Wilder Wellness 2025 Reading List: Books That Inspire Healing, Growth, and Liberation
At Wilder Wellness, we’re always reading—books that stretch us, ground us, and help us better support our clients on their healing journeys. Our 2025 reading list is a collection of works that invite self-compassion, challenge old systems, and deepen our understanding of what it means to care for ourselves and each other.
How These Books Shape Our Practice
Each of these titles speaks to a core value at Wilder Wellness: that healing is not about perfection, compliance, or productivity—it’s about connection, liberation, and trust. Whether we’re exploring inner parts through IFS, unpacking inherited trauma, or learning to rest in a culture that glorifies burnout, these works remind us that therapy is both personal and collective.
As we move through 2025, we’ll carry these lessons into our sessions, our supervision spaces, and our retreats—creating room for imperfection, curiosity, and joy along the way.
Here’s to a year of reading, reflecting, and remembering that healing is never linear—but always possible.
Here’s what we’re reading this year:
The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power by Katherine Morgan Schafler
Schafler redefines perfectionism not as a flaw to fix but as a strength to channel. She explores how high-achieving, sensitive people can harness their drive without burning out or collapsing under the pressure of unrealistic standards. It’s a love letter to ambitious women learning to soften control while honoring their deep desires for excellence.
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson
This book is a compassionate guide for anyone who grew up feeling unseen, dismissed, or emotionally responsible for their caregivers. Gibson offers insight into how these early dynamics shape adult relationships and self-worth—and, more importantly, how to break free from old emotional patterns to build a more authentic and secure sense of self.
Reclaiming Body Trust: A Path to Healing & Liberation by Hilary Kinavey and Dana Sturtevant
Kinavey and Sturtevant—founders of the Body Trust® framework—invite readers to disentangle from diet culture, body shame, and external authority over our bodies. Through powerful stories and reflection, they illuminate how reclaiming body trust is both an act of personal healing and a form of cultural resistance.
No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model by Richard C. Schwartz
Schwartz introduces the transformative Internal Family Systems (IFS) model, which helps us understand our inner world as a constellation of “parts,” each carrying wisdom and protective intentions. By learning to lead with self-compassion rather than judgment, we can integrate our inner parts and experience a deeper sense of wholeness.
Decolonizing Therapy: Oppression, Historical Trauma, and Politicizing Your Practice by Jennifer Mullan
Dr. Mullan’s groundbreaking work asks therapists to look beyond the individual and examine the systemic roots of trauma. She invites practitioners to “decolonize” their work by integrating social justice, activism, and ancestral wisdom—reminding us that healing is both personal and political.
Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski
In this empowering and relatable read, the Nagoski sisters blend science and storytelling to explain how stress affects our bodies—and how to complete the stress cycle to prevent emotional exhaustion. Their work centers joy, connection, and movement as essential tools for resilience.