Let’s Read! Books Recommended by a Therapist
Below you’ll find a curated list of books I recommend for particular subjects.
Consensual Nonmonogamy | ENM | Polyamory | Open Relationships
Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy by Jessica Fern
Using her nested model of attachment and trauma, the author expands our understanding of how emotional experiences can influence our relationships. Then, she sets out six specific strategies to help you move toward secure attachments in your multiple relationships. Polysecure is both a trailblazing theoretical treatise and a practical guide.
Opening Up: A Guide To Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships by Tristan Taormino
Drawing on in-depth interviews with over a hundred women and men, Opening Up explores the real-life benefits and challenges of all styles of open relationships — from partnered non-monogamy to solo polyamory. With her refreshingly down-to-earth style and sharp wit, Taormino offers solutions for making an open relationship work, including tips on dealing with jealousy, negotiating boundaries, finding community, parenting and time management.
The Ethical Slut, Third Edition: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships, and Other Freedoms in Sex and Love by Janet W. Hardy, Dossie Easton
For 20 years The Ethical Slut—widely known as the “Poly Bible”—has dispelled myths and showed curious readers how to maintain a successful polyamorous lifestyle through open communication, emotional honesty, and safer sex practices. The third edition of this timeless guide to the ethics of relationships, communication, and sex has been revised to include:
• Interviews with poly millennials (young people who have grown up without the prejudices their elders encountered regarding gender, orientation, sexuality, and relationships)
• Tributes to polyamory pioneers
• Tools for conflict resolution and instructions on how to improve interpersonal dynamics
• New sidebars on topics such as asexuality, sex workers, LGBTQ terminology, and ways polys can connect and thrive
It's Called "Polyamory": Coming Out About Your Nonmonogamous Relationships by Tamara Pincus, Rebecca Hiles
In this guide, Tamara Pincus and Rebecca Hiles provide a roadmap for explaining the expansive intricacies of the consensual nonmonogamy spectrum.
By fusing personal experience and community research, they break down the various incarnations of polyamorous relationship structures, polyamory's intersections with race and gender, and the seemingly esoteric jargon of the lifestyle.
Topics include everything from how to explain what a "unicorn hunter" is to answering questions like, "Can poly people raise children?" and "Can they live normal, healthy lives?" Such conversations are eloquently explained and the real dangers of being out as poly in a monogamy-centered society are laid bare.
The Jealousy Workbook: Exercises and Insights for Managing Open Relationships by Kathy Labriola
From the initial stages of trying to agree who can do what with whom, through advanced issues such as coping with logistics and seeking compersion, every relationship sooner or later confronts jealousy – and some relationships do not survive the confrontation. Between these covers you will find forty-two exercises with supporting text, developed by a professional relationship counselor and refined by hundreds of clients trying to find their own paths through jealousy.
When Someone You Love Is Polyamorous: Understanding Poly People and Relationships by Dr. Elisabeth Sheff
Having a friend or family member come out to you as polyamorous can be confusing and stressful. Chances are, you have a lot of questions: Is this just a phase? Won’t they settle down someday? What’s going to happen to their kids? Do I have to invite all their partners over for Thanksgiving dinner? Why can’t they just keep it in the bedroom?
When Someone You Love Is Polyamorous offers answers to these and more questions, to help you better understand and support your polyamorous loved ones.
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) Books
A Radical Guide for Women with ADHD: Embrace Neurodiversity, Live Boldly, and Break Through Barriers by Sari Solden and Michelle Frank
If you are a woman with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), you’ve probably known—all your life—that you’re different.
Over the course of a lifetime, women with ADHD learn through various channels that the way they think, work, speak, relate, and act does not match up with the preferred way of being in the world. In short, they learn that difference is bad. And, since these women know that they are different, they learn that they are bad.
It’s time for a change.
A Radical Guide for Women with ADHD is the first guided workbook for women with ADHD designed to break the cycle of negative self-talk and shame-based narratives that stem from the common and limiting belief that brain differences are character flaws.
Is It You, Me, or Adult A.D.D.?: Stopping the Roller Coaster When Someone You Love Has Attention Deficit Disorder by Gina Perta
Meticulously researched by award-winning journalist Gina Pera, Is It You, Me, or Adult A.D.D.? is a comprehensive guide to recognizing the behaviors where you least expect them (on the road and in the bedroom, for example) and developing compassion for couples wrestling with unrecognized ADHD symptoms.
It also offers the latest information from top experts, plenty of real-life details, and easy-to-understand guidelines for finding the best treatment options and practical solutions. The revolutionary message is one of hope for millions of people--and a joyous opportunity for a better life.
How to Build Trust
I Love You But I Don't Trust You: The Complete Guide to Restoring Trust in Your Relationship by Mira Kirshenbaum
Is my relationship worth saving?
Will the trust ever come back?
How can things be good between us again?
Whether broken trust is due to daily dishonesties, a monumental betrayal, or even a history of hurts from the past, it can put a relationship at risk. This is the first book to show you exactly what to do to restore trust in your relationship, regardless of how it was damaged.
In this complete guide, couples therapist Mira Kirshenbaum will also help you understand the stages by which trust strengthens when the rebuilding process is allowed to take place. And you will learn how the two of you can avoid the mistakes that prevent healing and discover how to feel secure with each other again.
Paige Bond, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) is the owner of Couples Counseling of Central Florida near Orlando, FL. She received her MA Degree in Marriage, Couple, and Family Therapy from the University of Central Florida.
As an LMFT Therapist, she specializes in working with individual adults, couples, and enm partners who want to enhance their relationship and feel connected to themselves and their partner(s). She is specially trained in Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) and uses it to help her clients process negative and traumatic memories related to relationship stress.
Paige believes everyone deserves to experience a happy relationship and with the right tools and effort, knows it can be achieved. It is her mission to support her clients in their healing journey so they can live a full and happy life.
