Book Recommendations
Your Resonant Self Workbook: From Self-Sabotage to Self Care, and Your Resonant Self: Guided Meditations and Exercises to Engage Your Brain’s Capacity for Healing. Sarah Peyton’s books are among my favorite guides to move from any kind of inner turmoil to inner peace and connection with one’s true nature. Though she uses different language from Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, the ideas are compatible. Both books are absolutely chock full of valuable information on how the brain works, along with step-by-step exercises to apply the information for our own healing. If you want to expedite your healing, these would be my top recommendation.
SoulCollage Evolving: An Intuitive Collage Process for Self-Discovery and Community. This book by Seena B. Frost is a great adjunct to IFS work, in that inspires and instructs the reader to create cards representing the different parts of ourselves. My clients who’ve taken up this work find that creating cards for parts is therapy in itself, working both to get to know a part better and to validate and affirm it. It’s also useful to have the tangible cards when doing parts work on your own, as you can easily get in touch with the part when you have a visual representation.
Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships: Healing the Wound of the Heart. John Welwood wrote the book I would like to give every person in a relationship of any kind. Yes, that’s a big statement (and a lot of people to whom to give books!), but it’s because John writes with such clarity and compassion about the “wound of the heart,” our defenses melt and we see ourselves with this same compassion and understanding. He sets forth what I’d call an “IFS-adjacent” process for healing our wounds and relating to one another with greater transparency. Were we to merely acknowledge Welwood’s insights, our world would be a vastly more liveable place.
Journey Through Trauma: A Trail Guide to the 5-Phase Cycle of Healing Repeated Trauma. Gretchen Schmelzer, PhD offers what no other author has thought to do: a description of each stage of trauma healing. Gretchen’s own healing journey and her decades of work with other survivors of complex trauma revealed to her, over time, the five stages people go through as they heal. The metaphors alone are worth the price of the book! Gretchen likens trauma healing to adventure travel — climbing-Mount-Everest-level adventure travel — and helps us understand the mission for each stage of the journey. This isn’t a how-to book; it’s a companion guide that gives you glimpses of what’s ahead, encourages you to take stock of where you are, and reassures you that you will get there as long as you keep going.
Meeting Self Meditation
This meditation takes you on a relaxing journey to meet and commune with your Self energy.
Meditation: Connecting with a Part
This meditation helps you connect with one of your parts from Self energy in order to learn more about that part’s experience.
Metta (Lovingkindness) Meditation
This meditation offers unconditional friendliness to self and others.
