Book Club 

Clients sometimes find it useful to compliment their counselling or life coaching work with a relevant book to read. The following list of books is based on recommendations from clients and professional counsellors and life coaches. This book list is always growing and new categories are added, so be sure to check back in periodically.

DEPRESSION, SELF-ESTEEM, AND CONFIDENCE 

Title: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
Author: Stephen Covey
Summary: Presents a holistic, integrated, principle-centered approach for solving personal and professional problems. With penetrating insights and pointed anecdotes, Covey reveals a step-by-step pathway for living with fairness, integrity, honesty, and human dignity -- principles that give us the security to adapt to change and the wisdom and power to take advantage of the opportunities that change creates. 

Title: Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy 
Author: David Burns
Summary: The good news is that anxiety, guilt, pessimism, procrastination, low self-esteem, and other "black holes" of depression can be cured without drugs. Feeling Good outlines the remarkable, scientifically proven techniques that will immediately lift your spirits and help you develop a positive outlook on life. Recognize what causes your mood swings, nip negative feelings in the bud, deal with guilt, handle hostility and criticism, overcome addiction to love and approval, and build self-esteem. 

Title: The Feeling Good Handbook 
Author: David Burns
Summary: Filled with charts, quizzes, weekly self-assessment tests, and a daily mood log, "The Feeling Good Handbook" actively engages its readers in their own recovery from self-defeating thoughts and feeling depressed. 

DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY BACKGROUND 

Title: Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families
Author: Charles Whitfield
Summary: In 1987, Charlie Whitfield''s breakthrough concept of the child within - that part of us which is truly alive, energetic, creative and fulfilled - launched the inner child movement. "Healing the Child Within" describes how the inner child is lost to trauma and loss, and how by recovering it, we can heal the fear, confusion and unhappiness of adult life. 

Title: Bradshaw On: The Family
Author: John Bradshaw
Summary: John Bradshaw's seminal work on the dynamics of families. Within its pages, you will discover the cause of emotionally impaired families. You will learn how unhealthy rules of behavior are passed down from parents to children, and the destructive effect this process has on our society. Bradshaw shows you ways to escape the tyranny of family-reinforced behavior traps--from addiction and co-dependency to loss of will and denial--and demonstrates how to make conscious choices that will transform your life and the lives of your loved ones. 

Title: Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life
Author: Susan Forward
Summary: Susan Forward reveals the complex legacy of inadequate, controlling, or abusive parents, and how adult children can get free of these destructive relationship patterns

RELATIONSHIP ISSUES 

Title: Getting the Love You Want
Author: Harville Hendrix
Summary: A guide to transforming an intimate relationship into a lasting source of love and companionship. Dr. Harville Hendrix presents the relationship skills to replace confrontation and criticism with a healing process of mutual growth and support. "Getting the Love You Want" describes the three stages of intimate relationships, provides illustrative case studies and gives helpful recommendations to overcome the obstacles in those stages to create a stronger bond between couples.  

Title: Intimate Partners
Author: Maggie Scarf
Summary: The definitive book for the general reader on marriage. Describes what really goes on in a marriage; why one chooses a certain partner, what systems get set up, and what the primary sources of conflict are.  

WOMEN IN UNHEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS WITH MEN 

Title: Women Who Love Too Much
Author: Robin Norwood
Summary: Why do so many women become obsessed with the wrong men--men who are emotionally unavailable, addicted to work, alcohol, or other women, men who cannot love them back? Robin Norwood helps these women recognize, understand and change the way they love. Through a series of intimate, revealing case histories, she offers women a way out that works. 

Title: When Your Lover is a Liar
Author: Susan Forward
Summary: Have you ever been lied to by a lover? In this straightforward and supportive book, therapist Susan Forward profiles the wide variety of liars, shows you how to deal with the lies -- from the benign to the lethal -- and gives practical strategies to stop them before they ruin your relationship and, ultimately, your life.  

TRAUMA (ABUSE, VIOLENCE, POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER) 

Title: Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence-from domestic abuse to political terror.
Author: Dr. Judith Herman
Summary: Explores the aftermath of many kinds of violence--from domestic terrors like rape, incest, and child abuse to political traumas like terrorism. 

Title: The Courage to Heal
Author: Ellen Bass & Laura Davis 
Summary: The Courage to Heal is an inspiring, comprehensive guide that offers hope and encouragement to every woman who was sexually abused as a child - and those who care about her. Although the effects of child sexual abuse are long-term and severe, healing is possible. The authors weave personal experience with professional knowledge to show the reader how she can come to terms with her past while moving powerfully into the future. They provide clear explanations, practical suggestions, a map of the healing journey, and many moving first-person examples of the recovery process drawn from their interviews with hundreds of survivors. 

