What’s on our bookshelf · High Thrive Counseling
The Best Therapy Books
Books for understanding yourself, your relationships, and the wonderfully complicated business of being human.
Welcome to our bookshelf. At High Thrive Counseling, we know that being human does not come with an instruction manual—but sometimes a good book helps. This collection offers different ways to understand your relationships, make room for difficult feelings, and put words to experiences you have not quite known how to explain. Browse what speaks to you. There is no required reading, and absolutely no quiz at the end.
If the list feels delightfully excessive
Three places to start
You do not need to read all of these. You do not even need to finish the one you choose. Start with the problem taking up the most room in your life.
For relationship patterns
Harriet Lerner is direct, smart, and remarkably good at explaining how changing your part of a pattern can change the whole dance.
The Dance of Intimacy →For trauma
A foundational explanation of how trauma affects the brain and body. Dense in places, but useful for understanding why “just move on” is terrible advice.
The Body Keeps the Score →For grief
A readable look at what the brain is trying to do after loss—and why knowing someone is gone is different from learning how to live in a changed world.
The Grieving Brain →Boundaries + anger
When being “nice” is not working
Books about anger as information, changing your role in a relationship pattern, and setting limits without writing a dissertation to defend every boundary.
Harriet Lerner
The Dance of Anger
A classic on hearing what anger is telling you and changing the patterns that keep women silenced, overfunctioning, or stuck.
Jill’s strong recommendationHarriet Lerner
The Dance of Intimacy
Specific, grounded guidance for strengthening relationships without abandoning yourself or trying to force someone else to change first.
Paul T. Mason + Randi Kreger
Stop Walking on Eggshells
For people struggling to protect their well-being and communicate clearly in an intense or unpredictable relationship.
Randi Kreger
Stop Walking on Eggshells for Parents
A parent-focused companion for responding to high emotional intensity with clearer boundaries, steadier communication, and less chaos.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames
A compassionate mindfulness-based approach to understanding anger, reducing suffering, and responding with greater intention.
John Paul Lederach
The Little Book of Conflict Transformation
A brief, thoughtful way to understand conflict as something that changes people and systems—not simply a problem to make disappear.
Boundaries are easier to read about than to hold. Jenny Staats, LMSW and Jill Frame, LMFT, CST both work on this in individual therapy, in Indianapolis and online.
Shame + worthiness
The voice that says you are the problem
Shame loves secrecy, perfectionism, and sweeping statements about who you are. These books give you better language for understanding it.
John Bradshaw
Healing the Shame That Binds You
Jill’s favorite book specifically about shame. Bradshaw explains how shame becomes part of identity and how that pattern can begin to loosen.
Jill’s favorite on shameDonald L. Nathanson
Shame and Pride
A deeper, more clinical exploration of affect, shame, identity, and the emotional systems shaping how people experience themselves.
Also on the Brené Brown shelf
- I Thought It Was Just Me (But It Isn’t)
- Braving the Wilderness
- Men, Women and Worthiness
- The Gifts of Imperfection
- Rising Strong
Shame shows up constantly in Jill’s work with couples, sex therapy and trauma. It is very workable. It just hates being talked about.
Grief + loss
For the loss that changed the shape of everything
There is no required grief book and no reading assignment that makes loss tidy. These offer different lenses: meaning, ambiguity, neuroscience, mourning, and faith.
Harold S. Kushner
When Bad Things Happen to Good People
A rabbi and bereaved father thinks honestly about suffering, faith, fairness, and the questions tragedy leaves behind.
David Kessler
Finding Meaning
A hopeful discussion of remembering someone with love and building meaning after loss without forgetting who died.
Pauline Boss
Ambiguous Loss
Essential language for losses without a clear ending: estrangement, disappearance, dementia, or someone being physically present but psychologically absent.
Mary-Frances O’Connor
The Grieving Brain
Accessible neuroscience about attachment, loss, and why the brain needs time to learn a reality the mind already understands.
Alan D. Wolfelt
Understanding Your Grief
A compassionate, reflective guide with journaling prompts and room for each mourner’s beliefs, support needs, and individual experience.
Looking for support beyond a book? Jill offers grief counseling in Indianapolis and online.
