Additional Resources

This is a small selection of books and articles by topic that many find helpful on the path toward growth and healing. Click on the topic to the right to be taken to the list of resources for that topic.

General Emotional and Mental Health

  • Nedra Glover Tawwab, Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself. This book is helpful for those that struggle to stand up for themselves or set healthy boundaries in work or with loved ones. She also has a helpful Instagram feed and website.
  • Phil Chanin, “A Foremost Goal of Psychotherapy: Healing Shame.” This is a helpful article from psychotherapist Phil Chanin about shame, the “that deep-seated and painful belief that something is wrong with me, that I’m irreparably flawed, that I’ll never be okay, and that others can see that I’m inferior.”
  • Nicole LePera, How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self. This book is helpful for those that want to better understand why they fall into certain unhealthy patterns or feel stuck where they are in life. LePera covers how things we learned in childhood might be impacting our struggles today. She also has a helpful Instagram feed and website. While her work can be very helpful, particularly for those who do not have access to high-quality, affordable psychotherapy, LePera is likely overly optimistic about the potential for people to heal via personal effort, and under-appreciates the benefits of psychotherapy and psychopharmacology.

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Crises/Major Challenges

Depression

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Grief

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Relationships

  • John Gottman, The Relationship Cure: A 5 Step Guide to Strengthening Your Marriage, Family, and Friendships. John Gottman is one of the leading writers and researchers on healthy relationships and his work is based on decades of evidence-based research. He also has a helpful website with a lot of resources.
  • Todd Baratz, LMHC is a certified sex therapist and relationship expert. His Instagram feed, podcast, and programs can be helpful for people who are interested in healthy, honest relationships, and ongoing healing and recovery. He is a little sassy, so if you like that vibe, he is a particularly good fit. Not super gentle and touchy-feely but still good! He also has a book, How to Love Someone Without Losing Your Mind: Forget the Fairy Tale and Get Real that many find helpful.
  • Melody Beattie, The New Codependency: Help and Guidance for Today’s Generation. If you find that your relationships are characterized by trying to take care of others, working very hard to try to get others to act a certain way or treat you a certain way, and that you often are not getting your own relational needs met because you put others before yourself, you may be in a codependent relationship. This book will help you understand this dynamic and provide paths to change and healing.
  • Terrance Real, The New Rules of Marriage: What You Need to Know to Make Love Work. This book is addressed to women, but partners of any gender will find it helpful to understand and navigate committed relationships and marriage. This book focuses on dynamics in a heterosexual relationship. This book addresses a common dynamic in relationships where one parter (usually but not always the female partner in a heterosexual relationship) is more flexible and doing more work, but also frustrated and angry because they are doing more, while the other partner is less engaged and open to change (usually but the male partner in a heterosexual relationship), and just wants their partner to quit complaining so much. This book will be most helpful to couples where they are both open to change.
  • Elizabeth Gish, “I Want to Stay with my Partner but I Can’t Get Them to Change,” is a helpful article to consider what to do if you want to stay with your partner, but they have major issues that you aren’t sure if you can live with indefinitely. Helpful when it comes to issues of addiction, narcissism, emotional neglect, abuse, infidelity, or serious mental health issues.

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Betrayal/Abandonment in a Romantic Relationship

  • Esther Perel, The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity. This book can be helpful to understand the complexity of infidelity and relationship norm violations. Perel does not excuse infidelity, but does make the case that it is often more complicated than it appears. The book can be helpful in gaining perspective about relationships and infidelity. If you have recently experienced a relationship norm violation and are feeling vulnerable or sensitive about it, this book may be triggering and you may wish to wait to read it until the pain is less raw.
  • Susan Anderson, The Journey from Abandonment to Healing: Turn the End of a Relationship into the Beginning of a New Life. This is a helpful book for someone who has gone through a divorce or breakup, particularly when the end of the relationship is surprising or feels like it is out of the blue. The chapters cover five stages: shattering, withdraw, internalizing the rejection, rage, and lifting. If you are experiencing the end of a relationship that feels shocking, devastating, and you aren’t sure how you will survive it, this book is a good place to start. It is particularly helpful that the author herself experienced this, so she does not approach this as an outsider.
  • Morgan Johnson, Rebuilding Trust: Guided Therapy Techniques and Activities to Restore Love, Trust, and Intimacy in Your Relationship. This book is helpful both for therapists and for couples that are trying to work through significant relationship norm violations such as sexual infidelity, emotional affairs, systematic dishonesty, or hidden addictions. She also has a very helpful Instagram account.

