10 books like Nonviolent Communication

In apposition to the Levi book I listed first, Frankl becomes more of what he already is, which is a transformation of a completely different sort. The author’s professional life becomes magnified, his thought processes on suffering become exponential. The Holocaust experience affects him so much, so deeply, that he emerges with a new field of thought that shakes up the foundational thought on mental health that Freud had well established. One is not a slave to his own mind; one can attain mastery under any circumstances with certain shifts of reason. Resonant for all time, and certainly for our time.

I include this refreshing travel memoir for escapism – something to be savoured as well as to stretch the mind. Written by an open-minded British author, it describes her solo trip around the Islamic Republic on a motorcycle. By turns entertaining, amusing and full of love for a country and people of which she had no knowledge beyond Western propaganda, it is brilliantly written. Pryce challenges her own assumptions, widens her perspective and has a blast in an engrossing, compelling, easy-to-read travelogue.

I love the simplicity of this book. I recommend it to clients who have a hard time being assertive. The book gives straightfoward, no nonsense input on how to handle a variety of challenging situations in a way which is both self-protective and likely to enable the reader to get a favourable outcome. Situations include how to say no without alienating the other person; asking in a way which makes it likely you’ll get what you want; and dealing with putdowns or unjust criticism.

In The Body Keeps the Score, van der Kolk explains the lifelong impact of trauma on the mind and body, then introduces various therapeutic approaches to help survivors carry the crushing weight of their past. This book is a lifeline for survivors, validating their fragmented memories and reassuring them that their trauma responses are biological necessities rather than personal failures. As a writer, I love that many of the therapeutic approaches described in the book harness the power of imagination to reprocess traumatic memories—a transformative process of healing that’s nothing short of magical.

I picked up this book about 12 years ago. Being a psychotherapist I love, love learning. I love attending workshops (pre-covid) and learning new ways of thinking. New ways of looking at issues. New ways to look at how we get stuck in our relationships and life. Reading this book gave me tools that have transformed my therapy practice and how I work with couples. How I interact with my husband, my sons, and my close friends. It helped me by giving me insight into who I want to be in a relationship and it gave me self-worth as well. I have all the couples I work with read this book and it speeds along our therapy work. 

This book challenges us to be brave and backs it up with ample research to show us how our lives can be so much bigger than we ever thought possible when we dare to step into the arena and get dirty with our lives. Not only does this book resonate deeply in my soul and wake me up to the possibility that my life is just as valuable and worthy as anyone else’s but she has a Netflix talk about this work and it is guaranteed to fire you up and light a spark under you to get moving! There is no one in the world like Brené Brown. She is the real deal. I could and do listen to her all the time. A doctor of social work, she has thousands upon thousands of research, data, and life experiences to offer her information and insights. You want to play… show more.

Norman Doidge is a Canadian psychiatrist and award-winning science writer, currently on the Faculty of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto and Research Faculty at Columbia University. In this book, he provides a fascinating synopsis of the current revolution in neuroscience with an emphasis on neuroplasticity. Essentially, Doidge cites many case histories illustrating the power of positive thinking in healing neurological diseases.

Doidge’s focus as the seat of the problem is always the brain. His book is highly readable and holds out hope for many people with neurological impairments.

Do you find yourself perennially trapped in relationships that can’t give you what you want? The answer may lie in your attachment style. Attached is an incredibly useful book, which provides a model for relationships that may well help you to understand why you’re always choosing the wrong person. The book uses self-reporting quizzes to help you to figure out your attachment style, and whilst that might sound like a bad horoscope. Attached is genuinely insightful, and will deliver a eureka moment or two. 

EMDR stands for “Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing,” which as a trained neuropsychologist was a phrase that made me want to roll my eyes (pun intended)—until I tried it. Being a woman of science, I don’t like that we don’t have a definitive explanation about why EMDR works for resolving things like trauma and anxiety (synchronization of the brain's two hemispheres? similarity to the eye movements during REM sleep?). But it does work (confirmed by solid research), and Francine Shapiro is the pioneer. In Getting Past Your Past, she takes EMDR treatment strategies and translates them into self-help techniques, giving even more people access to the potential transformation of emotional pain.

Full Catastrophe Living (Revised Edition): Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness is a wonderful primer on Mindfulness by Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD with a Preface by famed Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. This wonderful book shows how to use ancient modalities like breathwork and Mindfulness to heal the stresses and illnesses of the modern world. It removes the fear some may have that these are meaningless or rooted in superstition or that performing them is somehow in violation of the religion you practice. Dr. Kabat-Zinn anchors the practices in science. This book informed so much of what I added to my work as an organizer.