The Books We Keep Coming Back To: Recommendations From The Center KSQ
In partnership with local bookstore, Forage Books, you can purchase these books online here.
There’s something I love about asking therapists what books have stayed with them.
Not What book should everyone read? or What’s the best psychology book? Those questions feel a little too big.
I mean the books that made you underline half the page. The ones you found yourself talking about weeks, months and years after reading it. The ones you handed to a client, a friend, or maybe you revisited during a particular season of your own life, or over and over again.
Therapists are naturally curious people. We spend a lot of time thinking about why we do what we do, how relationships shape us, what happens inside our nervous systems, and how people find their way through really difficult things. So, unsurprisingly, our bookshelves tend to reflect that.
Recently, we asked the clinicians at The Center KSQ to share some of the books they find themselves recommending, referencing, or simply coveting. The answers were wonderfully varied: anxiety, relationships, grief, trauma, parenting, ADHD, mindfulness, identity, resilience and the search for meaning.
Here are a few of the books that have earned a place on our shelves.
Where Everything Starts: Trauma, Society, and the Shift in How We Heal
Before we look at anything else, we have to talk about the ground we stand on. The field of mental health is undergoing a massive, long-overdue revolution, moving away from asking What is wrong with you? and toward What happened to you?
As a trauma therapist, founder, and director of The Center KSQ, Winden Rowe, LPC cannot talk about books that shaped her without putting these frontline texts at the very top of the shelf.
Winden Rowe, LPC recommends:
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk.
"There is so much to say about this book. Van der Kolk is as much a genius as he has been critiqued by some people in the field of mental health, but this book has sat at the top of the New York Times Bestseller list for seven years for a reason. This book completely changed the way the world talks about mental health and brings THE view that the field needs to take when it comes to better understanding ourselves. If you are someone who says 'I don’t have any trauma!', read this first before you sign off on that idea. I own at least seven copies. Two or three of them look like I ate them, digested them, and then taped them all back together. There is not a book that I love more. This book saves lives."
She also recommends:
The Myth of Normal by Gabor Maté.
"This book is long, and it is dense, and Maté is much better at presenting than writing. But don’t let that turn you away. It is dense and long because so is the human experience. Each page slowly untangles the complexity of who we are and how we come to be, but in such a very easy to understand way, that by the end, you will never look at yourself, your loved ones, and life the same way again. Maté deconstructs the systems that we live in, and builds up the heart of humanity and what we call 'mental health' in such a real and relatable non-clinical way. This book should be standard curricula across all systems of education and learning. The whole world would be better for it."
Winden also recommends:
Trauma and Recovery by Judith Herman.
"Only read this book if you like reading about the history of sociopolitics and how our world is shaped by the powers that be, for the better and for the not so better. Maybe not a self help book, but one of the most life changing books that I have ever read as a woman, as a lover of science, and as someone who has a deep and abiding respect for women in science that put their necks out for the betterment of humankind. This book moves me and my heart. Judith Herman changed my life, my career, and my future all due to her studies. It’s not necessarily a page turning read. But it is, all at the same time. That is her brilliance."
And she recommends:
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.
"If in life you are lost, you are trying to find your way, and feeling deeply alone, read this book. That is all the review Coelho’s brilliant work needs."
Finally, Winden recommends:
The Five Levels of Attachment by Don Miguel Ruiz.
"Ruiz is best known for his book The Four Agreements (which you should also read ;)). But this work talks about how we are so prone to investing and sometimes overinvesting in a perspective to the point of our own collective detriment. This is applied in parenting, in love relationships, in families, in politics, and in our communities. This overinvestment can also show up in our mental health and the stories we tell ourselves about who we are."
When Anxiety Might Be Trying to Tell Us Something
Samantha Papps recommends The Anatomy of Anxiety by Dr. Ellen Vora.
"One of the things I appreciate about this book is that it doesn’t treat anxiety as if it exists only from the neck up. Vora looks at the whole person, covering sleep, stress, nutrition, hormones and everyday habits, while still making room for the emotional and psychological experiences underneath anxiety."
That distinction can be powerful. Sometimes anxiety is asking us to look at what is happening in our bodies or daily lives. Other times, it may be pointing us toward something deeper that deserves our attention. Either way, the invitation is less about forcing anxiety away and more about getting curious about it.
Understanding the Brain - and Working With It
Dr. Raquel Johnson-DeVera recommends Buddha’s Brain by Rick Hanson, Ph.D., a book that brings neuroscience, mindfulness and emotional well-being together in a very accessible way.
She also recommends The ADHD Effect on Marriage by Melissa Orlov, which looks at how ADHD can affect communication, responsibilities, conflict and connection between partners, as well as Make Your Bed by Admiral William H. McRaven, a short book about the surprisingly large impact of small, consistent actions. For those who don't know, Dr. Johnson-DeVera worked in the VA system for many years, so her special attention to veterans and what that special population teaches us is extra dear to her.
Her trio of books is interesting because, on the surface, they are very different books. But there’s a common thread running through all three: understanding what influences us and then recognizing where we still have room to make intentional choices.