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Divorce

  • Gabriel Cohen, Storms Can’t Hurt the Sky: A Buddhist Path Through Divorce. While this author discusses his divorce from the perspective of his Buddhist identity, many people going through or struggling with divorce will find his reflections and writing helpful.
  • Susan Anderson, The Journey from Abandonment to Healing: Turn the End of a Relationship into the Beginning of a New Life. This is a helpful book for someone who has gone through a divorce or breakup, particularly when the end of the relationship is surprising or feels like it is out of the blue. The chapters cover five stages: shattering, withdraw, internalizing the rejection, rage, and lifting. If you are experiencing the end of a relationship that feels shocking, devastating, and you aren’t sure how you will survive it, this book is a good place to start. It is particularly helpful that the author herself experienced this, so she does not approach this as an outsider.
  • For those that are finding divorce to be traumatic and/or heartbreaking, some people find Pema Chodron’s When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times helpful. Her writings are from a Buddhist perspective, but you don’t need to be Buddhist to appreciate her perspective and guidance as you feel like things are falling apart around you.
  • Claire Masurel, Two Homes. This is an illustrated book for younger children that normalizes having two homes after parents get divorced. The characters in the book are white and parents in the book are a mom and a dad.

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Narcissism

  • Nancy McWilliams, “Narcissistic Personalities,” pages 176-195 in Psychoanalytic Diagnosis, Second Edition: Understanding Personality Structure in the Clinical Process. This is a clinical book, but McWilliams provides an excellent overview of narcissistic personalities that is grounded in clinical experience and research. Many people who were raised by a narcissistic parent or have been/are in a romantic relationship with someone who exhibits narcissistic tendencies find this description helpful and clarifying. It is important to recognize that the framing of narcissism in popular literature and presented on social media is often not grounded in research, but rather in particular people’s experiences. It can still be helpful, but it is important to rely on resources from professionals who have studied and treated people with narcissistic personality structures. This book is also available as an audiobook on Audible.
  • Margalis Fjelstad, Stop Caretaking the Borderline or Narcissist: How to End the Drama and Get On with Life. This book has practical, helpful advice for someone who is in a relationship with someone who exhibits characteristics of either narcissism or borderline personality disorder. The person does not need to officially be diagnosed with this in order for the book to be helpful. The relationship can be a romantic one, friendship, or familial. There is also a section that covers if you should continue this relationship or if it is time to reduce or end contact with this person.
  • Elizabeth Gish, Is My Partner a Narcissist? This is an article on our website that is intended for people who are wondering if their partner is a narcissist, if recovery is possible, and what, if anything, can be done to support recovery for a narcissistic partner.

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Codependency

  • Melody Beattie, The New Codependency: Help and Guidance for Today’s Generation. If you find that your relationships are characterized by trying to take care of others, working very hard to try to get others to act a certain way or treat you a certain way, and that you often are not getting your own relational needs met because you put others before yourself, you may be in a codependent relationship or have codependent tendencies. This book will help you understand this dynamic and provide paths to change and healing.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

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Adult Children of Alcoholics/Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families

  • Daily Affirmations: Strengthening My Recovery. Meditations for Adult Children of Alcoholics and/or Dysfunctional Families. This is a great “starter” book for people who grew up in a family where there was an alcoholic, someone who struggled with substance abuse, or where the family was generally dysfunctional (often, but not always, including substance abuse). What seemed/seems like normal while growing up, turns out not to be so normal and we discover that it impacts our relationships and life even after we are an adult and move out of our childhood home. This book includes daily encouragements, reflections, and affirmations that invite us to begin to recognize and shift patterns, while being compassionate and caring to ourselves.

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Miscarriage/Pregnancy Loss

  • Jessica Berger Gross, About What Was Lost: Twenty Writers on Miscarriage, Healing, and Hope. This book can help those who have experienced a miscarriage to feel less alone. People who are still feeling very emotional or vulnerable about a miscarriage may find this triggering.
  • Elizabeth Gish has written an article here, “When Pregnancy Loss is Devastating,” with guidance for those facing very difficult or repeat pregnancy loss.
  • Jessica Zucker, I Had a Miscarriage: A Memoir, a Movement. This is written by a therapist who had a miscarriage. She has done a lot of important work to destigmatize miscarriage. People who are still feeling very emotional or vulnerable about a miscarriage may find this triggering. She also has an Instagram feed and has written a range of articles on miscarriage and pregnancy loss.
  • Pink Elephant is an organization focused on support and advocacy after miscarriage and pregnancy loss. They provide resources and information for both mental health as well as issues related to the medical aspect of miscarriage and pregnancy loss.
  • Tommy’s is an organization that offers information on miscarriage both in terms of the medical issues with recurrent losses, as well as the mental health challenges involved in miscarriage and pregnancy loss. They have a Facebook support group.
  • The Worst Girl Gang Ever is an organization founded by two women who have experienced losses that helps offer support after pregnancy loss and miscarriage. They have written a book by the same title, have a helpful Instagram account, a podcast, and host support groups.

