Self-Help
Resources

By Pia Mellody

Pia Mellody creates a framework for identifying codependent thinking, emotions and behaviour and provides an effective approach to recovery. Mellody sets forth five primary adult symptoms of this crippling condition, then traces their origin to emotional, spiritual, intellectual, physical and sexual abuses that occur in childhood. Central to Mellody's approach is the concept that the codependent adult's injured inner child needs healing. Recovery from codependence, therefore, involves clearing up the toxic emotions left over from these painful childhood experiences.

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By Miguel Ruiz

In The Four Agreements, bestselling author don Miguel Ruiz reveals the source of self-limiting beliefs that rob us of joy and create needless suffering. Based on ancient Toltec wisdom, The Four Agreements offer a powerful code of conduct that can rapidly transform our lives to a new experience of freedom, true happiness, and love.

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By Melody Beattie

With instructive life stories, personal reflections, exercises, and self-tests, Codependent No More is a simple, straightforward, readable map of the perplexing world of codependency--charting the path to freedom and a lifetime of healing, hope, and happiness.

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By Viktor Frankl

A book for finding purpose and strength in times of great despair, the international best-seller is still just as relevant today as when it was first published.

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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.

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By Melody Beattie

Millions identified with Melody Beattie in Codependent No More and gained inspiration from her in Beyond Codependency. Now she’s back to help you discover how recovery programs work and to help you find the right one for you. Interpreting the famous Alcoholics Anonymous Twelve Steps specifically for codependent issues for the very first time, this groundbreaking book combines Melody’s expertise with the experience of other people to:

• Explain each step and how you can apply it to your particular issues.

• Offer specific exercises and activities to use both in group settings and on your own.

• Provide a directory of the wide range of Twelve Step programs—including Al-Anon, Codependents Anonymous, Codependents of Sex Addicts, Adult Children of Alcoholics, and more.

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By Melody Beattie

In Codependent No More, Melody Beattie introduced the world to the term codependency. Now a modern classic, this book established Beattie as a pioneer in self-help literature and endeared her to millions of readers who longed for healthier relationships. Twenty-five years later concepts such as self-care and setting boundaries have become entrenched in mainstream culture. Now Beattie has written a follow-up volume, The New Codependency, which clears up misconceptions about codependency, identifies how codependent behavior has changed, and provides a new generation with a road map to wellness.

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by Patricia O'Gorman and Philip Oliver-Diaz

If you are the child of an alcoholic or an adult who has experienced trauma in childhood, you can give yourself a second chance for intimacy, fulfillment and joy by self-parenting. 12 Steps to Self-Parenting, based on the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, will guide you to nurture your inner child so that it may grow into healthy self acceptance.

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by Laura Davis

Based on in-depth interviews and her workshops for partners across the country, Laura Davis offers practical advice and encouragement to all partners—girlfriends, boyfriends, spouses, and lovers—trying to support the survivors in their lives while tending to their own needs along the way. She shows couples how to deepen compassion, improve communication, and develop an understanding of healing as a shared activity. Addressing partners' most important questions.

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by Laura Davis & Ellen Bass

Come to terms with your past while moving powerfully into the future.

The Courage to Heal is an inspiring, comprehensive guide that offers hope and a map of the healing journey to every woman who was sexually abused as a child—and to those who care about her. Although the effects of child sexual abuse are long-term and severe, healing is possible.

Weaving together personal experience with professional knowledge, the authors provide clear explanations, practical suggestions, and support throughout the healing process. Readers will feel recognized and encouraged by hundreds of moving first-person stories drawn from interviews and the authors' extensive work with survivors, both nationally and internationally.

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by Laura Davis

In this groundbreaking companion to The Courage to Heal, Laura Davis offers an inspiring, in-depth workbook that speaks to all women and men healing from the effects of child sexual abuse. The combination of checklists, writing and art Projects, open-ended questions and activities expertly guides the survivor through the healing process.

Survival Skills—Teaches survivors to create a safe, supportive environment, ask for help, deal with crisis periods, and choose therapy.

Aspects Of Healing—Focuses on the healing process: gaining a capacity for hope, breaking silence, letting go of shame, turning anger into action, planning a confrontation, preparing for family contact, and affirming personal progress.

