RECOMMENDED RESOURCES
Recommended Resources
A personal library, not a reading list.
A PERSONAL LIBRARY
Recommended resources: a personal library, not a reading list.
I’ve been collecting this stuff for years. Some of it I return to constantly. Some of it cracked something open once and I’ve never forgotten it. Some of it I recommend to almost everyone who works with me.
It’s organized by theme, not format, because that’s how I think about it: what are you actually dealing with right now, and what might help?
Notes in italics are mine.
Anchored: How to Befriend Your Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory
The most accessible entry point into polyvagal theory for a general audience. Start here.
Foundational and widely read. Dense in places. I’d recommend reading it with support if you’re early in your healing process.
Less clinical than van der Kolk, more embodied. A good companion.
For people who want to go deeper into Somatic Experiencing after Waking the Tiger.
On the nervous system and desire. More useful than the title suggests for understanding shutdown and activation.
On the brain, the body, and relationship. Accessible and genuinely illuminating.
His most comprehensive book. On trauma, illness, and the society that produces both. Essential.
The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory
Porges in conversation form. More readable than his academic papers.
The Science of Well-Being
Yale’s most popular course in 300 years, now free online. On what actually makes people happy versus what they think will. Start here if you want the research without the jargon.
Sensitive: The Untold Story
On high sensitivity as a trait rather than a disorder. Directly relevant if you’ve been told your intensity is a problem.
The Wisdom of Trauma
A good introduction to Maté’s framework for people who want to see it in practice before reading the books.
Therapist Uncensored
Attachment and neuroscience explained accessibly. One of the best.
Sensitive: The Untold Story
Also featured in Nervous System Science. Worth its own mention here for anyone who has spent years wondering if their sensitivity is a flaw. It isn’t.
The foundational text on HSP research. Aron coined the term and her work remains the most rigorous. If you’ve ever been told you’re too much, this book will reframe that entirely.
The most readable introduction to EFT and attachment in romantic relationships. Based on the ARE framework.
Her more recent popular book on the science of love.
Attachment styles in romantic relationships. Practical and specific.
Good entry point for people new to attachment theory. Somewhat simplified compared to clinical frameworks but widely useful.
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents
Quietly one of the most useful books I know of for people who grew up in families with limited emotional capacity.
Pairs well with the Gibson book. For people whose early environment didn’t have room for their full experience.
It Didn’t Start With You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle
On intergenerational trauma and how the patterns of our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents live in our unexplained anxiety, depression, and physical symptoms. Practical exercises alongside the theory.
On the NARM model. For people who want to understand how early relational patterns shape everything that comes after. Verify title before purchasing.
This book belongs in somatic practice and in liberation psychology. Listed in both because it’s that important. On racialized trauma and the body.
One of the foundational texts on somatic coaching as a practice. More useful for practitioners.
The most accessible introduction to IFS for a general audience. Start here.
A workbook-style guide to doing IFS work independently. More structured than No Bad Parts.
You Are the One You’ve Been Waiting For
IFS applied specifically to relationships. Directly relevant to the dating work.
Also listed in Attachment. The core insight: the traumas of our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents can live in our unexplained symptoms. Understanding the lineage can release the pattern.
Also listed in Somatic Practice and Liberation Psychology. The intergenerational dimension of racialized trauma. Essential.
Also listed in Liberation Psychology. On what gets passed down across generations when we stay in relationship with the land and with each other.
Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression and the Unexpected Solutions
On the social and relational causes of depression rather than the chemical imbalance model. Compelling and accessible. Read it as a framework for asking better questions, not as a definitive clinical text.
The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
The most comprehensive and literary book on depression available. Personal, wide-ranging, and genuinely illuminating across cultures, treatments, and lived experiences. Pulitzer finalist. Worth reading slowly.
On the neuroscience of depression in accessible form. Small, practical changes that shift the brain’s depressive patterns. Evidence-based without being clinical.