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Infertility

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Trauma

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Addiction

  • Gabor Maté. In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction. Author argues that addiction is best understood the result of societal structure, personal history, including trauma and abandonment, emotional and neurological development, brain chemistry, and drugs themselves. He discusses problems with current addiction responses and treatments and suggests alternatives ways to understand and respond to addiction. He emphasizes that addiction is not a personal failing or related to personal will.

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Purity Culture/Sexual Purity Teachings

  • Sara Moslener, Virgin Nation: Sexual Purity and American Adolescence. This book sketches out the sexual purity movement/purity culture that arose in evangelicalism in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s. It is an academic and historical book. But, it can be helpful for those that experienced purity culture, and feel as though they were harmed by it, to understand how it developed and where it came from.
  • Linda Kay Klein, Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement that Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free. This book is less academic than Virgin Nation. It discusses the larger purity movement, but also is part memoir by the author who was a part of the purity movement. This book is helpful to explain what was going on and to not feel alone. One thing to note is that the book does not offer a path forward, so some people feel lost afterward. Bromleigh McCleneghan and Nadia Boltz-Weber’s books below can help with next steps or new ways of thinking about sexuality within Christianity.
  • Emily Joy Allison, #ChurchToo: How Purity Culture Upholds Abuse and How to Find Healing. This book is part memoir, part critique of purity culture and sexism within Christian churches, and part guide to healing. The author discusses her own experience of abuse and draws from interviews with many other survivors. This book will help those who grew up in or around purity culture/abstinence-only teachings feel less alone. It provides a Christian-focused path toward healing and overcoming the shame that purity culture promotes in the name of Christianity.
  • Elizabeth Gish has written several academic articles on purity culture. These are not a good starting place, as they are written for an academic audience. But, for those who are interested in more academic or “deep dive” investigations of these teachings and theologies, you can read Elizabeth’s articles here: “When Purity Cannot Save Us: On Matter out of Place and Democratic Hope,” Journal of Theology and Sexuality, April 2024; “Are You a ‘Trashable’ Styrofoam Cup?”: Harm and Damage Rhetoric in the Contemporary American Sexual Purity Movement, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 2018, “Producing High Priests and Princesses: The Father-Daughter Relationship in the Christian Sexual Purity Movement,” Religions, 2016.
  • Elizabeth Gish and her colleague Kathryn House have compiled a bibliography on purity culture, which was published in the Journal of Theology and Sexuality, April 2024. As of mid-2024, it is the most comprehensive collection of scholarly, clinical, and popular writing on purity culture. You can view that as a PDF here.
  • Erica Smith has been a sexuality educator for nearly a quarter century. While she focuses on people who are recovering from or leaving purity culture, her sex-positive and shame-free resources are helpful to anyone growing up in a culture that has confusing and conflicting messages about sexuality and relationships (which is most people!). She provides support groups, workbooks such as My Sexual Values Workbook or Very Basic Sex Ed 101, one-on-one consultations, as well as a great Instagram feed.
  • The Go Ask Alice! website is helpful to get secular information about questions related to bodies and sexuality.

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Deconstruction/Leaving Your Faith

  • Michelle Collins, Into the Gray: The Mental and Emotional Aftermath of Spiritual Deconstruction. This author discusses her journey through deconstructing her Christian faith, addressing not only the theological challenges but also the practical ones. Deconstructing can be very challenging and this book offers encouragement and support to those who have gone through this, or want to understand the process better. There is some controversy around this author’s treatment of issues of race, diversity, inclusion, and equity, so while her book is has been helpful to many, be aware that it may not be suitable as the only book on deconstruction you engage with.
  • Laura Anderson, When Religion Hurts You: Healing from Religious Trauma and the Impact of High-Control Religion. Written by a therapist who also has first-hand experience of religious trauma. This is a good book to start with both for people trying to understand and recovery from religious trauma, as well as therapists and pastors that are interested in helping people heal from religious trauma. She is the founder of the Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery and co-founder of the Religious Trauma Institute.
  • Josie McSkimming, Leaving Christian Fundamentalism and the Reconstruction of Identity, Routledge, 2016. This book is pretty academic, so it isn’t going to be light beach reading. That said, it does a good job of discussing a range of stories from those who have left Christian fundamentalism, which can include evangelical Christianity as well. It doesn’t provide “answers,” but for professionals and those who are thinking about or have left fundamentalists churches, it can be a helpful book to explore what that is like and how people change after they have left. It can help people leaving high-demand religious feel less alone.