Title: Allies in Healing: When the Person You Love was Sexually Abused as a Child
Author: Laura Davis
Summary: Filled with information, support, and guidance, this book answers the most important questions asked by partners of survivors of child sexual abuse. Laura Davis offers practical advice, encouragement and much-needed support. 

Title: Victims No Longer: The Classic Guide for Men Recovering from Sexual Child Abuse
Author: Mike Lew
Summary: For millions of men on the path to recovery. Offers compassionate and practical advice, supported by personal anecdotes and statements of male survivors. This book helps survivors identify and validate their childhood experiences, explore strategies of survival and healing, work through issues such as trust, intimacy and sexual confusion, establish a support network for continued personal recovery, make choices that aren't determined by abuse, and educates survivors and professionals about the recovery process -- speaking to the pain, needs, fears, and hopes of the adult male survivor. 

Title: The Sexual Healing Journey: A Guide for Survivors of Sexual Abuse
Author: Wendy Maltz
Summary: From a nationally recognized sex therapist and sexual abuse treatment specialist, a compassionate, comprehensive, and practical guide to overcoming the sexual effects of past sexual abuse.
Title: Secrets, Lies, Betrayals: How the Body Holds the Secrets of a Life, and How to Unlock Them
Author: Maggie Scarf
Summary: Explores how the body holds on to painful episodes from the past—including secrets we may be keeping even from ourselves—and how we can release them to live freer, healthier lives. The body has a unique memory system, in which early trauma and deeply buried feelings become woven into the fabric of our physical being. Certain events can trigger these body memories, which may then manifest themselves symptomatically—as persistent anger, mood swings, headaches, muscle tension, and fatigue. These echoes from the past also cause destructive patterns in our lives and relationships. Grounded in recent breakthroughs in mind/body science and drawing on Scarf’s personal experiences, this book is a masterpiece of research, analysis, and insight into the human psyche, and into human life. 

PARENTING 

Title: How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk Author: Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish
Summary: Children need support and understanding from their parents. This classic text helps parents learn to achieve this. It offers excellent advice on coping with a child’s negative feelings, using different methods other than punishment to resolve conflict peacefully. Here is the bestselling book that will give you the know-how you need to be more effective with your children and more supportive of yourself. 

Title: Loving Your Child is Not Enough: Positive Discipline That Works  Author: Nancy Samalin
Summary: This book shows parents how to set clear, concise guidelines to ensure positive and constructive discipline. It offers advice on: avoiding daily battles, using alternatives to punishment, dealing with anger, learning to let go, and diminishing sibling rivalries. It’s filled with practical solutions to everyday problems and thoughtful, useful information on opening up communication between the generations. 

Title: Your Baby and Child
Author: Dr. Penelope Leach
Summary: This new version encompasses the latest research and thinking on child development and learning. Your Baby & Child is the baby book that responds fully to every parent's deepest concerns about the psychological and emotional as well as physical well-being of his or her children. Dr. Leach describes--in easy-to-follow stages, from birth through starting school--what is happening to your child, what he or she is doing, experiencing and feeling. Whether your concern is a new baby's wakefulness, a toddler's tantrums, a preschool child's shyness, aggression or nightmares, or how to time your return to work, choose day care or tell a child about a new baby or an impending divorce, the information you need to make your own decisions is right here. 

Title: Kids Are Worth It
Author: Barbara Coloroso
Summary: By looking at the difference between encouragement and rewards, discipline and punishment, Coloroso helps parents learn how to empower and influence their children instead of controlling them by teaching them how to think, not what to think. Throughout the book, Coloroso examines three approaches to parenting and, through meaningful examples and anecdotes she demonstrates which approaches work and which don’t. By applying her powerful methods to specific topics such as toilet training, chores and sibling rivalry as well as buffering children from sexual promiscuity, drug abuse and suicide, she feels that teaching kids to take ownership of their feelings and problems can lead to progress toward self-discipline. 

Title: 1-2-3 Magic: Effective Discipline for Children 2-12
Author: Thomas Phelan
Summary: It's not easy being a parent--and when children are acting like little monsters it would be helpful to handle their disrespectful outbursts in a reasonable, unemotional manner. A proven bestseller, 1-2-3 Magic addresses the difficult task of child discipline with humor, keen insight and proven experience 

Title: Girlfriends Guide (to Parenting, to Surviving the First Year of Motherhood, to Toddlers,...) series.
Author: Vicki Lovine