"Where do I go from here?"
Healing from complex trauma rarely comes from a single book, technique or explanation. I created this collection to help readers find trustworthy ways to understand their symptoms, explore the beliefs beneath them, locate appropriate support and approach healing with greater compassion. These resources are educational and are not a substitute for individualized mental-health care.
Seeking the Right Therapist for You
Peer Support and Recovery Communities
Coming soon:
Resources for Clinicians
Resources for Healing from Complex PTSD
1. Recommended books
Best introduction to Complex PTSD - Complex PTSD: From Surviving To Thriving by Pete Walker
Best memoir - What My Bones Know - A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma by Stephanie Foo
Best combination of memoir and tools to heal - Complex PTSD: Follow My Map to Healing by Anna Lacey
Best workbook - The Complex PTSD Workbook by Dr. Arielle Schwartz
Best introduction book for people starting from scratch - What Happened to You? by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD, and Oprah Winfrey
Best for Addressing Shame -Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself by Kristin Neff, PhD
Best for people including ACA in their healing - The Loving Parent Guidebook by Adult Children of Alcoholics/Dysfunctional Families World Service Organization
Click here for more information on these books.
2. Understanding C-PTSD
Click the links below to learn more about each topic.
Why understanding C-PTSD is a part of healing
the 4 trauma responses
C-PTSD versus PTSD
What is an emotional flashback?
What is an Emotional shutdown?
How does C-PTSD impact my identity?
How can I understand my shame and negative core beliefs?
How childhood emotional neglect can lead to complex trauma
How C-PTSD gets in the way of authentic connection
Is my addiction self-medication for C-PTSD?
Common misdiagnoses for C-PTSD
***Featured Free Guide
The Beliefs Beneath the Symptoms of C-PTSD
A reflective guide to understanding how trauma, invalidation, and repeated relational harm can become internalized as beliefs about who we are—and how those beliefs may shape people-pleasing, perfectionism, isolation, self-doubt, emotional flashbacks, and other C-PTSD patterns.
3. Self-reflection tools
Free downloads. Just click on the link.
What happens before, during and after an emotional flashback?
Identifying beliefs I learned about myself
A compassionate alternative to my inner critic
Coming soon:
Recognizing my people-pleasing patterns
Needs I learned to suppress
Triggers, responses and unmet needs
*Please note that these are educational tools, not diagnostic tests or substitutes for therapy.
4. Grounding and emotional-regulation resources
Grounding and emotional regulation are not about forcing ourselves to calm down or eliminating difficult emotions. They are ways of helping the nervous system recognize the present, regain a sense of choice, and move through distress without becoming completely overwhelmed or disconnected. Here are some simple tools to help practice grounding and emotional-regulation. Just click on the link for a free download.
Creating a calming sensory kit
When grounding feels ineffective or overwhelming
Meditations are also very helpful for many people. I personally recommend the app, Insight Timer. The app includes guided meditations, including facilitators Richard C. Schwartz, founder of Internal Family Systems (to improve insight on part work), Sally Clough, poet and healer (for sleep support), as well as many other amazing healers.
5. Therapy frameworks
Phase-oriented trauma treatment - A gradual approach to trauma healing that prioritizes safety, stabilization, and emotional regulation before deeper trauma processing. It recognizes that healing often unfolds in stages and should move at a pace the nervous system can tolerate.
Internal Family Systems and parts work - A compassionate framework for understanding the different “parts” of ourselves that developed to protect us, manage pain, or carry unmet needs. Parts work helps us relate to these inner experiences with curiosity rather than shame.
Traumatic invalidation and internalized beliefs - Repeated dismissal, criticism, denial, or punishment of our feelings and needs can become internalized as painful beliefs about who we are. This framework explores how messages such as “I am too much,” “my needs are a burden,” or “I cannot trust myself” are learned—and how they can begin to change.
Attachment and developmental trauma - Early relationships shape how we understand safety, connection, trust, and ourselves. Attachment and developmental trauma frameworks help explain how inconsistent, frightening, neglectful, or emotionally unavailable caregiving can affect relationships and emotional wellbeing later in life.