I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression
On covert male depression, isolation, and the relational cost of emotional unavailability. Also listed in Healthy Masculinity. Useful for anyone who loves a man who won’t ask for help.
Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief
On the intimate connection between unresolved grief and anxiety. If you’ve been treating anxiety without looking at loss, this book will reframe everything. Also listed in Grief.
On reframing your relationship to stress so it works for you rather than against you. Counterintuitive and well-researched.
On the habit loops that drive anxiety and how to interrupt them using mindfulness and neuroscience. Practical and accessible. Verify before purchasing.
How to Make Stress Your Friend
One of the most-watched health TED Talks. The research on what happens when you stop fighting stress and start working with it.
The best book on grief I know of. Specifically challenges the idea that grief needs to be fixed or moved through in stages.
Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief
Also listed in Anxiety. Significant loss and unresolved grief are primary underpinnings of anxiety. If you’re anxious and can’t figure out why, start here.
On acute grief. One of the most honest things ever written about loss.
Advice column format but genuinely profound on loss, love, and finding your way.
The memoir came first and is worth reading before watching. Hard seasons, finding yourself, the path forward. Both versions hold up.
A more poetic and ritualistic approach to grief. Relevant if ceremony and collective mourning resonate with you.
Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief
On catastrophic loss and the practice of mindful grief. More clinical than Devine but deeply compassionate. For the losses that don’t have adequate language.
The Other Side of Sadness: What the New Science of Bereavement Tells Us About Life After Loss
Research-based challenge to the stages of grief model. Shows that resilience after loss is more common than prolonged grief. An important counterpoint to the more emotional grief literature.
Buddhist-informed approach to difficulty and uncertainty. For the existential layer of hard seasons.
On finding meaning in suffering. One of the most widely read books of the twentieth century for good reason.
On desire and domesticity. Already referenced throughout the dating pages. Essential.
On infidelity and what it reveals about relationships. More nuanced than most people expect.
Buddhist principles applied to dating and relationships. Presence, non-attachment, conscious relating. A gentler counterpoint to the attachment science books.
On love as a practice, not a feeling. Directly relevant to the dating work and the philosophy of connection here.
Communion: The Female Search for Love
Specifically relevant to the women’s dating work. On women, love, and what gets in the way.
On men and love. Directly relevant to the men’s dating work.
On redefining masculinity, vulnerability, and what it means to be a man in relationship.
Attachment theory applied to non-monogamous relationships. Important given the full spectrum of relationship structures this work serves.
Buddhist-informed approach to love and connection. Gentle entry point.
Fleishman Is in Trouble
It looks like one story and becomes another entirely. The Libby storyline is the one that stays with you.
Where Should We Begin
Actual couples therapy sessions. Extraordinary for understanding relational dynamics in practice.
Man Enough
Honest conversations with men about masculinity, relationships, and emotional life. Pairs well with the book.
The most direct resource here on redefining what it means to be a man.
Why I’m Done Trying to Be Man Enough
The talk that launched the Man Enough movement. Over 8 million views.
Also listed in Depression. On covert male depression and what emotional unavailability actually costs.
Archetypal psychology and the wild feminine. The La Llorona chapter alone is worth the book.
On breaking free from the life you were told to want.
The Dance of the Dissident Daughter
On a woman’s journey from patriarchal religion into feminine spirituality. Directly relevant to the spirituality without doctrine framing and the religious deconstruction work.
The feminine counterpart to Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. On the journey inward rather than outward and what gets reclaimed when women stop trying to fit a map designed for someone else. Verify before purchasing.
Also listed in Liberation Psychology. Understanding what was taken is part of taking it back.
Short pamphlet on the historical suppression of women healers. Essential context.
On reclaiming feminine power and ancestral healing practices. Verify before publishing.
What My Gender Transition Taught Me About Womanhood
A perspective on womanhood from someone who came to it from the outside. Warm, honest, and surprisingly funny.
Historical context for naming the problem that has no name. Still resonant.
