book recommendations?

Hi there, I'm looking for book recommendations for healing from childhood trauma and abuse? I feel like this is brought up a lot and is probably important to my healing.. was wondering if anyone can recommend a book they like?
I have the Pete Walker book about CPTSD, however I think I need to do some inner child work.. Thank you.

I found the books and presentations by John Bradshaw extremely helpful for inner child work. He has walked the walk so his talk is sincere and comes from a place of personal experience clawing his way out of the pit and into the light. He is quite erudite, knows his stuff and, I think, he's a very compelling speaker, conveying true compassion and understanding for the trauma and abuse. He talks about the inner child as that innocent child that once was you. His book Homecoming is very powerful....if you google him on YouTube you can see his videos. He's also done videos on Family Systems, amazing and enlightening information on multi generational dysfunction and its impact, as well as a book entitled Shame and videos on all these topics. I highly recommend his work. Wishing you the best on your quest for self discovery and healing.

Awesome, thank you, I will check those out, right now I've been really liking "the tao of fully feeling" Pete Walker's other book.

I have both Pete Walker's books on my list. I've read portion Surviving to Thriving but I want to take more time with it. Years ago I did the Bradshaw Homecoming video series with about 6 friends. We watched a segment, making notes of what was relevant or triggering emotions as we watched and listened. Then we took turns sharing our perceptions, thoughts, emotional responses...whatever we felt like revealing. Every person had 5 minutes to share and the only rule was no interrupting

The experience was very powerful because we all uncovered hidden truths that had contaminated our adult lives in some way because they were toxic and had sunk into our unconscious, running the script of our adult lives and causing pain that we could not address because we had lost touch with the root cause. We all felt validated by sharing our new perceptions, naming previously invisible demons in the presence of caring friends, and by sharing without someone else taking over our narrative or giving advice. The no interrupting rule was sacred and key to the progress we all made in our inner child work. I hope you will find the material as illuminating as I did!

Absolutely. Shared healing work is powerful. Like Pete Walker says in his book, healing socially is so super important because our wounds are social as well. Learning intimacy and vulnerability is profound for healing people like ourselves.

+1 on John Bradshaw's work. The "Homecoming" video series is available on Youtube in it's entirety, definitely worth a watch. His other major book Healing the Shame that Binds You is worth reading too. He's got a wonderfully warm and human way of presenting all this stuff so that it's simple and easy to understand. He speaks from the heart.

Richard also recommended Pia Mellody's work, which there is a lot of on Youtube as well. The clarity of what she has to say about family systems has been really useful and powerful in my self healing work. She's a 'big name' in the 12 Step / ACOA  world and does a lot of work focusing on codependency in family systems. Beautiful and profound stuff.

Another book that is commonly recommended is Bessel Van Der Kolk's The Body Keeps the Score. It seems that many people get a lot out of this book, and find it very validating. He spends a lot of time describing in depth the kinds of traumas and healing processes his clients have gone through to illustrate his points. Personally, I wasn't thrilled with it in terms of feeling like it had some clear, actionable solutions that were new to me, but that's just my bias. Still a worthy read on your journey.

This may sound odd, but part of the way I became aware of my own family's dynamics was by reading The Truth by Neil Strauss, which is a great book about his healing journey, coming at it from the angle of sex addiction. He did a lot of reading during his healing phase, and left a couple pretty good lists of related books worth looking into in terms of healing trauma:

https://www.neilstrauss.com/neil/healing-trauma/

http://www.neilstrauss.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/TheTruth_ReadingList.pdf

Hope that helps a little bit

Thank you for your feedback and recommendation of additional resources. I have not explored Pia Mellody's work....I will add that to the collection and check it out. My first exposure to family of origin work was through John Bradshaw and I did read his books and watch his videos on Family Systems and Shame. That was an epiphany for me and was the catalyst for my analysis of my family going back to my grandparents. The recurrent patterns became so obvious and terrifying for me because my children were very young at the time. I began exploring this material because I sensed that "something was wrong with me" and I desperately needed to identify it so I could spare my children. It was as if my family had this baggage that generations would hand off to their children who then dragged it around for decades then handed it off to their children. It was a legacy of dysfunction that was staunchly defended because it was "normal" to everyone in the system. Terrifying stuff. My children are adults now, married with children of their own and they seems to be quite stable, healthy and functional. I worked really hard on not passing all that toxic shit on to them. My daughter is a psychologist now, living with her family in Tasmania, Australia and I've spoken with her about my awakening to the emotional contamination and trying so hard not to contaminate them. My husband also suffers old toxic shame and disassociates with TV as his drug of choice but still won't accept this reality. My daughter seems to have the big picture and is very candid about our family. It seems the demons lose quite a bit of their power when you can call them out. Hopefully, my grandchildren will be even further removed from the emotional/psychological toxins.

It's very interesting that you reference Neil Strauss. He is an excellent writer and offers a unique perspective. I will definitely investigate "The Truth".

Thanks for your reply, your insights and suggestions.

All the best to your on your journey!

Just one addition, Esther Perel has studied relationships and sex in countries around the globe. Her book Mating in Captivity is a classic. She has many You Tube videos and TED Talks. She's brilliant, insightful, and a captivating speaker. I highly recommend her work on intimate relationships, eroticism, monogamy and infidelity. Why we cheat is a key theme in her work as it relates to eroticism and the effort to balance pleasure and security for both men and women. Her work is groundbreaking and illuminating.