That is a theme we come back to again and again in therapy.
Why Do We Keep Having the Same Relationship Fight?
Relationships understandably showed up a lot on our list.
Mona Jantzi recommends Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller, an approachable introduction to anxious, avoidant and secure attachment styles and how they influence the ways we connect with our partners.
She also recommends Hold Me Tight by Sue Johnson, which walks couples through conversations designed to increase emotional safety and help them move out of painful communication cycles.
Troby Roosevelt’s recommendations take us even further into this territory. He recommends three books by Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt: Keeping the Love You Find, Getting the Love You Want, and Giving the Love That Heals.
Their work explores the idea that our earliest experiences of connection can influence what later feels familiar to us in love, relationships and even conflict. But what Troby appreciates is that the books don’t stop at understanding why our patterns exist. They offer concrete ways to communicate, develop empathy, work through conflict and become more intentional about how we relate to the people we love.
Christine Jones, LPC also recommends Melissa Orlov’s work, including The ADHD Effect on Marriage and The Couple’s Guide to Thriving with ADHD. Christine particularly appreciates how Orlov helps couples step outside of the blame cycle and gives them practical strategies that can be useful even when there isn’t a formal ADHD diagnosis.
And Cassidy Fritz recommends The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John Gottman, a useful introduction to many of the relationship principles that have shaped modern couples therapy. Not to mention, John Gottman is a change maker in couples work and deeply revered and respected in our field.
The larger message in all of these books is one I wish more couples heard earlier:
Having a pattern doesn’t mean you have a bad relationship. It means you have a pattern. And patterns can be understood, interrupted and changed.
Grief That Changes Shape Over Time
Christine also recommends Motherless Mothers by Hope Edelman.
Grief is rarely as tidy as we would like it to be. A loss may happen at one point in our lives and then return to us differently years later, as we marry, become parents, experience milestones or find ourselves needing someone who is no longer here.
Christine describes Edelman’s work as influential in the way she thinks about grief, childhood trauma, maternal relationships and end-of-life issues. Motherless Mothers specifically explores what happens when women who have lost their own mothers later become mothers themselves and must navigate parenting alongside their continuing grief.
There is something deeply validating about a book that can put language around a grief you thought you were supposed to have already “finished.”
Your Body Is Part of the Story, Too
Natalie Onesi’s recommendations share a particularly strong theme: the relationship between our thoughts, our identities and what is happening inside our bodies.
She recommends Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself by Dr. Joe Dispenza, which she appreciates for making complicated concepts understandable and exploring how familiar nervous-system patterns can begin to feel like part of our identity.
She also recommends Body Sense by Alan Fogel, which encourages readers to pay closer attention to the information the body is constantly giving us rather than relying exclusively on intellectual analysis.
Natalie describes the body almost like a metal detector, constantly picking something up, even when we don’t yet have words for what we are experiencing.
That metaphor sticks with me.
We are very good at thinking about our feelings. Sometimes healing asks us to notice what it feels like to actually feel them.
That same idea runs through Natalie’s recommendation of In an Unspoken Voice by Peter Levine, which explores how traumatic experiences can continue to show up in the body and nervous system, not simply as memories or thoughts.
Questioning the Stories We’ve Been Given
Natalie also recommends Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés and 101 Essays That Will Change the Way You Think by Brianna Wiest.
Both, in very different ways, invite us to question the identities, expectations and habitual ways of thinking we may have absorbed over time.
Sometimes one of the most important moments in therapy happens when someone realizes:
Wait. I don’t actually have to keep doing it this way.
Maybe the belief came from childhood. Maybe from a relationship. Maybe from culture, family expectations or simply years of repetition.
Understanding where something came from does not automatically change it. But it can give us the freedom to decide whether we still want to carry it.
Books for Parents, Too
Cassidy recommends The Whole-Brain Child by Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson, an accessible book that helps parents understand what may be happening beneath a child’s emotions, behavior, decision-making and memories.
Instead of simply asking, How do I get my child to stop doing this?, books like this encourage a different question:
What is happening for my child right now?
That shift, moving from controlling behavior to understanding it, can change a lot.
Cassidy also recommends Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom, a book that steps outside of the traditional mental-health category altogether but still asks some of the biggest questions we encounter in therapy: What matters? How do we want to live? What does it mean to connect with other people while we are here?
And Eric Shapiro adds another classic to our shelf: Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.
You Don’t Have to Read the “Right” Book
If there’s anything I hope people take from this list, it’s that there is no single book that unlocks everything.
Sometimes the right book gives you language for something you’ve felt for years. Sometimes it helps your partner finally understand an experience you haven’t known how to explain. Sometimes it gives you one small exercise that changes the way you respond to yourself.
And sometimes it simply makes you stop on a page and think:
Oh. That’s me.
That moment of recognition can be the beginning of something.
Books aren’t therapy, of course. But they can open doors. They can spark conversations. They can make us curious about ourselves and the people we love.
And around here, curiosity is usually a pretty good place to start.
In partnership with local bookstore, Forage Books, you can purchase these books online here.