Recommended Books on Overcoming Narcissistic Abuse
Moving Forward with Hope aims to be a resource for your on your journey. Below is a list of 15+ recommended books and is continually expanding to help in your recovery from narcissistic abuse.
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Overcoming the Devastation of Narcissistic Abuse
by Lynn Nichols
What if I told you, you could be free from toxic and manipulative people? Are you trying to understand what has been happening in your relationship, but having a hard time putting your finger on it? Narcissistic abuse is an insidious and deliberate crime, but armored with healthy tools, skills and the knowledge to overcome, we can move forward with hope. Learning to overcome the devastation from narcissistic abuse will free you to heal, recover, and to take your life back. Audio version also available.
Master Manipulators
by Lynn Nichols
Are you walking on eggshells in your relationship? Do you feel controlled, even manipulated, told what to say, and how to act? Perhaps you are exhausted from trying to perform and keep up with the demands put upon you, or maybe you feel you are being controlled, and manipulated but are having a hard time putting your finger on it. This book is to blow the lid off the emotional abuse that occurs, which is often not seen, and in most circles is not acceptable to discuss. It’s empowerment. It’s education. It’s about validating your experiences so you can choose to rebuild, and from then, it opens the doors of positive things to come. Audio version also available.
The Emotionally Destructive Marriage
by Leslie Vernick
Something Has to Change… You can’t put it into words, but something is happening to you. Your stomach churns, your heart aches, and the tension in your marriage is making you feel weary and a little crazy. The constant criticism, disrespect, cruelty, deceit, and gross indifference are eroding your confidence and breaking your spirit.
Is It Me? Making Sense of Your Confusing Marriage: A Christian Woman's Guide to Hidden Emotional and Spiritual Abuse
by Natalie Hoffman
One out of three married women sitting in an average conservative Christian church is in a confusing and painful marriage relationship. These women believe they are alone. I want them to know they aren’t. They believe they can’t find peace. I want them to know they can. They believe they don’t have choices. I want them to know they do.
Life Saving Divorce: Hope for People Leaving Destructive Relationships
by Gretchen Baskerville
You Can Love God and Still Get a Divorce And get this, God will still love you. Really. Are you in a destructive marriage? One of emotional, physical, or verbal abuse? Infidelity? Neglect? If yes, you know you need to escape, but you’re probably worried about going against God’s will.
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents
by Lindsay C. Gibson PsyD
If you grew up with an emotionally immature, unavailable, or selfish parent, you may have lingering feelings of anger, loneliness, betrayal, or abandonment. You may recall your childhood as a time when your emotional needs were not met, when your feelings were dismissed, or when you took on adult levels of responsibility in an effort to compensate for your parent’s behavior. These wounds can be healed, and you can move forward in your life.
In this breakthrough book, clinical psychologist Lindsay Gibson exposes the destructive nature of parents who are emotionally immature or unavailable. You will see how these parents create a sense of neglect, and discover ways to heal from the pain and confusion caused by your childhood. By freeing yourself from your parents’ emotional immaturity, you can recover your true nature, control how you react to them, and avoid disappointment. Finally, you’ll learn how to create positive, new relationships so you can build a better life.
Discover the four types of difficult parents:
- The emotional parent instills feelings of instability and anxiety
- The driven parent stays busy trying to perfect everything and everyone
- The passive parent avoids dealing with anything upsetting
- The rejecting parent is withdrawn, dismissive, and derogatory
When the Body Says No: Exploring the Stress-Disease Connection
by Gabor Maté M.D.
International Bestseller — Translated into 15 Languages
“This is a most important book, both for patient and physician. It could save your life.”
— Peter Levine, PhD, best selling author of In an Unspoken Voice
“Gabor Maté, M.D., skillfully blends recent advances in biomedicine with the personal stories of his patients to provide empowering insights into how deeply developmental experiences shape our health, behavior, attitudes, and relationships. A must read.”
― Bruce Lipton, Ph.D., author of The Biology of Belief
The international bestseller is a groundbreaking exploration of the effects of the mind-body connection on stress and disease ― and how we can heal.
Through the lens of moving personal stories, medical doctor and best-selling author Dr. Gabor Maté shows how emotion and psychological stress play a powerful role in the onset of chronic illness, cancer, and many other serious illnesses.
Drawing on scientific research and the author’s decades of experience as a practicing physician, this book provides answers to important questions about the effect of the mind-body link on illness and health and the role that chronic stress and one’s individual emotional makeup play in an array of common diseases.
