A Recovery Library

Add your favorites.

This is a partial bibliography related to being raised in an alcoholic or dysfunctional family system—if it looks familiar, you may have seen a version of it among my Medium posts. If there’s a book that’s a significant one to you and you don’t see it here, feel free to add in the comments on this post at any point so we can keep a reading list going.

There are things in each of these books that I disagree with or don’t find helpful. I’ve learned, in self-help reading, to skim and skip what doesn’t resonate with me and concentrate on the parts that do. But overall these are the ones that provided the biggest epiphanies about why I struggle with the things I struggle with, and how to work on those things. I’ve added a little commentary related to what I found most helpful in each.

In no particular order:

• Codependent No More by Melody Beattie. This the book that brought codependence into common parlance and was the one that made me go OH SHIT OH NO when I really read it around 2011, I think. It’s a classic. Also very of its era and woo-woo.

• Adult Children of Alcoholics Big Red Book (“by” the ACOA World Service) Ignore the stuff that makes 12 step groups feel like a cult and soak up the wisdom of lived experience. This is the one that made me feel far less alone and far less like I was just inexplicably broken. Great for explaining myself to myself, and very comprehensive. When they say big they mean big.

• Facing Love Addiction and The Intimacy Factor by Pia Mellody. I know. “Love addiction” is not my favorite phrase. But if you’ve ever found yourself repeatedly getting enmeshed in intense relationships (whether with lovers, family, or friends) that end up hurting you and leaving you feeling abandoned and like you’re going to die, you may want to read this. You can always slip a brown bag over the cover. The Intimacy Factor continues with a lot of good stuff about boundaries and healthy intimacy that is not based on always having to agree with or be approved of by everyone.

• The ACOA Trauma Syndrome and Emotional Sobriety by Tian Dayton. Dayton is one of my favorites and these are two great deeper dives into how cognitive and emotional development works and how it’s disrupted by various things in one’s upbringing.

• The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk. If you do talk therapy and reading and journaling and you intellectually understand your issues, and still experience all kinds of mental and physical symptoms when you’re feeling anxious and triggered, for example when you’re just in a place where something happened or in a place that reminds you of a place where something happened or it’s a time of year when something happened or you smell booze on an old guy’s breath or any number of smells … Bessel will explain why you probably need to get your body in on the healing process. (Full disclosure: 1. I have not read the whole thing, 2. Van der Kolk has been wrapped up in some lawsuits in the past few years around accusations he created a hostile work environment at the trauma center he ran, just so you know.)

• Codependency for Dummies by Darlene Lancer. Yes, the For Dummies book is actually really good. And if you struggle with the woo-wooier aspects of some of other types of self-help books, you will appreciate the bullet points, boxes, and checklists of this approach. It’s very thorough.

• Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families by Charles Whitfield. Another classic. The phrase “inner child” has become fodder for jokes, but truly, grasping what happened to and/or around you and how you processed it when you were eight years old, and then helping that eight-year-old that’s still in there somewhere get through it with your grownup tools is some powerful stuff.

• Adult Children of Alcoholics by Janet Woititz. A good one on the specific topic of ACOA that’s more concise than the big red book, and not affiliated with the 12-step group.

Add any recs below. I’m especially curious to know your own OH SHIT OH NO book if you’ve got one!