Guidelines For Healing Sexually—Redefines the concept of "safe sex" and establishes healthy ground rules for sexual contact.

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by John Bradshaw

Based on the public television series of the same name, Bradshaw On: The Family is John Bradshaw's seminal work on the dynamics of families that has sold more than a million copies since its original publication in 1988. 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.

Using the latest family research and recovery material in this new edition, Bradshaw also explores the individual in both a family and societal setting. He 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. He helps you heal yourself and then, using what you have learned helps you heal your family.

Finally, Bradshaw extends this idea to our society: by returning yourself and your family to emotional health, you can heal the world in which you live. He helps you re-envision societal conflicts from the perspective of a global family, and shares with you the power of deep democracy: how the choices you make every day can affect--and improve--your world.

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by John Bradshaw

Shame is the motivator behind our toxic behaviors: the compulsion, co-dependency, addiction and drive to super-achieve that breaks down the family and destroys personal lives. This book has helped millions identify their personal shame, understand the underlying reasons for it, address these root causes and release themselves from the shame that binds them to their past failures.

This is not just a recovery book. Among other things, it is a classic book on identifying and working through unresolved family issues. Includes affirmations, visualizations, inner voice and feeling exercises. Strong supporting studies make this a popular book with counselors and other professionals.

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by John Bradshaw

In this powerful book, John Bradshaw shows how we can learn to nurture that inner child, in essence offering ourselves the good parenting we needed and longed for. Through a step-by-step process of exploring the unfinished business of each developmental stage, we can break away from destructive family rules and roles and free ourselves to live responsibly in the present. Then, says Bradshaw, the healed inner child becomes a source of vitality, enabling us to find new joy and energy in living.

Homecoming includes a wealth of unique case histories and interactive techniques, including questionnaires, letter-writing to the inner child, guided meditations, and affirmations. Pioneering when introduced, these classic therapies are now being validated by new discoveries in attachment research and neuroscience. No one has ever brought them to a popular audience more effectively and inspiringly than John Bradshaw.

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By Dwight E. Kobar

Read this book to your own inner child or to any child, or let children read to themselves. It will lift the spirits of both reader and audience, even if they're one and the same. Keep it handy and read it often as a reminder of just how delightfully precious you really are. I dare you not to smile before you reach the end each time.

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by Patrick Carnes, PhD

A first-time examination of sexual anorexia, an extreme fear of sexual intimacy and obsessive avoidance of sex, by the acknowledged leader in the treatment of compulsive sexual behavior and recovery.

Author Dr. Patrick Carnes begins by defining sexual anorexia and demonstrating how it and its parallel disorder, sexual addiction and compulsivity, often arise from a background of childhood sexual trauma, neglect, and other forms of abuse. Carnes explores the numerous dimensions of sexual health, examining key issues which must be addressed and resolved for recovery to proceed.

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Alcoholics Anonymous is an international fellowship of men and women who have had a drinking problem. It is nonprofessional, self-supporting, multiracial, apolitical, and available almost everywhere. There are no age or education requirements. Membership is open to anyone who wants to do something about his or her drinking problem.

Visit AA site

Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA)/Dysfunctional Families is a Twelve Step, Twelve Tradition program of men and women who grew up in dysfunctional homes.

We meet to share our experience of growing up in an environment where abuse, neglect and trauma infected us. This affects us today and influences how we deal with all aspects of our lives.

Visit ACA’s site

Established in 1987, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) is a voluntary health organization that gives those affected by suicide a nationwide community empowered by research, education and advocacy to take action against this leading cause of death.

Visit AFSP

The Center for Mindful Self-Compassion was originally founded in 2012 by the developers of MSC, Christopher Germer and Kristin Neff, and is now an international nonprofit organization. The Center provides resources and training opportunities to anyone wishing to learn and practice self-compassion

Visit the Center for Mindful Self-Compassion

CODA is a fellowship of men and women whose common purpose is to develop healthy relationships. The only requirement for membership is a desire for healthy and loving relationships.

Visit CODA’s site

Tessa Milne is a survivor of abuse and an Inspirational Speaker. She shares her survival story to inspire others to escape abusive and unhealthy lifestyles, as well as spread awareness on ALL forms of abuse to change lives and save lives. If you are a victim, a survivor, or know someone who is, check out her site for more information.