- Explore the role of the mind-body link in conditions and diseases such as arthritis, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, IBS, multiple sclerosis, autoimmune conditions, and more
- The book draws on years of medical research and the author’s own clinical experience as a family physician
- Complete with The Seven A’s of Healing – Once you’re ready to acknowledge underlying stress, Dr. Mate guides you forward with principles of healing, management, and the prevention of illness from hidden stress
- Discover dozens of enlightening case studies and personal stories, including familiar names such as Lou Gehrig (ALS), Betty Ford (breast cancer), Ronald Reagan (Alzheimer’s), Gilda Radner (ovarian cancer), and Lance Armstrong (testicular cancer)
- An impressive contribution to research on the physiological connection between life’s chronic stress cycles, anxiety, and emotions and the body systems governing nerves, immune apparatus, and hormones
The Journey: A Roadmap for Self-Healing after Narcissistic Abuse
by Meredith Miller
There is currently a silent pandemic leaving millions of people feeling alone and confused, struggling to escape the self-doubt, fear and so many unanswered questions. Invisible abuse is rarely talked about because of how hard it is to pin-point, even by mental health professionals.
Should I Stay or Should I Go?: Surviving a Relationship with a Narcissist
by Ramani Durvasula PhD
Narcissism is a modern epidemic, and it’s spreading rapidly. But how do you know if you are in a relationship with one—and, what can you do about it? We live in a world of romance and rescue, where many believe love will conquer all, and that the more we endure unacceptable behavior, the more likely that we can “fix” our relationships. It doesn’t always work that way—despite what the fairy tales tell us. Learn more.
The Body Remembers: The Psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma Treatment
by Babetter Rothschild
This book illuminates that physiology, shining a bright light on the impact of trauma on the body and the phenomenon of somatic memory.
It is now thought that people who have been traumatized hold an implicit memory of traumatic events in their brains and bodies. That memory is often expressed in the symptomatology of posttraumatic stress disorder-nightmares, flashbacks, startle responses, and dissociative behaviors. In essence, the body of the traumatized individual refuses to be ignored.
While reducing the chasm between scientific theory and clinical practice and bridging the gap between talk therapy and body therapy, Rothschild presents principles and non-touch techniques for giving the body its due. With an eye to its relevance for clinicians, she consolidates current knowledge about the psychobiology of the stress response both in normally challenging situations and during extreme and prolonged trauma. This gives clinicians from all disciplines a foundation for speculating about the origins of their clients’ symptoms and incorporating regard for the body into their practice. The somatic techniques are chosen with an eye to making trauma therapy safer while increasing mind-body integration.
Packed with engaging case studies, The Body Remembers integrates body and mind in the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder. It will appeal to clinicians, researchers, students, and general readers.
Revolutionizing Trauma Treatment: Stabilization, Safety, & Nervous System Balance
by Babette Rothschild
Challenges the notion that clients with PTSD must revisit, review, and process their memories to recover from trauma.
Being able to monitor and modulate a trauma client’s dysregulated nervous system is one of the practitioner’s best lines of defense against traumatic hyperarousal going amok―risking consequences such as dissociation and decompensation. This paperback edition of Babette Rothschild’s The Body Remembers, Volume 2, clarifies and simplifies autonomic nervous system (ANS) understanding and observation. It includes a full-color table that distinguishes six levels of arousal, which has proven to be an essential clinical tool, presenting a new and useful distinction between trauma-induced hypoarousal and the low arousal that is caused by lethargy or depression.
Multiple therapeutic transcripts illuminate key points in trauma treatment, including stabilizing clients who dissociate, identifying and implementing hidden somatic resources, and utilizing good memories and somatic markers. With an authoritative yet personal voice, Rothschild’s book is essential reading for anyone working with those who have experienced trauma. The full-color ANS table is also available separately as a laminated desk reference card.
Why Can't I Just Leave?
by Kristen Milstead Ph.D.
More than 60 million people have been in a pathological love relationship with someone who has an impaired conscience. Are you one of them?
Do you feel fiercely loyal toward your partner although your partner has put you through unspeakable acts of cruelty and betrayal? Has your partner lied so much that sometimes you aren’t sure you know what’s real or who your partner really is? Have you tried to break off the relationship yet feel powerless to stop your partner from walking in and out of your life?
Disarming the Narcissist
by Wendy T. Behary MSW LCSW, Daniel J. Siegel MD (Preface), Jeffrey Young PhD (Foreword)
Now a self-help classic, Disarming the Narcissist is a practical, step-by-step communication guide to help you cope with and confront the narcissist in your life. Based on reader feedback, this fully revised and updated third edition features new information on shame, hypersexuality, and infidelity in narcissism; legal information to help you if you are divorcing a narcissist; and the impact of narcissism on children.
Freeing Yourself from the Narcissist in Your Life
by Linda Martinez-Lewi
In Freeing Yourself from the Narcissist in Your Life, psychotherapist Linda Martinez-Lewi presents an in-depth and supportive plan for identifying, understanding, and dealing with high level narcissistic behavior in those close to you. Martinez-Lewi helps you to liberate yourself from draining personal relationships with narcissists, and shows how to regain a sense of peace, balance, and well-being.
