The Books Redefining How I See the World

You may have heard me mention the concept on a podcast or on instagram called Bibliotherapy…

Bibliotherapy is the use of reading as a therapeutic tool for emotional healing, personal insight, and self-growth. Whether guided by a therapist or self-directed, bibliotherapy invites readers to engage with stories, memoirs, psychology texts, or even poetry that reflect their own experiences, challenges, or inner worlds. It can provide comfort, perspective, validation, and tools for change.

As author & therapist Pete Walker puts it, reading about Complex PTSD can feel like “finding a bunch of wise aunts and uncles” who help you feel seen. This sense of recognition of finally having language for what you’ve been through can be powerfully healing. When someone feels understood by an author, it activates a form of co-regulation by proxy, helping the nervous system settle and making space for deeper emotional work.

Importantly, bibliotherapy doesn’t replace body-based healing, like somatic therapy, EMDR, or nervous system regulation practices. But it does support it. Books can help build cognitive scaffolding which is the understanding and context that makes somatic work feel safer and more grounded. They give us frameworks, language, and a sense of companionship on what can be a very lonely road.

This reading list is a reflection of the books that have helped me reconnect with my intuition, untangle belief systems, and feel less alone in the messy, nonlinear process of healing. I hope you find a few “wise uncles and aunts” in these pages too.

Most Influential Books

These books have had the biggest impact on me…broadening my perspectives, challenging my biases, and influencing my work the most.

📚 Top Books of 2025 (Foundational & Ongoing Influences)

These are the books I reference constantly. They’ve shaped how I think about morality, belief, trauma, power, and susceptibility to ideology.

The Righteous Mind – Jonathan Haidt
Moral psychology, tribalism, and why good people disagree. This book permanently changed how I understand ideological conflict and human reasoning.

Religion as Make Believe – Neil Van Leeuwen
A cognitive science lens on religious belief that helped me articulate the difference between belief-as-identity and belief-as-symbol. Still deeply influential in my work.

Toxic Parents – Susan Forward
A pivotal book for understanding my childhood environment and how early emotional dynamics shaped my later vulnerabilities.

Mothers Who Can’t Love – Susan Forward
Essential for recognizing emotional neglect, conditional attachment, and how unmet childhood needs can prime people for high-control relationships and belief systems later in life.

Free Your Mind – Laura Dodsworth
An incisive look at how fear, media, and psychological tactics shape compliance. This directly feeds into my interest in autonomy, perception management, and resistance to soft authoritarianism.

The Closing of the Western Mind – Charles Freeman
A sweeping historical account of how Christian orthodoxy constrained intellectual life and reshaped Western thought. A major turning point in my understanding of religious power.

The Darkening Age – Catherine Nixey
A vivid, unsettling examination of how early Christians destroyed classical culture, art, and philosophy. Central to my dive into the Jesus Mythist debate and late antique history.

📖 Other Books I Read in 2025

Animal Farm – George Orwell
1984 – George Orwell
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley Classic dystopias that feel less like fiction every year.

The Tao of Fully Feeling – Pete Walker
Deepened my understanding of emotional processing, grief, and self-compassion.

The Body Project – Joan Jacobs Brumberg
A historical look at how culture reshapes girls’ and women’s relationships to their bodies.

The ESP Enigma – Diane Hennacy Powell
A surprisingly rigorous exploration of psychic phenomena and consciousness research.

The Case Against the Sexual Revolution – Louise Perry
A grounded critique of modern sexual norms, especially their consequences for women.

Science Set Free – Rupert Sheldrake
A challenge to rigid scientific materialism and institutional dogma.

History of Racism – Karlyn Borysenko
Contextualizing how race became politicized and institutionalized across history.

Re-Regulated – Anna Runkle
Practical tools for nervous system regulation and trauma recovery.

The Happiness Hypothesis – Jonathan Haidt
Ancient wisdom filtered through modern psychology.

The Jesus Hoax – David Skrbina
A provocative contribution to mythicist scholarship.

The New Jerusalem – Michael Collins Piper
Exploring apocalyptic imagination and political theology.

Sigmund Freud & the Jewish Mystical Tradition – David Bakan
A fascinating intersection of psychoanalysis, religion, and hidden intellectual inheritance.

The Female Brain – Louann Brizendine
An exploration of sex differences in neurobiology.

False Profits – Robert L. FitzPatrick
Ponzinomics – Robert L. FitzPatrick
Essential reading on MLMs, cultic business structures, and institutional deception.

Why Women Need Fat – Lassek & Gaulin
A biology-first critique of diet culture and metabolic misunderstanding.

Nailed – David Fitzgerald
A sharp dismantling of crucifixion myths and Christian apologetics.

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🎧 Currently Reading

Thinking, Fast and Slow – Daniel Kahneman (audio)
Decision-making, bias, and intuitive heuristics. Slow going, but worth it.

On the Historicity of Jesus – Richard Carrier (audio)
Dense, technical, and foundational for serious mythicist inquiry.

The History of Beauty – Umberto Eco
A sweeping cultural and aesthetic history of beauty across civilizations.

Christianity Before Christ – John G. Jackson
Tracing pre-Christian religious archetypes and continuity.

Panpsychism in the West – David Skrbina
Philosophy of mind, consciousness, and the limits of materialism.

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📚 Planned Reads for 2026

Books I haven’t read yet but plan to tackle next.

Power, Ideology & Institutional Control

Propaganda – Edward Bernays
Dumbing Us Down – John Taylor Gatto
American Transformed – Ronald Pestritto
The Assault on Truth – Jeffrey Masson

Worldview, History & Moral Psychology

A Conflict of Visions – Thomas Sowell
The Road to Serfdom – F.A. Hayek
Calendar: Humanity’s Epic Struggle to Determine a True and Accurate Year – David Ewing Duncan
The Historical Jesus – William Benjamin Smith

Consciousness, Meaning & Inner Work

The Biology of Belief – Bruce Lipton
The Way of Integrity – Martha Beck
The Master and His Emissary – Iain McGilchrist

Culture, Aesthetics & Narrative

Semiotics of Happiness – Ashley Frawley
Hollywood Babylon – Kenneth Anger

Health, Environment & the Body

To Dye For – Alden Wicker