Nervous-system and somatic approaches - Trauma affects the body as well as the mind. Nervous-system and somatic approaches focus on physical sensations, survival responses, grounding, and the body’s capacity to move gradually toward greater safety and regulation.
Reparenting and self-compassion - Reparenting involves learning to offer ourselves the protection, validation, guidance, and care we may not have consistently received. Self-compassion supports this process by helping us respond to pain and mistakes with kindness, shared humanity, and honest understanding rather than criticism.
6. Finding a trauma-informed therapist
Complex trauma treatment is not one-size-fits-all. Different approaches may focus on stabilization, traumatic memories, internalized beliefs, body-based responses, relationships, or protective parts. Treatment should be individualized according to a person’s symptoms, history, readiness, preferences, and current level of support.
Below are some of the most Established and Emerging Approaches to Trauma Treatment modalities for therapy.
Trauma-Treatment Approaches:
EMDR
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is a structured trauma therapy that helps people process distressing memories while engaging in bilateral stimulation, often through guided eye movements. EMDR is among the most strongly recommended treatments for PTSD and may be adapted carefully for people with complex trauma.
Best for explaining: how traumatic memories can remain emotionally activating and may be reprocessed so that they feel more clearly connected to the past.
Cognitive Processing Therapy
Cognitive Processing Therapy helps people identify and reconsider beliefs that developed following trauma, particularly beliefs related to safety, trust, control, self-worth, and intimacy. It has a strong research base for PTSD.
Best for explaining: how trauma can shape rigid or painful beliefs about ourselves, other people, and the world.
Prolonged Exposure
Prolonged Exposure helps people gradually approach trauma-related memories, emotions, and situations they have been avoiding. The goal is to reduce fear and avoidance while helping the nervous system learn that remembering trauma is not the same as being in present danger. It is one of the most extensively studied PTSD treatments.
Best for explaining: how avoidance can keep fear active and how supported, gradual exposure may reduce its power.
Brainspotting
Brainspotting is a body-focused trauma approach that uses a person’s visual field and internal sensations as points of focus during emotional processing. Some early studies report promising results, but its evidence base is currently much smaller than those for EMDR, CPT, and Prolonged Exposure. It would therefore be more accurate to describe it as an emerging trauma-treatment modality. I personally refer my clients for Brainspotting instead of EMDR, as I find it to be more efficient in getting to the root of the trauma wound's origin.
Best for explaining: how focused attention to visual position, emotion, and bodily experience may support trauma processing.
Somatic Approaches
Somatic approaches recognize that trauma can be carried not only in memories and beliefs, but also in the body and nervous system. These therapies help people notice physical sensations, patterns of tension, shutdown, activation, and protective impulses while gradually building a greater sense of safety and choice.
Rather than focusing only on talking through what happened, somatic work may include grounding, movement, breath, posture, sensory awareness, and careful attention to what the body is experiencing in the present. The goal is not to force emotional release, but to help the nervous system become less overwhelmed and more able to move between activation and calm.
For people with complex trauma, somatic approaches can be especially helpful when distress shows up as dissociation, numbness, panic, chronic tension, difficulty identifying emotions, or feeling unsafe in the body.
Best for explaining: how trauma affects the body and nervous system, and how healing can involve developing greater awareness, regulation, and a felt sense of safety.
A Final Suggestion When Seeking a Trauma Therapist
Below are some questions you can ask during your search for a new therapist. I feel it is important for individuals to feel empowered in their search, as finding the right fit is very important.
What experience do you have treating complex trauma?
How do you approach dissociation and emotional flashbacks?
Do you use parts-oriented or attachment-based therapy?
How do you avoid moving too quickly into trauma processing?
How do you understand shame and traumatic invalidation?
What happens when a client becomes overwhelmed in session?
How do you decide whether a treatment approach is a good fit?
Are you trauma-informed or do you specialize in complex trauma?
Do you have any lived experience of C-PTSD? I find this to be the most important question, as my clients take great comfort in knowing that I truly understand how they feel.
