Body Psychotherapy

Dr. Elaine Aron's audiobook Psychotherapy and the Highly Sensitive Person redefines the term highly sensitive for the professional researcher and practitioner. She dispels common misconceptions about the relationship between sensitivity and other personality traits, such as introversion and shyness, and further defines the trait for the benefit of both the clinician and patient.

This best-selling classic presents seminal theory and research on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Together, the leading editors and contributors comprehensively examine how trauma affects an individual's biology, conceptions of the world, and psychological functioning. Key topics include why certain people cope successfully with traumatic experiences while others do not, the neurobiological processes underlying PTSD symptomatology, and enduring questions surrounding traumatic memories and dissociation.

The premise of Trauma and the Body is that, by adding body-oriented interventions to their repertoire, traditionally trained therapists can increase the depth and efficacy of their clinical work. Sensorimotor psychotherapy is an approach that builds on traditional psychotherapeutic understanding but includes the body as central in the therapeutic field of awareness, using observational skills, theories, and interventions not usually practiced in psychodynamic psychotherapy.

From over 25 years of clinical experience, Manuela Mischke-Reeds, MA, LMFT, has created the go-to resource for mental health therapists who want to incorporate somatic techniques into their daily practice. Highly-effective for clients dealing with trauma and stress disorders, somatic psychotherapy is the future of healing the entire person-body and mind.

This groundbreaking book explores the recent revolution in psychotherapy that has brought an understanding of the social nature of people's brains to a therapeutic context. Louis Cozolino is a master at synthesizing neuroscientific information and demonstrating how it applies to psychotherapy practice. New material on altruism, executive function, trauma, and change round out this essential book.

Immersed in Buddhist psychology prior to studying Western psychiatry, Dr. Mark Epstein first viewed Western therapeutic approaches through the lens of the East. This posed something of a challenge. Although both systems promise liberation through self-awareness, the central tenet of Buddha's wisdom is the notion of no-self, while the central focus of Western psychotherapy is the self. This book wrestles with the complex relationship between Buddhism and psychotherapy.

If you’re a survivor of sexual harm, recovering your sexuality is possible. You are worthy of good care. The toxic effects of sexual trauma and abuse can be devastating and lasting. Victims’ ability to experience healthy sexuality, even if they free themselves from the abuse, is often shattered. If sexual abuse, violence, or coercive control is part of your story, certified sex addiction therapist (CSAT) and trauma specialist Tabitha Westbrook wants you to know: you are not alone, and healing is possible.

Sufferers with any type of body image or anxiety conditions will identify with Chloe’s suffering and the daily struggles she faces. Dr. Callaghan and Dr. O’Connor’s wisdom, expertise, and compassionate approach have enabled Chloe to move on significantly with her life. Their approach is captured perfectly as they provide valuable insight into why and how Chloe struggled with her condition and what needs to be done to ensure her path to recovery and beyond.

Those who struggle with disordered eating often find themselves in an unrelenting cycle of harsh self-judgment, painful emotions, and harmful behaviors. Seeing the body as an adversary, these patterns can lead many people to become withdrawn or isolated. Ann Saffi Biasetti’s powerful holistic approach to liberating people from disordered eating focuses on growing self-compassion and embodiment. This insight, informed by yoga and mindfulness meditation, views the body not just as something to be healed or restored but as a source of great wisdom and knowledge.

Catherine Cook-Cottone provides tools for clinicians working with clients to restore their healthy selves and use their bodies as a positive resource for healing and long-term health. The book goes beyond traditional treatments to talk about mindful self-care, mindful eating, yoga, and other practices designed to support self-regulation.

Do you hate your body? Are you deeply dissatisfied with your appearance, shape, or weight—so much so that you avoid looking at yourself in the mirror, avoid certain social situations, or dread having your photo taken? If so, you are not alone. Body dissatisfaction and even body hatred have reached epidemic levels in our culture—particularly for women and girls. But you don't have to live your life consumed by feelings of shame and self-hatred. This workbook offers a way out of the darkness.

Therapy is a dialogue. The first two chapters of this small book are an inquiry into the nature of psychotherapy, an asymmetric dialogue, where one person, the therapist, literally attends to another. Weaving together overlapping perspectives from Emmanuel Levinas, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Martin Buber, Amdur asserts that the greatest gifts of therapy arise from a fundamental estrangement from each other. The realization of this unbridgeable distance, however close we may be, is a profound shock that gives birth to a genuine relationship.

This breakthrough book presents a disarmingly simple idea: The way we pay attention in daily life can play a critical role in our health and well-being. According to Dr. Les Fehmi, a clinical psychologist and researcher, many of us have become stuck in “narrow-focus attention”: a tense, constricted, survival mode of attention that holds us in a state of chronic stress - and which lies at the root of common ailments including anxiety, depression, ADD, stress-related migraines, and more.

Do you ever feel like your body’s still in survival mode, even when things are calm? Like you’re exhausted from holding it all together—but have no idea how to let go without falling apart? Maybe you’ve even looked in the mirror and thought, “I don’t recognize myself anymore.” If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone—and you’re not stuck. Healing doesn’t have to be overwhelming. With the right tools, just a few minutes a day can shift you from chaos to calm, tension to ease, disconnection to safety.

“To treat, even to cure, is not always to heal.” In this expansive cultural history of the treatment and healing of mental suffering, Kay Jamison writes about psychotherapy, what makes a great healer, and the role of imagination and memory in regenerating the mind. From the trauma of the battlefields of the twentieth century, to those who are grieving, depressed, or with otherwise unquiet minds, to her own experience with bipolar illness, Jamison demonstrates how remarkable psychotherapy and other treatments can be when done well.

In The Wisdom of Your Body, clinical psychologist and award-winning researcher Hillary McBride explored the ways many of us inherit a broken understanding of the body and offered a more compassionate, healthy, and holistic perspective on embodied life. In this follow-up book, McBride takes the principles of The Wisdom of Your Body and puts them into action in practical, tangible ways.

The Practitioner’s Guide to Mirroring Hands describes in detail how "Mirroring Hands" is conducted and explores the framework of knowledge and understanding that surrounds and supports this therapeutic process.

This book identifies seven stages of therapy that provide a framework for working with client's emotional, cognitive, somatic, and sensory experiences to heal from trauma. Through composite case illustrations, practitioners will learn how to safely mitigate a range of trauma content, including complicated grief, natural disaster, children in foster care, aggression, toxic divorce, traumatized infants diagnosed with neonatal abstinence syndrome, and young mothers recovering from opioid addiction.

When treating a client who has suffered from interpersonal trauma - whether chronic childhood abuse or domestic violence, for example - talk therapy isn't always the most effective course. For these individuals, the trauma and its effects are so entrenched, so complex, that reducing their experience to a set of symptoms or suggesting a change in cognitive frame or behavioral pattern ignores a very basic but critical player: the body.

This book will help you gain comprehensive insights into the world of manipulation, negative persuasion, and NLP. It will blow the lid off the clever and sneaky manipulation tactics people use to have their way over you. It will also help you recognize situations where you have been manipulated. In addition, you’ll also learn how to fight back against manipulation and be in control of certain situations.