top of page

What Our Therapists are Reading

Top Picks

deepest well.jpg

Deepest Well

Nadine Burke Harris

Nadine Burke Harris’s The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity is a 2018 nonfiction book that explores the evolving science on the relationship between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and health disparities. Burke Harris is a pediatrician, a founder of San Francisco’s Center for Youth Wellness, and the first surgeon general of California. In her book, she recounts how her pediatric practice in San Francisco’s Bayview community helped her link childhood trauma to long-term health problems. Using powerful anecdotes, episodes from medical history, summaries of major research, and expositions on the biology of stress, Burke Harris makes the case for developing protocols to identify and treat toxic stress responses early in life to improve health and educational outcomes for children.

Boy raised as a dog.jpg

The Boy Who was Raised as a Dog

Bruce Perry

What happens when a young brain is traumatized? How does terror, abuse, or disaster affect a child's mind--and how can that mind recover? Child psychiatrist Bruce Perry has helped children faced with unimaginable horror: genocide survivors, murder witnesses, kidnapped teenagers, and victims of family violence. In The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, he tells their stories of trauma and transformation through the lens of science, revealing the brain's astonishing capacity for healing.

what-happened-to-you-1619462871.png

What Happened to You?

Bruce Perry, Oprah Winfrey

Through wide-ranging and often deeply personal conversation, Oprah Winfrey and Dr Perry explore how what happens to us in early childhood – both good and bad - influences the people we become. They challenge us to shift from focusing on 'What’s wrong with you?' or 'Why are you behaving that way?' to asking 'What happened to you?'. This simple change in perspective can open up a new and hopeful understanding for millions about why we do the things we do, why we are the way we are, providing a road map for repairing relationships, overcoming what seems insurmountable, and ultimately living better and more fulfilling lives.

victor frankl.jpg

Man's Search For Meaning

Victor Frankl

Man's Search for Meaning is a 1946 book by Victor Frankl chronicling his experiences as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps during World War II, and describing his psychotherapeutic method, which involved identifying a purpose in life to feel positive about, and then immersively imagining that outcome. According to Frankl, the way a prisoner imagined the future affected his longevity. 

Penny's Pink Elephant_edited_edited.jpg

Penny's Pink Elephant

Catherine Castillo

Penny ignores her chores, and her troubles begin when a pink elephant shows up and decides to stay. Penny thinks the pink elephant is cute until the elephant grows too big for her, and she realizes she needs help. See how Penny is able to overcome her troubles and make better decisions in the future in this book.

Resources: Resources
bottom of page