Best Books About Trauma & PTSD [Top 10, Update 2024]

What are the best books on trauma and complex PTSD? In this page you will find the best recommendations, including the acclaimed books by Bessel van de Kolk. Read along…

The top 10 best books about trauma & PTSD

1.Struggle Well: Thriving in the Aftermath of Trauma

With a background in combat situations, Ken Falke and Josh Goldberg have found a way to work past your struggles and start living again. Where there is trauma, there are also opportunities to grow, and that is what makes this book special according to us.

2.101 Trauma-Informed Interventions: Activities, Exercises and Assignments to Move the Client and Therapy Forward

This workbook shows many different types of treatments to overcome trauma, and these may come in handy for any health professional, especially if you have just started. What we think sets this book apart from others, is that the interventions mentioned can be applied to both groups and individuals. This book by Linda Curran is therefore a practical guide on trauma recovering tools and techniques.

3.Finding Peace: A Workbook on Healing from Loss, Rejection, Neglect, Abandonment, Betrayal, and Abuse

Troy L Love makes a true statement that we as humans depend on being connected to others. If something happened to these connections, we can be damaged for the rest of our lives. That is, unless you are looking for a way to find peace again and work through what happened to you. This book made it to our top 10 list of books on trauma, because of the healing that can take place in your heart.

4.Healing the Survivors: 8 Steps to Whole-Self Healing for Sexual Trauma Survivors

Anyone who has suffered from sexual assault may be confronted with the trauma over and over again, until it is properly dealt with. Healing the Survivors by Jacquelyn Weis is not only a book that tells the story from a personal perspective as a survivor of sexual abuse, but it also gives you 8 steps to heal yourself from the trauma you went through. This is our pick for those who need to self-heal.

5.The Cognitive Behavioral Coping Skills Workbook for PTSD: Overcome Fear and Anxiety and Reclaim Your Life (A New Harbinger Self-Help Workbook)

We can recommend this book to those who are professionally involved in working with PTSD clients. Matthew T. Tull, Alexander L. Chapman and Kim L. Gratz have combined all their expertise in this workbook, and they discuss important and effective techniques, like cognitive behavioral therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy, and cognitive processing therapy.

6.Complex PTSD Workbook: A Mind-Body Approach To Regaining Emotional Control And Becoming Whole

This book by Arielle Schwartz provides you with exercises and strategies to deal with your PTSD or C-PTSD. We highly value the Complex PTSD Workbook, because of its hands-on ways to recover from trauma. You will be able to get control back over your emotions, as long as you are able to connect mind and body.

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

Everybody faces trauma at one point in his life, or knows someone who has, and feels the effect of their experience directly. If that is the case, what ways are there – old and new – to influence the brain and overcome this trauma? Bessel van der Kolk offers a path to recovery from trauma, and in our opinion this means there is hope for every generation involved.

8.Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving: A Guide and Map for Recovering from Childhood Trauma

Pete Walker describes in great length what complex PTSD is, and how one can take steps into healing their trauma. This book is especially directed at childhood trauma, which will almost certainly manifest later in life if problems have been pushed away and not tackled

9.Healing Days: A Guide For Kids Who Have Experienced Trauma

If your child, or a child you know, has been facing scary or bad things, we think you might want to consider this book by Susan Farber Straus and Maria Bogade. Read Healing Days together with the child or let a therapist work through it with the child, and every child will improve. Recovery can be through learning new techniques on how to respond to bad things, or to make yourself feel safe and relaxed again.

10.The PTSD Workbook: Simple, Effective Techniques for Overcoming Traumatic Stress Symptoms

When your response to a situation is having a bad effect on your life, you know you may need to ask experts for help to deal with your situation. In this book, Mary Beth Williams and Soili Poijula have come up with the most effective tools to work through PTSD. No matter what happened or how you usually respond, according to us this workbook will be of great help to anyone who wants to overcome trauma.

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