Here are 100 books that Soulbroken fans have personally recommended if you like
Soulbroken.
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As the co-author of Broken But Healing, I know firsthand what it means to survive emotional, physical, and psychological trauma—and to slowly piece yourself back together. Books were a lifeline during my healing journey. They offered comfort, clarity, and the reminder that I wasn’t alone. These five books helped shape my own recovery and inspired me to share my story so others could find the strength to rebuild, too.
This book reveals how the body stores emotional and traumatic memories long after the mind tries to forget them.
Van der Kolk explains why symptoms like anxiety, emotional numbness, anger, or disconnection can surface years later.
Many men who “push through” or never talk about their trauma find clarity in this book’s explanation of how stress affects the brain and nervous system. It helps readers understand themselves physically and emotionally, while giving hope that healing is possible through therapy, mindfulness, and self-awareness.
"Essential reading for anyone interested in understanding and treating traumatic stress and the scope of its impact on society." -Alexander McFarlane, Director of the Centre for Traumatic Stress Studies
A pioneering researcher transforms our understanding of trauma and offers a bold new paradigm for healing in this New York Times bestseller
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…
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
Everyone experiences stress, loss, grief, and disconnection in life. We often feel isolated and alone in our sorrow and pain. For many years, I’ve shared openly about my personal challenges, starting in 2003 with my Babyfruit blog about my multiple miscarriages to the speeches I’ve given around the world in the 90s, to several of the books I’ve written. Through storytelling, I try to turn my heartbreak into lessons—to turn my pain into tangible steps that can help others navigate hard things and feel less alone. Helping others is part of my healing process.
As adults, we don’t always realize how our childhood—and our parents—have played a major role in how we feel about ourselves and our relationships. This is not about blaming parents but realizing how we may not have learned important aspects of healthy relationships because of our upbringing.
This book sets out to help people free themselves from the effects of growing up with immature parents to heal deep wounds that have led to feelings of anger or fear of abandonment. With that newfound freedom comes the ability to create positive relationships with oneself and others.
Are you one of the countless people who grew up with emotionally immature parents? If you suffer from this troubling parent/child dynamic, you may still recall painful moments from your childhood when your emotional needs were not met, when your feelings were dismissed, or when you took on adult levels of maturity in an effort to "compensate" for your parents' behavior. And while you likely cultivated strengths such as self-reliance and independence along the way- strengths that have served you well as an adult-having to be the emotionally mature person in your relationship with your parent is confusing and even…
Everyone experiences stress, loss, grief, and disconnection in life. We often feel isolated and alone in our sorrow and pain. For many years, I’ve shared openly about my personal challenges, starting in 2003 with my Babyfruit blog about my multiple miscarriages to the speeches I’ve given around the world in the 90s, to several of the books I’ve written. Through storytelling, I try to turn my heartbreak into lessons—to turn my pain into tangible steps that can help others navigate hard things and feel less alone. Helping others is part of my healing process.
Regardless of your religious beliefs, anyone who feels they are suffering mentally, emotionally, physically, or even spiritually can gain benefits from this book that is rooted in Buddhist teachings. I have always found solace in the teachings of Zen Buddhism.
The author, a psychotherapist, and Zen teacher shares eight “roads” one can take to transform one’s life, creating change within and without. The combination of both Eastern and Western wisdom makes this book accessible to anyone seeking to feel more connected and content.
Though we are seemingly more connected to our world than ever before, many of us cannot ignore a nagging sense of loneliness and isolation. To keep this anxiety and discontentment at bay, we can search for connection through unhealthy distractions, believing these will bring us true nourishment. And yet, loneliness is on the rise, exacting detrimental effects on our mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual wellbeing. Even those of us who have succeeded in the ways that society applauds, often feel unanchored, disengaged, and purposeless. If true pleasure is what we desire, how do we look past the surface, to discover…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
Everyone experiences stress, loss, grief, and disconnection in life. We often feel isolated and alone in our sorrow and pain. For many years, I’ve shared openly about my personal challenges, starting in 2003 with my Babyfruit blog about my multiple miscarriages to the speeches I’ve given around the world in the 90s, to several of the books I’ve written. Through storytelling, I try to turn my heartbreak into lessons—to turn my pain into tangible steps that can help others navigate hard things and feel less alone. Helping others is part of my healing process.
This culturally rich book, written by an Indigenous Medicine Woman, guides you through a different set of paths you can walk on your healing journey. For many, these traditions will be new and unfamiliar, but they are universal in their focus on honoring both oneself and one’s roots, in this case, one’s ancestors and Ancestral guides.
Indigenous Medicine Woman Asha Frost invites readers to learn the healing medicine of the 13 Ojibway moons and the spirit animals that will guide their wisdom journey.
