to Liberation in Psychedelic Medicine

• Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism

• No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

• Always Enough, Never Done: Volume I: Heal Your Nervous System, Turn Wounds Into Wisdom, and Cultivate Your Inner Badass