Visit Face of a Survivor

Founded in 2004, Joyful Heart is a leading national organization with a mission to transform society’s response to sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse, support survivors’ healing, and end this violence forever.

Joyful Heart carries out its mission through an integrated program portfolio of education and advocacy. Our work is paving the way for innovative approaches to treating trauma; igniting shifts in the way the public views and responds to sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse; and reforming and advancing policies and legislation to ensure access to justice for survivors.

Visit Joyful Heart

NSVRC provides research & tools to advocates working on the frontlines to end sexual harassment, assault, and abuse with the understanding that ending sexual violence also means ending racism, sexism, and all forms of oppression.

Visit NSVRC

PAL groups meet weekly to educate, support and help each other with issues arising from loving someone with an addiction. Each PAL group is facilitated by a peer, someone walking the same path. While the focus is on parents with an addicted child, all family member and friends are welcome to attend PAL meetings.

Visit PAL Website

SLAA is a program for anyone who suffers from an addictive compulsion to engage in or avoid sex, love, or emotional attachment. We use the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions adapted from Alcoholics Anonymous to recover from these compulsions.

Visit SLAA Website

As part of their collection of symptoms relating specifically to survivors of Child Sexual Abuse, Saprea includes this excellent resource that explains triggers and provides guidance on how to cope when triggered.

Read the article

The Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction and Relaxation Program (MBSR) was pioneered by Jon Kabat Zinn, PhD at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center’s Center for Mindfulness over 40 years ago. Since then over 6000 studies have been published worldwide attesting to the effectiveness of the program. The effects of stress can be felt physically, mentally and emotionally and the studies delve into all of these categories and more. We define mindfulness as paying attention moment by moment on purpose and without judgement.

Visit the Program

Stop it Now! was founded by Fran Henry, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse who learned first-hand that standard approaches to keeping children safe from child sexual abuse at that time did not respond to the complex relationships surrounding most abuse.

Visit Stop It Now!

Tara Brach’s teachings blend Western psychology and Eastern spiritual practices, mindful attention to our inner life, and a full, compassionate engagement with our world. The result is a distinctive voice in Western Buddhism, one that offers a wise and caring approach to freeing ourselves and society from suffering.

Visit Tara Brach

Our mission is to help as many people as possible recover from substance abuse addiction and other behavioral health issues. Through our vast network of quality treatment providers, mental health facilities, sober living homes, self help groups and licensed mental health therapists, we strive in providing the best treatment options in Arizona and Nationwide. Whether it be a drug and alcohol rehab center in Scottsdale or a mental health Inpatient Facility in Phoenix, we will help you start your journey of recovery and sobriety.

Visit Together AZ

WINGS works to empower all of us – survivors, loved ones, providers and communities – to have the resources we need to speak about, heal from and thrive beyond childhood sexual abuse trauma.

Specifically, we work to empower adults who have experienced this abuse in childhood, and those who support them. When we effectively do so, survivors’ lives – and all of our lives – are healthier, happier and stronger.

Visit Wings Foundation

Featuring Brené Brown

Brené Brown studies human connection -- our ability to empathize, belong, love. In a poignant, funny talk, she shares a deep insight from her research, one that sent her on a personal quest to know herself as well as to understand humanity. A talk to share.

Click to listen at Ted

Featuring Brené Brown

Shame is an unspoken epidemic, the secret behind many forms of broken behavior. Brené Brown, whose earlier talk on vulnerability became a viral hit, explores what can happen when people confront their shame head-on. Her own humor, humanity and vulnerability shine through every word.

Click to listen at TED

Featuring Dr Jee Hyun Kim

Dr Kim currently leads a research team working on memory aspects of early-onset anxiety disorders and drug addiction in the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, University of Melbourne. Her research suggests cognitive-behavioural therapies have different effectiveness depending on one's age, and advocates treatment of mental disorders during childhood.

Click to watch on YouTube

It's a humbling situation, but much about who we are as adults can be traced back to things that happened to us before our 12th birthday. Part of learning to be an adulthood means making sense of the events of our childhood. We need to spot how our past might be trying to interfere with our chances in the present.

Click here to watch on YouTube