The Medicine you have been searching for lives within you. Follow the path of the 13 Ojibwe Moons with Animal Spirits and Ancestors as your guides as you unlock your connection to your own unique, inherent healing power. Through storytelling, ceremonies, and Shamanic journeys, learn to apply ancient wisdom to your life in ways that are respectful and conscious of the stolen lands, lives, and traditions of Indigenous peoples.
I was adopted as a baby, so I have first-hand experience of the emotions and challenges this presents. I am passionate about shining light on this often misunderstood and complex family trauma through my writing. My memoir Blood and Blood, an emotive exploration of the search for my birth relatives, was shortlisted for the Mslexia Prize. My research extends to fiction and non-fiction, where the psychological effects of adoption are referenced or highlighted. I am always keen to chat with fellow care-experienced people. I hope you find the books on this list helpful.
If you haven’t already, READ ERIC LAROCCA NOW! I have devoured all his published work, and this one was so bleak, subversive, gothic, and intense… in fact, I’m sure a whole dictionary would never completely describe how it made me feel.
He has a way of slicing through the viscera and injecting words into your bloodstream. Whenever I read any of his stories, I feel inspired as a horror writer to up my game and insert more gore into my own writing. Yet, he makes it look incredibly easy, almost as if he is writing poetry using his own bodily fluids. Perhaps he does!? Proceed with care…
"When you're given a gift, something else gets taken away."
A precocious young girl with an unusual imagination is sent on an odyssey into the depths of depravity. After her father dies violently, young Mara is surprised to find her mother welcoming a new guest into their home, claiming that he will protect them from the world of devastation and destruction outside their door.
A grotesque and thrilling dark fantasy, We Can Never Leave This Place is a harrowing portrait of inherited grief and familial trauma.
"We Can Never Leave This Place is the apocalyptic 21st century Grimm's fairy tale…
I have been a biographer going on five decades now -- from William Carlos Williams to Man Ray to Thomas Edison to Henry Ford to Martha Graham. I am above all else a student of the human condition as well as a devotee of narrative at its most burnished - the kind of narrative that imposes its voice upon me at the end of a long day of quotidian interaction when all I want to do is get into bed and “pick up where I left off”. Biography is, indeed, storytelling - but it is restrained, or perhaps I should say tamed, by factual fidelity, a point of pride with me as a conscientious practitioner of the craft.
A powerful parent dies and each of his adult children reacts in startling and unexpected ways -- and his grieving widow in the most surprising way of all. This is an “everything” book. It took over my life. It overwhelmed my brain and mind. The utterly believable characters so generously intermingled and interwoven, familial and dynamic in their pushing and pulling, loving and hating - ignited by a precipitating event so abrupt yet simple, with consequences that spin out of control. Reading this tale, you feel as if you are drowning in a fever dream - Joyce Carol Oates once again as she has since Them (1969), offering innumerable reasons for wonderment.
The bonds of family are tested in the wake of a profound tragedy, providing a look at the darker side of our society by one of our most enduringly popular and important writers
Night Sleep Death The Stars is a gripping examination of contemporary America through the prism of a family tragedy: when a powerful parent dies, each of his adult children reacts in startling and unexpected ways, and his grieving widow in the most surprising way of all.
Stark and penetrating, Joyce Carol Oates's latest novel is a vivid exploration of race, psychological trauma, class warfare, grief, and eventual…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I’m fascinated by our connections to animals, our similarities and differences, and how we communicate. Large mammals have always been my favorites, but like many people, I started noticing birds in my backyard during the pandemic lockdowns. As an author of middle-grade novels, my stories have been inspired by something interesting I’ve learned about a particular animal. I started writing my novel after learning that whooping cranes had nested in Texas for the first time in over a century. I knew I had to give that momentous nest sighting to a bird-loving girl who’d appreciate the visitation by these rare and majestic birds!
This book helped me relive one of the bright spots of the pandemic lockdowns of 2020, when author Stephanie Lucianovic chronicled her son’s Zoom classroom spiraling into chaos when the teacher was disconnected from the class.
That fun and messy narrative unfolded in a Twitter thread known as #ZoomOfTheFlies. Imagine my delight when I saw that real-life event woven into Lucianovic’s novel.
In this engaging novel in verse, I identified with Archie as he navigated through the upheaval of the pandemic lockdowns and struggled to make his voice heard over so much noise. I felt like I was in the company of a trustworthy friend who finds hope and connection amid isolation and uncertainty.
A poignant and necessary story about finding hope during difficult times, set in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Archie's life--and the whole world--is turned upside down by Covid-19. Suddenly there are no more Friday night dinners out, no more going to school, no more hanging out with friends . . . no leaving the house at all.