Anxiety + depression
A workbook for the brain that keeps arguing back
Sometimes you want insight. Sometimes you want something structured to do with the thought that has been pacing in circles for three hours.
David D. Burns
Ten Days to Self-Esteem
Do not let the slightly infomercial-ish title scare you off. This practical workbook helps identify and challenge thinking patterns tied to anxiety, depression, and low self-worth.
More useful than the title suggestsJenny Staats, LMSW works with anxiety, depression and ADHD in teens and adults. Learn about anxiety therapy, depression therapy and ADHD therapy in Indianapolis.
Addiction + codependence
Compassion, boundaries, and help that does not require rescuing
For understanding addiction and for the partners and family members trying to stay connected without disappearing into someone else’s recovery.
Gabor Maté
In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts
A compassionate account of addiction rooted in clinical experience, trauma, human connection, and the conditions that shape substance use.
Beverly Berg
Loving Someone in Recovery
Tools for partners seeking emotional steadiness, clearer communication, healthy boundaries, and intimacy during recovery.
Jeffrey Foote and colleagues
The Beyond Addiction Workbook for Family and Friends
Evidence-based skills for encouraging positive change without relying on shame, “tough love,” or waiting helplessly for rock bottom.
Jeanette Elisabeth Menter
You’re Not Crazy—You’re Codependent
A plainspoken look at guilt, control, perfectionism, shame, and the relationship patterns that can develop around addiction, abuse, or trauma.
When addiction is reshaping a relationship, couples counseling with Jill can give both partners somewhere to put the fear, the anger and the hope.
Relationships + attachment
Because love is lovely. And also logistically complicated.
Attachment, conflict, household labor, emotional connection, belonging, and the patterns couples repeat even after agreeing never to have that argument again.
Sue Johnson
Hold Me Tight
An accessible introduction to attachment needs and the conversations that help couples recognize the fear underneath recurring conflict.
John Gottman + Nan Silver
The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work
Research-informed principles and exercises for friendship, conflict, shared meaning, and the ordinary habits that shape long-term relationships.
Michael W. Pantalon and colleagues
Couples by Intention
Follow couples through group counseling and see what intentional communication and connection look like outside the polished examples.
Eve Rodsky
The Fair Play Deck
A conversation deck for making invisible labor visible, clarifying ownership, and talking about domestic responsibilities before resentment moves in permanently.
Sebastian Junger
Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging
A provocative look at community, belonging, military experience, and what people may miss when intense shared purpose disappears.
Allan N. Schore
Affect Regulation and the Repair of the Self
A considerably denser read connecting attachment, neuroscience, emotional development, regulation, and the formation of self.
For the therapy-textbook peopleIf reading together turns into debating who the book is really about, couples counseling with Jill may be useful. Getting married? Jenny offers premarital counseling.
Trauma + the body
When your nervous system did not get the memo that it is over
Two foundational books exploring trauma as a whole-person experience involving the brain, body, relationships, memory, and capacity for regulation.
Bessel van der Kolk
The Body Keeps the Score
A wide-ranging explanation of how trauma affects the brain and body, with discussion of several approaches to healing and recovery.
Peter A. Levine
In an Unspoken Voice
A body-oriented view of trauma, helplessness, arousal, and the innate capacity to restore regulation after overwhelming experiences.
Jenny and Jill are both trained in EMDR. Learn about trauma and EMDR therapy in Indianapolis and EMDR intensives.
Forgiveness
A complicated word that deserves more than a greeting card
Forgiveness is not the same as excusing, forgetting, reconciling, or restoring access. These books approach it with more seriousness than “let it go.”
Desmond Tutu + Mpho Tutu
The Book of Forgiving
A four-part path through telling the story, naming the hurt, considering forgiveness, and deciding whether to renew or release a relationship.
John Patton
Is Human Forgiveness Possible?
Jill’s favorite book of all time. It is not an easy read, and Patton’s conceptualization of forgiveness is masterful.
Jill’s all-time favoriteForgiveness after betrayal is its own kind of work. See affair recovery intensives with Jill.
Families + co-parenting
Family patterns, power struggles, and the myth of the instant blend
For understanding family-of-origin patterns, parenting conflict, divorce, co-parenting, and the particular architecture of stepfamilies.