How to Stop the Pain
by James B. Richards
We all experience pain! Every day millions of people live in a world of heartache. We’re forced to smile and pretend that everything is all right. You’ve been wounded, and you just can’t seem to heal. You try to get on with your life, but you just can’t move on. You forgive, but you can’t forget! Every day exhumes the pain you try to bury. It cripples your relationships with people, God, and life itself. It destroys your ability to pursue your dreams.
Emotional Vampires
by Albert Bernstein
Emotional Vampires will help you cope effectively with the people in your life that confound you, confuse you, and seem to sap every ounce of your energy. Bestselling author Dr. Al Bernstein shows you how to recognize each vampire type–antisocial, histrionic, narcissists, obsessive-compulsives, paranoids–and deal with them effectively. He uses many examples from the latest news headlines, which will help you distinguish between the types and deepen your understanding of each one.
Will I Ever Be Good Enough?
Karyl McBride, Ph.D.
From experienced family therapist Dr. Karyl McBride, Will I Ever Be Good Enough? is an essential guide to recovery for women with selfish, emotionally abusive, and toxic mothers—designed to help daughters reclaim their lives.
Narcissistic mothers teach their daughters that love is not unconditional, that it is given only when they behave in accordance with maternal expectations and whims. As adults, these daughters have difficulty overcoming feelings of inadequacy, disappointment, emotional emptiness, and sadness. They may also have a fear of abandonment that leads them to form unhealthy romantic relationships, as well as a tendency to perfectionism and unrelenting self-criticism or to self-sabotage and frustration.
Why is it Always About You?
by Sandy Hotchkiss
In this groundbreaking book — the first popular book on narcissism in more than a decade — clinical social worker and psychotherapist Sandy Hotchkiss shows you how to cope with controlling, egotistical people who are incapable of the fundamental give-and-take that sustains healthy relationships. Exploring how individuals come to have this shortcoming, why you get drawn into their perilous orbit, and what you can do to break free, Hotchkiss describes the “Seven Deadly Sins of Narcissism” and their origins.
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, MInd and Body
by Bessel van der Kolk M.D.
Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world’s foremost experts on trauma, has spent over three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers’ capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. He explores innovative treatments—from neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga—that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain’s natural neuroplasticity.
It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle
by Mark Wolynn
Depression. Anxiety. Chronic Pain. Phobias. Obsessive thoughts. The evidence is compelling: the roots of these difficulties may not reside in our immediate life experience or in chemical imbalances in our brains—but in the lives of our parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents. The latest scientific research, now making headlines, supports what many have long intuited—that traumatic experience can be passed down through generations. It Didn’t Start with You builds on the work of leading experts in post-traumatic stress, including Mount Sinai School of Medicine neuroscientist Rachel Yehuda and psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score. Even if the person who suffered the original trauma has died, or the story has been forgotten or silenced, memory and feelings can live on. These emotional legacies are often hidden, encoded in everything from gene expression to everyday language, and they play a far greater role in our emotional and physical health than has ever before been understood.
Boundaries
by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend
Boundaries is the book that’s helped over 4 million people learn when to say yes and know how to say no in order to take control of their lives.
Does your life feel like it’s out of control? Perhaps you feel like you have to say yes to everyone’s requests. Maybe you find yourself readily taking responsibility for others’ feelings and problems. Or perhaps you focus so much on being loving and unselfish that you’ve forgotten your own limits and limitations. Or maybe it’s all of the above.
How to Handle a Narcissist
by Theresa Jackson
“How to Handle a Narcissist” is an expertly informed guide to help you understand, handle and heal from dealing with narcissistic people in your life. This eye-opening book gives you, the reader, clarity and awareness so that you can handle any situation involving narcissists in a healthy way. It is particularly suited to those who have been the target of gaslighting, or other techniques that reduce the recipient’s ability to maintain their objectivity.
How To Do No Contact Like A Boss!: The Woman's Guide to Implementing No Contact and Detaching from Toxic Relationships
by Kim Saeed
The day of No Contact can be both exhilarating and intimidating. And no wonder: you’re facing the tremendously exciting prospect of freedom and a better life, but you are also racked with uncertainty and you are dealing with the huge amount of toxic shame and blame that victims have typically been left with by this point. How to Do No Contact like a Boss explains the reasons for going No Contact and takes the reader from the initial planning stages, exit strategies, the moment of No Contact, what to expect in the days that follow, and how to deal with a persistent and/or abusive ex who refuses to respect one’s request for No Contact.
The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist
by Debbie Mirza
The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse is the most comprehensive and helpful audiobook on the topic of covert narcissism. This type of narcissism is one of the most damaging forms because the abuse is so hidden and so insidious. You can be in a relationship that can last for decades and not realize you are being psychologically and emotionally controlled, manipulated, and abused.
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