Recommended Reading

Please click a button below to view a list of reading materials organized by topic. Following the description, each listed item includes a link to purchase a copy of the recommended material on Amazon. Do you have other recommended readings? Please contact us at restoredheartsomaha@gmail.com.

Dysfunction

Adult Children: Secrets of Dysfunctional Families (John C. Friel)

It is estimated that as many as 34 million people grew up in alcoholic homes. But what about the rest of us? What about families that had no...

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Dance of Anger (Harriet Lerner)

Anger is something we feel. It exists for a reason and always deserves our respect and attention. We all have a right to everything we feel—and certainly our anger is no exception.

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Co-Dependent No More (Melody Beattie)

Is someone else's problem your problem? If, like so many others, you've lost sight of your own life in the drama of tending to someone else's, you may be codependent--and you may find yourself in this book--Codependent No More.

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Beyond Co-dependency (Melody Beattie)

You're learning to let go, to live your life free of the grip of someone else's problems. And yet you find you've just started on the long journey...

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Healing for Damaged Emotions (David Seamands)

Events in our lives, both good and bad, form rings in us like the rings in a tree. Each ring records memories that affect our feelings, our relationships, and our thoughts about God.

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Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care About Has Borderline Personality Disorder (Paul T. Mason & Randi Kreger)

Do you feel manipulated, controlled, or lied to? Are you the focus of intense, violent, and irrational rages? Do you feel you are 'walking on eggshells' to avoid the next confrontation?

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Controlling People: How to Recognize, Understand, and Deal with People Who Try to Control You (Patricia Evans)

Learn how to 'break the spell' of control with Patricia Evans' new bestseller. Already hailed by Oprah Winfrey, Controlling People deals with issues big and small - revealing the thought processes of those who seek to control in order to provide a 'spell-breaking' mind-set for those who suffer this insidious manipulation. Invaluable insight and advice for those who seek support.

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Secrets of Your Family Tree - Healing for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families (Dave Carder; Earl Henslin; John Townsend; Henry Cloud; Alice Brawand)

Revised and updated from the original, this honest and forthwright look at families of all shapes and sizes will help you down the path of healing (whether you know you need it or whether yo're just not sure).

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Sexual Abuse

Dan B. Allender Study Set - The Wounded Heart: Hope for Adult Victims of Childhood Sexual Abuse

Almost everybody knows a victim of childhood sexual abuse---perhaps the most soul-deadening trauma there is. In this Christ-centered resource, Allender assures adult survivors that there is a way out of the rage, fear, and confusion---and offers their spouses, families, friends, and counselors specific ways to help the healing process

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Helping Victims of Sexual Abuse: A Sensitive Biblical Guide for Counselors, Victims, and Families Reprint Edition

This solidly biblical and sensitive guide from two medical and counseling professionals is full of helpful information for Christian communities ministering to children and families recovering from sexual abuse.

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The Courage To Heal - A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse (Ellen Bass & Laura Davis) (+ companion workbook)

The Courage to Heal is an inspiring, comprehensive guide that offers hope and a map of the healing journey to every woman who was sexually abused as a child—and to those who care about her. Although the effects of child sexual abuse are long-term and severe, healing is possible.

Weaving together personal experience with professional knowledge, the authors provide clear explanations, practical suggestions, and support throughout the healing process. Readers will feel recognized and encouraged by hundreds of moving first-person stories drawn from interviews and the authors' extensive work with survivors, both nationally and internationally.

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Healing for the Wounded Heart: The Heart of Sexual Abuse and the Hope of Transformation (Dan Allender) (+ companion workbook)

The crime of childhood sexual abuse leaves victims with lasting physical, emotional, and spiritual scars. How can they experience healing? In this 25-year retrospective of The Wounded Heart, Allender shares up-to-date research on the effects of rape, incest, molestation, sexting, and more. His fresh insights will provide new hope for victims---and those who minister to them.

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Integration

The Three Battlegrounds (Francis Frangipane)

This book explores the three arenas of spiritual warfare that the maturing Christian will face: the mind, the church and the heavenly places. It provides a foundation of insight, wisdom and discernment on the nature of the battle and the keys to victory.

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The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog (James M. Sire)

Voted one of Christianity Today's 1998 Books of the Year! For more than thirty years, The Universe Next Door has set the standard for a clear, readable introduction to worldviews. In this new fifth edition...

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Worldviews In Conflict (Ronald H. Nash)

This world is a battlefield in the arena of ideas. The prize is the heart and mind of humankind. In this book, Ronald Nash outlines the Christian way of looking at God, self, and the world. He holds that worldview up against the tests of reason, logic, and experience, particularly discussing the problems of evil and the alleged "nonsense" of the historic Christian doctrines and of Jesus' incarnation and resurrection.

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Sexual Predators

Identifying Child Molesters: Preventing Child Sexual Abuse by Recognizing the Patterns of the Offenders (Carla Van Dam)

Identifying Child Molesters: Preventing Child Sexual Abuse by Recognizing the Patterns of the Offenders will teach you to better protect children from potential child sexual molesters long before any abuse can actually occur. Here you'll learn to recognize and understand the seemingly invisible steps that typically precede child sexual abuse. These stories of molesters, their families, and their victims, will enable you to more accurately see through a potential molester's charming demeanor and better protect the children in your life.

Understanding the behavior that molesters often exhibit when trying to obtain access to children is essential to protecting children from their advances. By becoming familiar with this terrain you will find the courage and strength to decide what must be done, and the skills to follow through with the necessary actions. Such responses will appropriately curtail an offender's access to children and subsequent opportunities to molest.

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The Stop Child Molestation Book: What Ordinary People Can Do In Their Everyday Lives To Save 3 Million Children (Nora Harlow & Gene G. Abel M.D.)

What ordinary people can do in their everyday lives to save three million people

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Healing

An Adult Child's Guide to What's Normal (John C. Friel)

You have begun to deal with the pain and trauma of being raised in a dysfunctional family and now you are ready to lead a healthy life. But: Do you know what healthy people do? Do you know what is "normal"? ...

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Internal Family Systems Therapy (Richard C. Schwartz)

Applying family systems concepts to the intrapsychic realm, the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model proposes that individuals' subpersonalities interact and change in many of the same ways as do families and other human groups. Seasoned practitioner Richard C. Schwartz illuminates how parts of a person can form paralyzing inner alliances resembling the destructive coalitions found in dysfunctional families, and provides straightforward guidelines for incorporating the IFS model into treatment. A valuable text and clinical resource, the book demonstrates in step-by-step detail how therapists can help individuals, couples, and families tap core resources, bring balance and harmony to their subpersonalities, and feel more integrated, confident, and alive.

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Homecoming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child (John Bradshaw)

Are you outwardly successful but inwardly do you feel like a big kid? Do you aspire to be a loving parent but all too often “lose it” in hurtful ways? Do you crave intimacy but sometimes wonder if it’s worth the struggle? Or are you plagued by constant vague feelings of anxiety or depression? If any of this sounds familiar, you may be experiencing the hidden but damaging effects of a painful childhood—carrying within you a “wounded inner child” that is crying out for attention and healing.

In this powerful book, John Bradshaw shows how we can learn to nurture that inner child, in essence offering ourselves the good parenting we needed and longed for. Through a step-by-step process of exploring the unfinished business of each developmental stage, we can break away from destructive family rules and roles and free ourselves to live responsibly in the present. Then, says Bradshaw, the healed inner child becomes a source of vitality, enabling us to find new joy and energy in living.

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