The philosophical foundation underneath almost everything else in the feminist section. Dense and worth the effort. De Beauvoir named the mechanisms of women’s otherness before most of us had language for what we were living inside.
Listed in somatic practice too. On racialized trauma and the body. The most important book currently available on this intersection.
Why Healing Racism Begins With the Body
Not a TED Talk but one of the most accessible introductions to Menakem’s framework available online.
Essays and speeches. The self-care as self-preservation framework referenced throughout this site comes directly from this book. Essential.
On reclaiming joy, pleasure, and desire as political acts.
On organizing, change, and the natural world as a model for human systems. The spiral and mycelium metaphors alive throughout this site live here too.
On facilitation and conflict transformation. Directly relevant to the Affinity Circles work.
Short, practical, essential.
On disability justice and collective care.
Dense but foundational for understanding why the village got dismantled.
Short pamphlet on the historical suppression of women healers.
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States
Essential context for decolonial frameworks.
Indigenous botanical knowledge and reciprocity as a framework for relating to the living world.
Radical self-love as a political framework.
The foundational clinical text on trauma including political violence and oppression.
On how racism costs everyone and what collective repair might look like.
On the underlying architecture of hierarchy in America.
All My Relations
Indigenous perspectives and decolonial frameworks. Essential.
13th
On the 13th Amendment and mass incarceration as a system of racialized control.
No Nonsense Spirituality
Secular spirituality for people post-religion or outside of any faith tradition. No beliefs required.
Eighty-one short verses on how things actually work. I return to it when I need to remember that forcing and controlling are not the same as leading. It has nothing to say about productivity and everything to say about presence.
On love, children, work, joy, sorrow, freedom. Written in 1923 and still saying things most people never figure out. The chapter on children alone is worth the whole book.
Buddhist-informed but doctrine-light.
Short, sharp, and surprising. On waking up to your actual experience.
On personal legend and following the path.
Toltec wisdom applied to everyday life. Verify before publishing.
Also listed in Grief. On finding meaning in suffering.
On the observer self and releasing habitual thought patterns. Popular but genuinely useful entry point for people new to inner work.
Also listed in Spirituality Without Doctrine. Short and worth reading twice.
The Happiness Lab
The podcast companion to the course. Gently challenges the self-improvement industrial complex.
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
On what it feels like to be fully absorbed in something. Directly relevant to the definition of joy as full presence rather than peak experience.
The founder of positive psychology on what wellbeing actually consists of. More nuanced than his earlier work.
On what communities where people live longest actually have in common. Spoiler: community, purpose, movement, and belonging. Not individual optimization.
On wholehearted living.
The Gift and Power of Emotional Courage
On emotional agility and what it costs us to suppress our emotional experience.
For clinicians and coaches wanting the clinical application of polyvagal theory.
The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory
Also listed in Nervous System Science. Worth featuring here for practitioners who want the source material.
Essential for anyone facilitating somatic or mindfulness-based work.
On circle practice as a container. Directly applicable to Affinity Circles facilitation. Verify title before publishing.
Also listed in Liberation Psychology. On facilitation and conflict transformation.
On mass incarceration as a system of racialized control. Essential.
On the underlying architecture of hierarchy in America.
On the broken criminal justice system and what it means to fight for people the system has discarded.
So You Want to Talk About Race
Practical and compassionate. More accessible than some of the denser academic texts on this list.
On housing instability and poverty in America.
Also listed in Depression. The social causes of depression are inseparable from the systemic conditions people are living inside.
Embracing Otherness, Embracing Myself
On identity, the constructed self, and what it means to stop performing yourself for others.
The Power of Vulnerability
Why I’m Done Trying to Be Man Enough
The Gift and Power of Emotional Courage
How to Make Stress Your Friend
What My Gender Transition Taught Me About Womanhood
Embracing Otherness, Embracing Myself
The Danger of a Single Story
Sensitive: The Untold Story
On high sensitivity as a trait. Featuring Alanis Morissette.
This Is Us
Attachment patterns, family systems, grief, and repair across generations.