7. Peer-support and recovery communities
Community is a very important piece of healing. People with C-PTSD struggle greatly with shame and feeling misunderstood or without value. Finding like-minded people is a necessary step to breaking free from the isolation of trauma.
Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families (ACA) - A Twelve-Step fellowship for people affected by growing up in alcoholic or otherwise dysfunctional families. ACA focuses on childhood patterns, reparenting, boundaries, and developing a more compassionate relationship with ourselves.
Website: https://adultchildren.org/ (Adult Children)Co-Dependents Anonymous (CoDA) - A Twelve-Step fellowship for people seeking healthier relationships, stronger boundaries, and freedom from codependent patterns.
Website: https://coda.org/ (CoDA.org)Al-Anon - A mutual-support fellowship for people whose lives have been affected by someone else’s drinking.
Website: https://al-anon.org/ (Al-Anon Family Groups)Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous - Peer-support fellowships for people seeking recovery from alcohol or drug use, including substance use that developed as a way of coping with trauma or emotional pain.
Alcoholics Anonymous: https://www.aa.org/
Narcotics Anonymous: https://na.org/ (Alcoholics Anonymous)Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (S.L.A.A.) - A Twelve-Step fellowship for people seeking recovery from compulsive patterns involving sex, romantic relationships, attachment, or emotional dependency.
Website: https://slaafws.org/ (S.L.A.A.)Survivors of Incest Anonymous (SIA) - A Twelve-Step, peer-support fellowship for adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse.
Website: https://siawso.org/ (SIA)SMART Recovery Family & Friends - A non-Twelve-Step program offering practical, evidence-informed tools for people affected by a loved one’s addictive behavior. It emphasizes coping, communication, boundaries, and personal balance.
Website: https://smartrecovery.org/family (SMART Recovery)GriefShare: Structured grief-support groups for people mourning the death of someone close.
https://www.griefshare.org/ (GriefShare)The Dinner Party: Grief resources and guidance for creating peer-led spaces where people can connect honestly around significant loss.
https://www.thedinnerparty.org/ (thedinnerparty.org)Complex trauma process groups, like the ones offered at Let The Light In Therapy. Click here to find your group with me. For more detail on process groups at LTLIT, please view the following articles.
Process Groups for Complex Trauma
What Actually Happens in a Process Group
Why Group Therapy Feels So Hard (And Why That's Actually the Point)
8. Crisis and immediate-support resources
This section should clarify that your website is educational and is not monitored for emergencies.
Emergency Services
For immediate danger, a medical emergency, fire, or a situation requiring urgent police assistance, call 911. The website provides general information but cannot dispatch help.
Website: https://www.911.gov/ (911.gov)
Crisis Support
The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline provides free, confidential support nation-wide for suicidal thoughts, emotional distress, or a mental-health crisis. Call or text 988, or use online chat, 24/7.
Website: https://988lifeline.org/ (988 Lifeline)
Domestic-Violence Resources
The National Domestic Violence Hotline offers confidential support, safety planning, and referrals for people experiencing relationship abuse. Call 800-799-SAFE (7233) or text START to 88788.
Website: https://www.thehotline.org/ (The Hotline)
Sexual-Assault Support
RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline provides confidential, 24/7 support for survivors of sexual assault or abuse. Call 800-656-HOPE (4673) or text HOPE to 64673.
Website: https://rainn.org/hotline (RAINN)
Child-Abuse Reporting Resources
The Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline offers crisis support, safety planning, and guidance about reporting suspected child abuse or neglect. Call or text 800-422-4453. State reporting information is also available through Child Welfare Information Gateway.
Websites:
https://childhelphotline.org/
https://www.childwelfare.gov/how-report-child-abuse-and-neglect/ (Childhelp)
Substance-Use Crisis Services
SAMHSA provides confidential treatment referrals and information for concerns involving alcohol or drug use. Call 800-662-HELP (4357). For an immediate emotional or substance-related crisis, call or text 988.
Websites:
https://www.samhsa.gov/find-help
https://findtreatment.gov/ (findtreatment.samhsa.gov)