Ronald W. Richardson
Family Ties That Bind
A readable family-of-origin guide to roles, rules, birth order, patterns, and how old relationship systems keep showing up in new rooms.
Mary Sheedy Kurcinka
Kids, Parents, and Power Struggles
Practical ways to understand the issues underneath conflict while helping children build regulation, assertiveness, problem-solving, and cooperation.
Patricia L. Papernow
Surviving and Thriving in Stepfamily Relationships
Research and clinical wisdom about the structural challenges of stepfamilies and the strategies that help at different levels of difficulty.
Ron L. Deal
The Smart Stepfamily
Practical guidance for communication, co-parenting, finances, stepparent roles, and allowing a blended family to develop slowly.
Karen Bonnell + Kristin Little
The Co-Parenting Handbook
A road map for guiding children and young adults through separation, divorce, two homes, and the emotional terrain surrounding family change.
Parenting a teenager through all of this? Jenny offers therapy for teens 15 and up, in Indianapolis and online across Indiana.
Spirituality + self-knowledge
For people who enjoy a personality system with approximately 847 layers
A comprehensive Enneagram reference for understanding type, instinct, subtype, patterns, strengths, defenses, and opportunities for growth.
Beatrice Chestnut
The Complete Enneagram
A detailed guide to the nine types and 27 subtypes, with attention to self-observation, defenses, growth, and the parts of themselves people would prefer to explain away.
The people behind the bookshelf
Meet our therapists
Reading is a fine place to start. If you would rather talk it through with an actual human, here is who you would be talking to.
Jenny Staats
LMSW · Teens 15+ and adults
Jenny works with teens and adults around ADHD, anxiety, depression, trauma and EMDR (including EMDR intensives), premarital counseling, and the big transitions that rearrange a life. Her style is warm, practical and collaborative, with an emphasis on helping people translate what they learn into real life.
Jill Frame
LMFT, CST · Couples and adults
Jill is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, AASECT Certified Sex Therapist, EMDR therapist, and the kind of person who has, in fact, taken therapy textbooks on vacation. She works with adults and couples around relationships, betrayal, sex and intimacy, trauma, grief, and major life changes—and likes therapy because humans rarely fit perfectly into Chapter Seven.
Also at High Thrive: Christie Jansing, LCSW. Meet the whole team →
For parents, caregivers + professionals
Children’s books, games, and therapeutic resources
Explore our collection of children’s books, games, and therapeutic resources, organized by topic to help you find what you need.
Conversation, emotions + social skills
Grief, anxiety + family mental health
- Wishing Wellness
- Black Jack Jetty
- I’ll Know What to Do
- When I Was Little Like You
- When Dinosaurs Die
- It Won’t Last Forever
- Know the World’s Worst Secret
- Jenny Is Scared
- The Hyena Who Lost Her Laugh
- The Lion Who Lost His Roar
- The Bear Who Lost His Sleep
- Don’t Pop Your Cork on Mondays!
- Don’t Feed the Monster on Tuesdays!
Body safety, abuse + violence
Behavior, kindness + self-control
- Feet Are Not for Kicking
- The Penguin Who Lost Her Cool
- The Koala Who Wouldn’t Cooperate
- The Rabbit Who Lost His Hop
- Hands Are Not for Hitting
- Be Polite and Kind
- Words Are Not for Hurting
- Be Honest and Tell the Truth
- Blue Cheese Breath and Stinky Feet
- Just Kidding
- I Want Your Moo
- Don’t Behave Like You Live in a Cave
- Don’t Be a Menace on Sundays!
- Don’t Tell a Whopper on Fridays!
- Don’t Rant and Rave on Wednesdays!
How to use this bookshelf
A book can support therapy. It does not have to become homework.
Read selectively
Skip around. Highlight one paragraph. Stop when a book is not useful. Completion is not a moral achievement.
Notice your reaction
The part you love, resist, argue with, or want to text someone immediately can all be worth discussing.
Bring it to therapy
A book can give you and your therapist shared language. Your actual life helps determine whether that language fits.
Books are helpful. Humans are complicated.
Sometimes you need more than a really good paragraph.
If a book helped you name the issue but did not tell you what to do with it, Jenny or Jill can help you explore how the pattern shows up in your life, your body, or your relationships. A free 15-minute consultation is the easiest place to start.