The following is a list of books we recommend reading in order to improve your education and knowledge to heal trauma and manage PTSD. The books are placed in the order I believe would be a priority if you are truly serious about learning how to heal your trauma and effectively manage PTSD for the remainder of your life. Many books I recommend are the very one's clinicians use. I recommend not being limited to half the story therapists or physicians want you to have, but instead be armed with as much knowledge as possible. PTSD is not lenient on you, never will be, hence why I recommend you know the most you can regarding direct and effectively proven strategies to manage what you have for life.

I make personal specific recommendations next to books to help you choose. There are specific trauma related books in which if apply to you I would recommend you buy, read and learn from them to help your specific type of trauma.

I Can't Get over It: A Handbook for Trauma Survivors
This is the first book to guide trauma survivors through the healing process one step at a time. It helps readers cope with memories and emotions, explains secondary wounding, and identifies the triggers that reactivate traumatic stress. Written for people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and their families.

(Every PTSD Sufferer Should Have This Book)

PTSD Workbook
Two psychologists and trauma experts offer techniques and interventions used by PTSD experts to conquer trauma-related symptoms. Readers learn how to determine type of trauma, identify symptoms, and learn how to overcome them.

(Recommended To Educate Sufferers)

PTSD Source Book
The Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Sourcebook is a guide for both survivors and their loved ones, helping them to see that on the other side of their pain is recovery and growth.

• Explains the psychic defenses that can go into effect to protect a victim from further emotional harm
• Provides information on triggers and the debilitating effects of post-traumatic stress disorder
• Addresses how the healing process can begin and how fear diminishes through a variety of medic and non-medicinal treatment methods

(Recommended To Educate Sufferers)

Secondary Traumatic Stress
This book was written for those who counsel trauma, so those counsellors learn how not to transfer patient trauma to themselves effectively. That means, if your a carer of someone with PTSD you likely live with worst than what a therapist gets from counselling.

(Recommended to every carer who lives with a PTSD sufferer)

Coping With Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: A Guide for Families
This handbook describes how the characteristics of PTSD manifest in daily life and details its effects on the emotional, mental, and physical aspects of an individual’s life, including disorders and physical disabilities that may occur jointly or as a result. The work analyzes the affect of PTSD on the couple and the family, detailing possible reactions, and compares the characteristics of healthy and PTSD families. The work explains how and by whom the disorder is diagnosed, with discussion of cross-cultural perspectives on PTSD and the effects of cultural difference on its diagnosis and treatment.

(Recommended for Families / Carers)

Prolonged Exposure Therapy for PTSD
This guide gives clinicians the information they need to treat clients who exhibit the symptoms of PTSD. It is based on the principles of Prolonged Exposure Therapy, the most scientifically-tested and proven treatment that has been used to effectively treat victims of all types of trauma. Whether your client is a veteran of combat, a victim of a physical or sexual assault, or a casualty of a motor vehicle accident, the techniques and strategies outlined in this book will help.

(Recommended To Educate Sufferers)

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for PTSD
The authors illustrate the "whats," "whys," and "how-tos" of exposure, cognitive restructuring, and other effective techniques for treating posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and show how to organize interventions within a systematic yet flexible case formulation. Throughout, detailed clinical material shows exactly what the process of therapy looks like and offers guidance for overcoming treatment hurdles. More than 20 reproducible clinical tools are included.

(Recommended To Educate Sufferers)

Waking the Tiger : Healing Trauma : The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences
It asks and answers an intriguing question: why are animals in the wild, though threatened routinely, rarely traumatized? By understanding the dynamics that make wild animals virtually immune to traumatic symptoms, the mystery of human trauma is revealed. Waking the Tiger normalizes the symptoms of trauma and the steps needed to heal them. People are often traumatized by seemingly ordinary experiences. The reader is taken on a guided tour of the subtle, yet powerful impulses that govern our responses to overwhelming life events. To do this, it employs a series of exercises that help us focus on bodily sensations. Through heightened awareness of these sensations trauma can be healed.