Even though he's inside with his family all day every day, Archie can't help but feel more alone than ever before. While everyone else seems to be adapting to their new normal just fine, it's like Archie is permanently on mute,…
The truth is, I’ve never fit in. I'm always asking questions like: Why do we do it that way? And, what if we tried this instead? These types of questions, however, though intriguing to me and other creatives, make the keepers of the status quo really nervous. As a professor and narrative inquiry researcher, I study the stories of people who've been silenced—extracting the characters, plot, and setting these narratives have in common. For workplace abuse survivors, a salient theme is they think big! To support this mission, I'm on the Executive Board and serve as the Education Director for the National Workplace Bullying Coalition and am a regular contributor to Psychology Today.
I am a voracious reader, digesting several books a week. Every once in a while, a book stops me in my tracks, charging me to yell to myself and anyone who will listen - “Yes, yes, that is it!” This is exactly how I felt when I read Janoff-Bulman’s explanation of how trauma sleeps not in the “what” of the story but in how that “what” shatters our assumptions of a benevolent world, making us question if the world is inherently good, if events are meaningful, and whether we are truly worthy.
As both a survivor and researcher of workplace abuse, bullying on the job shatters all of these assumptions - charging the target to doubt the benevolence of the workplace, the predictability of the work environment, and the innate belief that we are inherently worthy despite the workplace gossip that hijacked our narrative.
This book investigates the psychology of victimization. It shows how fundamental assumptions about the world's meaningfulness and benevolence are shattered by traumatic events, and how victims become subject to self-blame in an attempt to accommodate brutality. The book is aimed at all those who for personal or professional reasons seek to understand what psychological trauma is and how to recover from it.
As a child, I wanted to fly away to the land of Oz or walk through a wardrobe into Narnia, but as I grew up, I learned that magic can truly be found in the most ordinary of circumstances. It’s in our commitment to caring for and supporting each other, sometimes through painful struggle, allowing a wider reality to shine through. Today, while I still love a good tale of wonder and enchantment, I find the most spiritually sustaining practices keep me grounded in the everyday, opening up a space for transformation that doesn’t suck me into another world, but reveals the latent beauty and hidden dimensions of this one.
Starting out with a dramatic account of his own trauma and recovery from a car accident, Levine quickly drew me into the fascinating realm of somatic experiencing, an exciting new paradigm for healing. Even though I have never gone through such a physical trauma myself, I could see many parallels to my own experience in Levine’s description of how past trauma gets blocked and stored in the body when our natural pattern of releasing stored-up defense energy can’t complete.
The very idea has helped me to solve some of the riddles of my own most puzzling behavior and find a new, more peaceful and satisfying way of coping with challenging situations.
Unraveling trauma in the body, brain and mind—a revolution in treatment. Now in 17 languages.
In this culmination of his life’s work, Peter A. Levine draws on his broad experience as a clinician, a student of comparative brain research, a stress scientist and a keen observer of the naturalistic animal world to explain the nature and transformation of trauma in the body, brain and psyche. In an Unspoken Voice is based on the idea that trauma is neither a disease nor a disorder, but rather an injury caused by fright, helplessness and loss that can be healed by engaging our…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
An avid reader from an early age, what has moved me most were the characters who faced adversity and fought to overcome it. In my 30s, I lost my way, followed a guru, and took almost a decade to realize I was in a cult. Psychotherapy helped me get out and led me to become a psychotherapist. The books I've recommended have encouraged and inspired me to heal and to grow, to build a good, strong, healthy life–even though I fell more than once and didn't know for sure if I could get back up. I hope these books will inspire you as they inspired me.
This is an outstanding book on healing from trauma, and I've read literally hundreds. This book transformed the way I practice psychotherapy; it transformed the way I understand what trauma does to the mind and body, and it transformed my relationship with myself. Fisher gets right to the heart of what brings most people into psychotherapy: self-alienation. Lots of people say, "I'm beating myself up," casually, without realizing the price they are paying for how habitually critical, punitive, discouraging, and condemning they are toward themselves!
Most people have compassion for others, but can't imagine how they could use that compassion internally. Internal compassion is what heals trauma, and this book, like no other I know, lays out, with depth and complexity, how to get there.
Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors integrates a neurobiologically informed understanding of trauma, dissociation, and attachment with a practical approach to treatment, all communicated in straightforward language accessible to both client and therapist. Readers will be exposed to a model that emphasizes "resolution"-a transformation in the relationship to one's self, replacing shame, self-loathing, and assumptions of guilt with compassionate acceptance. Its unique interventions have been adapted from a number of cutting-edge therapeutic approaches, including Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Internal Family Systems, mindfulness-based therapies, and clinical hypnosis. Readers will close the pages of Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors with a…