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Religious Trauma

  • Laura Anderson, When Religion Hurts You: Healing from Religious Trauma and the Impact of High-Control Religion. Written by a therapist who also has first-hand experience of religious trauma. This is a good book to start with both for people trying to understand and recovery from religious trauma, as well as therapists and religious leaders that are interested in helping people heal from religious trauma. She is the founder of the Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery and co-founder of the Religious Trauma Institute.
  • Michelle Collins, Into the Gray: The Mental and Emotional Aftermath of Spiritual Deconstruction. This author discusses her journey through deconstructing her Christian faith, addressing not only the theological challenges but also the practical ones. Deconstructing can be very challenging and this book offers encouragement and support to those who have gone through this, or want to understand the process better. There is some controversy around this author’s treatment of issues of race, diversity, inclusion, and equity, so while her book is has been helpful to many, be aware that it may not be suitable as the only book on deconstruction you engage with.
  • Josie McSkimming, Leaving Christian Fundamentalism and the Reconstruction of Identity, Routledge, 2016. This book is pretty academic, so it isn’t going to be light beach reading. That said, it does a good job of discussing a range of stories from those who have left Christian fundamentalism, which can include evangelical Christianity as well. It doesn’t provide “answers,” but for professionals and those who are thinking about or have left fundamentalists churches, it can be a helpful book to explore what that is like and how people change after they have left. It can help people leaving high-demand religious feel less alone.
  • Nadia Bolz-Weber, Shameless: A Sexual Reformation. This is a New York Times bestseller by a Lutheran (ELCA) minister, Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber. She makes the case that sexual flourishing can and should be for all genders, all bodies, and all humans. She uses stories and humor to argue for healthy, honest sexuality, not only in a Christian context, but also in the context of our world today. With no judgement, and affirmation of all identities, she argues for “celebrating sexuality in all its forms and recognizing it for the gift that it is.” This book can be helpful for people who were influenced or harmed by purity culture or high-control religious communities.

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Healthy Sexuality

  • Sex Positive Families Website This is a website that offers parents guidance about how to talk to children about sexuality in a healthy way. It emphasizes consent, care, respect, and seeks to counteract messages related to shame. They also published a book called Sex Positive Talks to Have with Kids: A Guide to Raising Sexually Healthy, Informed, Empowered Young People (by Melissa Pintor Carnagey). Some adults may also find these resources helpful for themselves, as a way to unlearn harmful and shameful messages they were taught by parents and religious authorities as a child. This is a secular website and book.Nadia Bolz-Weber, Shameless: A Sexual Reformation. This is a New York Times bestseller by a Lutheran (ELCA) minister, Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber. She makes the case that sexual flourishing can and should be for all genders, all bodies, and all humans. She uses stories and humor to argue for healthy, honest sexuality, not only in a Christian context, but also in the context of our world today. With no judgement, and affirmation of all identities, she argues for “celebrating sexuality in all its forms and recognizing it for the gift that it is.” This book can be helpful for people who were influenced or harmed by purity culture or high-control religious communities.
  • Michael Coogan, God and Sex: What the Bible Really Says. This book by biblical scholar Michael Coogan discusses the historical context of sexuality, marriage, and gender that is discussed in the bible, with a focus on the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. It will be helpful for those that would like to understand the historical and religious context of many of the things written in the bible about sexuality.
  • Marvin Ellison and Kelly Brown Douglas, editors. Sexuality and the Sacred, Sources for Theological Reflection. This is a big book with lots of different writers. It is more academic than popularly oriented. It helps to explore Christian sexuality, spirituality, and ethics from many perspectives.
  • Kate Ott, Sex + Faith: Talking With Your Child from Birth to Adolescence. This book is helpful to parents who are interested in making sure that their faith values inform how they teach their children about bodies, gender, and sexuality. It includes helpful biblical stories.
  • Bromleigh McCleneghan, Good Christian Sex: Why Chastity Isn’t the Only Option-And Other Things the Bible Says About Sex. This may be helpful for those that are looking for a model of Christian sexuality that is not grounded in purity teachings or sexism. The book was written by a Christian pastor who argues that the church must talk about sex differently. She explores the bible, weaving together wisdom from theologians, ethicists, and psychologists in order to lay out a better path for Christians to understand and practice their sexuality.
  • The Go Ask Alice! website is helpful to get secular information about questions related to bodies and sexuality.
  • Erica Smith has been a sexuality educator for nearly a quarter century. While she focuses on people who are recovering from or leaving purity culture, her sex-positive and shame-free resources are helpful to anyone growing up in a culture that has confusing and conflicting messages about sexuality and relationships (which is most people!). She provides support groups, workbooks such as My Sexual Values Workbook or Very Basic Sex Ed 101, one-on-one consultations, as well as a great Instagram feed.

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Additional Resources: The Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery provides a good selection of books at this link. They do not provide commentary on each book, but they are organized by category and can be helpful if you are interested in further resources.