(Good reading for the sufferer)

Clinicians Guide to PTSD
The author offers well-documented, practical recommendations for planning and implementing cognitive-behavioral therapy with people who have experienced different types of trauma - sexual assault, combat, serious accidents, and more - and shows how to use a case formulation approach to tailor interventions to the needs of each patient. Coverage includes different conceptual models of PTSD, approaches to integrating psychopharmacology into treatment, and strategies for addressing frequently encountered comorbid conditions. Illustrated with helpful case examples, the book features over a dozen reproducible handouts and forms.

(Recommended only to those who want an advanced knowledge of CTB principles)

Principles of Trauma Therapy: A Guide to Symptoms, Evaluation, and Treatment
The material is cutting edge, encompassing a wide range of interventions, including a very comprehensive chapter on psychopharmacology. It includes discussion of techniques and principles for which an evidence base has developed, as well as other techniques developed from clinical experience.

(Recommended only for those wishes to advance their knowledge)

Treating The Trauma of Rape
The book opens with a vivid, gripping account of rape trauma that underscores the terror of sexual violence. Turning next to the scientific literature, the authors review studies on epidemiology, psychopathology, and treatment for rape-related posttraumatic stress disorder, and interpret these data within the framework of Foa's emotional processing theory. In addition to being a first-rate work of scholarship, this book provides detailed, explicit guidance on how to conduct state-of-the-art treatment for survivors of sexual assault.

(Recommended to Every Rape / Sexual Assault Victim)

Women Who Hurt Themselves: A Book of Hope and Understanding
Women Who Hurt Themselves explores the suffering of women who reenact childhood trauma, particularly abuse or neglect, through self-destructive behavior. Miller is a therapist who has treated hundreds of women with this condition (which she labels Trauma Reenactment Syndrome, or TRS) and whose behaviors include self-mutilation, alcoholism, drug addiction, and eating disorders. She argues that women with TRS did not feel protected as children, and thus have trouble protecting themselves as adults. She explains what TRS is and outlines her therapeutic program, which begins by exploring the symptoms and, as therapist and patient develop a trusting relationship, gradually moves into an examination of the original trauma.

(Recommended to all childhood abuse victims)

Prostitution, Trafficking and Traumatic Stress
Prostitution, Trafficking, and Traumatic Stress extensively documents the violence that runs like a constant thread throughout all types of prostitution, including escort, brothel, trafficking, strip club, and street prostitution. Prostitutes are always subjected to verbal sexual harassment and often have a lengthy history of trauma, including childhood sexual abuse and emotional neglect, economic discrimination, rape, and racism.

(Recommended to anyone who has ever worked within any sex industry)

Overcoming the Trauma of Your Motor Vehicle Accident
It is estimated that over 3 million people per year are injured in motor vehicle accidents and up to 45% of people in a serious auto accident develop posttraumatic stress disorder. Written by the creators of an empirically supported cognitive-behavioral therapy program, this workbook includes all the information necessary for a client to learn the appropriate skills to overcome their MVA-related PTSD. When used in conjunction with the corresponding therapist guide, this book provides a complete treatment package with a proven success rate.

(Recommended to any sufferer due to MVA)

Military Veterans PTSD Reference Manual
Written by a Vietnam veteran for Vietnam veterans, this guide discusses the history and etiology of PTSD.

Helps USA veterans if they are dealing with the VA.

(Recommended only to veterans - typically USA only)

Cop Shock
Through gripping stories, extensive research and over 200 support sources, CopShock helps law enforcement officers, their families and all other trauma sufferers survive PTSD. A book for active duty or retired cops, police recruits, war veterans, corrections officers, paramedics, firefighters, nurses, doctors, security guards, crime victims--anyone suffering from trauma.

(Recommended to those in law enforcement and military)

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
EMDR, arising out of a cognitive-behavioral orientation, has increasingly become a rather strikingly integrative approach. Its potential fascination for psychodynamically oriented therapists is considerable. In my own experience, it has seemed to generate 'deep' material rapidly and to provide access to a wider range of associations and of sensory/affective connections. I am personally eager to conduct research further investigating these impressions, and hope other psychodynamically oriented clinician-researchers will join in this investigative effort.

(Recommended for anyone interested in EMDR - Written by the Inventor, Dr. Francine Shapiro)