Normal People
Anxious and avoidant attachment in real time.
Ted Lasso
The most widely cited current example of healthy masculine emotional intelligence on television.
Shrinking
Grief, emotional openness, men leaning on each other.
Fleabag
Grief, humor, self-destruction, and unexpected grace.
Fleishman Is in Trouble
It looks like one story and becomes another entirely.
Marriage Story
Attachment patterns and relational breakdown. Honest and devastating.
Good Will Hunting
Vulnerability, trauma, mentorship, and asking for help.
Ordinary People
Family trauma, grief, and a man in therapy. Quiet and devastating.
Dead Poets Society
Conformity, authenticity, and the cost of performing yourself for someone else.
Hard seasons, finding yourself, the path forward. Read the memoir first.
Maid
Financial abuse, poverty, and survival. Systemic and deeply personal.
13th
On mass incarceration as racialized control.
The Wisdom of Trauma
Gabor Maté’s framework in practice.
The Mask You Live In
On how societal norms around masculinity affect boys’ and men’s mental health.
Stutz
Transparency in the therapy room.
Crip Camp
Disability justice and collective power.
Schitt’s Creek
On community, belonging, and what happens when people are forced to need each other.
Frida
Art, body, pain, and resilience.
Unlocking Us
Good entry point for people new to vulnerability and shame work.
We Can Do Hard Things
More personal and wide-ranging than Unlocking Us.
Therapist Uncensored
Attachment and neuroscience explained accessibly.
Where Should We Begin
Actual couples therapy sessions. Extraordinary.
Man Enough
Honest conversations with men about masculinity and emotional life.
The Happiness Lab
On the science of wellbeing.
The Trauma Therapist Podcast
Interviews with leading trauma clinicians. More for practitioners.
All My Relations
Indigenous perspectives and decolonial frameworks. Essential.
Maintenance Phase
On wellness culture and its harms.
For the Wild
Ecology, animism, and the more-than-human world.
The Science of Well-Being
Free to enroll, approximately 19 hours, certificate optional.
No Nonsense Spirituality
Secular spirituality for people post-religion or spiritually curious without a doctrine to put it in.
The Five Love Languages
The concept of understanding how you and your partner give and receive love is genuinely useful. The framework underneath it is shakier: no peer-reviewed research supports the five categories as distinct or predictive of relationship satisfaction, and more recent studies have found that matching love languages doesn’t actually correlate with relationship happiness. Chapman is also a Baptist pastor whose body of work includes explicitly homophobic guidance to parents of LGBTQ+ children. The idea that people express love differently is real. This particular framework and this author are worth approaching carefully.
The Gottman research tradition, Sue Johnson’s EFT work in Hold Me Tight, and Stan Tatkin’s Wired for Love are all more rigorously grounded and more inclusive.
Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus
Built on the premise that men and women are so fundamentally different they might as well be from different planets. This framing reinforces binary gender stereotypes, has no empirical foundation, asks women to do the bulk of relational adjustment, and leaves no room for the full spectrum of gender identity and expression. John Gray’s PhD is from an unaccredited institution and he has no licensed therapeutic training.
The Will to Change by bell hooks on men and emotional life. Polysecure by Jessica Fern on attachment across relationship structures. Hold Me Tight by Sue Johnson on the actual science of what makes love work.
The Secret
On the premise that your thoughts attract your circumstances. The harm here is specific: it locates all outcomes in individual thought and belief, which means suffering becomes a personal failing. It’s a framework that’s particularly damaging for people who have experienced trauma, systemic oppression, illness, or loss. You didn’t manifest what happened to you.
Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown on how change actually happens. Lost Connections by Johann Hari on why circumstances matter. The Myth of Normal by Gabor Maté on how systems shape individuals.
Somatic Playlists
I’m building playlists organized by nervous system state and by phase of the work: activation and discharge, grounding and regulation, gentle return, expansion and joy. Each will include a brief note on what it’s designed for and how to use it somatically.