Phone: (510) 649-9818
3101 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94705
We offer the following therapy services:
Individual Therapy
Couples Therapy
Child & Adolescent Therapy
Family Therapy
Read our staff member bios
Learn about our sliding scale fees and making an appointment.
Browse our reading list by subject area: Addiction and Recovery, ADHD/ADD, Books for Women, Buddhist Psychology/Mindfulness, Children/Teens, Depression/ Anxiety, Eating Disorders, Expression and Creativity, Forgiveness and Healing, Grief & Mourning, Parenting, Relationships/ Intimacy, Sexuality Transitions, Trauma & Recovery
The Thirst for Wholeness: Attachment, Addiction, and the Spiritual Path, Christina Grof.
This book explores the issues at the heart of craving, the longing for freedom from addiction, and the yearning to know our true Self.
Delivered from Distraction, Edward Hallowell and John Ratey.
Tailored expressly to ADD learning styles and attention spans, this book provides accessible, engaging discussion and coping strategies for living with ADD; including dealing with procrastination, clutter, and chronic forgetfulness.
Healing ADD: See and Heal the 6 Types of ADD, Daniel Amen.
This book captures the essence of ADD with real-life examples, and offers a practical treatment program. For those seeking answers about ADHD/ADD, this book is very useful.
Getting Things Done, David Allen.
A great book for those with ADD on the art of stress-free productivity; offers powerful methods to increase personal organization, efficiency, and results in work and life.
Women Who Run With the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Esté s, PhD.
This deeply soulful book offers myths and stories of the wild women archetype, in order to help women reconnect with their healthy, visionary, instinctual nature.
At The Root of This Longing, Carol Lee Flinders.
Flinders explores the connection between feminism and spirituality.
A Women’s Book of Life, Joan Borysenko.
This book explores the female life span and reveals the biological forces that drive our physical, emotional, and spiritual development.
Grace Unfolding: Psychotherapy in the Spirit of Tao-te ching, Greg Johanson and Ron Kurtz.
Johanson and Kurtz write about how to get the most out of therapy as a client, written from the perspective of the Hakomi Method.
Full Catastrophe Living, Jon Kabat-Zinn.
This book illustrates how mindfulness can be used to deal with stress, pain, and illness.
Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life, Stephen Hayes.
This workbook contains many useful mindfulness excercises, geared to help change one’s relationship with pain and suffering.
Getting Unstuck, Pema Chödrön. (Audio CDs).
Chödrön guides us through our “stuckness”—exploring the moments when we get hooked—and offers tools for learning to stay with our uneasiness and soften our hearts.
The Miracle of Mindfulness, Thich Nhat Hahn.
This is a very practical manual on meditation, combining both philosophy and exercises.
The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle.
This book describes the power of living in the present moment.
The Sanity We Are Born With, Chogyam Trungpa.
This book offers a Buddhist approach to psychological well-being.
When Things Fall Apart, Pema Chödrön.
This book guides readers on how to use painful emotions to cultivate wisdom, compassion, and courage from a Buddhist perspective.
The Adolescent Psyche, Richard Frankel.
Frankel brings a perspective on the adolescent psyche that helps adults understand the ways in which adolescents need to be supported in their search for identity.
Soul Catcher Journal, Kathy and Amy Eldon.
This is a wonderful, guided journal that helps teens (and adults) access their dreams and desires and identify and work through what makes them feel worried, frightened, angry, sad, or happy.
Uncommon Sense for Parents with Teenagers, Michael Riera.
A compassionate, down to earth and practical book, it addresses common issues facing parents and teens: alcohol and drugs, academics, sex and dating, divorce, and the internet. Provides a good reminder of what adolescence feels like from the inside, as well as providing useful advice for parents.
Authentic Happiness, Martin Seligman.
This book looks at questions, such as: What makes people positive, generous, funny, kind, or original? Are you born with these traits, or can you develop them? How do intimate relationships influence positive traits, and how are they related to depression, insecurity, and pessimism? The book also offers tools and exercises for creating inner happiness.
Calming Your Anxious Mind, Jon Kabat-Zinn.
This book gives helpful ways to use mindfulness to help with anxiety.
Coping With Anxiety, Edmund Bourne.
This is a great book for how to practically cope with anxiety. Bourne clearly summarizes the different ways in which we are affected by and gives a number of simple exercises to reduce anxiety.
Darkness Visible, William Styron.
This book in William Styron’s account of his struggle to overcome depression.
I Don’t Want to Talk About It, Terrance Real.
This book is an exploration of the secret depression epidemic facing men in our culture, how men conceal this condition to their detriment and ways in which men can heal from this isolating condition.
Man’s Search For Meaning, Viktor Frankl.
A holocaust survivor, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. He holds that our primary drive in life is not pleasure, as Freud maintained, but the discovery and pursuit of what we personally find meaningful.
Swamplands Of The Soul: New Life In Dismal Places, James Hollis.
James Hollis gives a Jungian perspective on how to find meaning in life through difficult feelings such as depression, grief, doubt, anger, etc.
The Drama Of The Gifted Child, Alice Miller.
This is a classic book on the ways in which we adapt, as children, to the demands and expectations of our parents that may serve us in childhood, but then hinder us in adulthood.
The Feeling Good Handbook, David Burns.
A user-friendly book that is full of cognitive-behavioral tools to deal with depression.
The Mindful Way through Depression, Williams, Teasdale, Segal, Kabat-Zinn.
This book offers useful help with depression, particularly changes the concept of depression; includes audio CD of meditations, with a 29-minute body scan.
When Anxiety Attacks, David Burns.
A user-friendly book that is full of cognitive-behavioral tools to deal with anxiety.
Eating In The Light of the Moon, Anita Johnston.
This is a beautiful book on the ways in which women can change their relationship to food.
The Owl was a Baker’s Daughter: Obesity, Anorexia Nervosa and the Repressed Feminine, Marion Woodman.
Famed Jungian analyst Marion Woodman writes eloquently about the psychology of eating disorders.
The Artist Way, Julia Cameron.
This is classic book on reclaiming your inner artist and creativity from the influences of blocks, limiting beliefs, fear and sabotage.
A Big New Free Happy Unusual Life, Nina Wise.
Nina Wise shows us how to bring creativity, spirituality, and joy into our day-to-day lives.
Life, Paint and Passion, Michell Cassou and Stewart Cubley.
This book demonstrates how to use art as a way to inhabit and explore what is authentic in yourself.
Children of the Self-Absorbed, Nina W. Brown.
As the title suggests, this book gives context to, and ways to heal, the wounds particular to growing up with self-absorbed (“narcissistic”) parents.
Family Secrets: The Path from Shame to Healing, John Bradshaw.
This book takes us into the heart of the family's mysterious power to impact our lives. It also offers readers advice on how to deal with the truths revealed, plus ways to stay safely and honestly connected with our families.
Forgive for Good, Fred Luskin.
This powerful book offers practical steps to help take your hurt less personally, take responsibility for how you feel, and become a hero instead of a victim in the story you tell.
Healing the Shame That Binds You, John Bradshaw.
This book has helped millions identify their personal shame, understand the underlying reasons for it, address the root causes, and release themselves from the shame that binds them to their past failures.
Homecoming: Reclaiming and Healing Your Inner Child, John Bradshaw.
A good book for those who are tired of going around in circles with addictions and other inner (self) conflicts. Bradshaw helps us to tune into that small (“inner child”) self that still remains in us, even as adults.
Stress Free for Good, Fred Luskin.
This book offers simple, common sense, scientifically tested ways to reduce stress in the midst of a busy life.
A Time to Mourn, Verena Kast.
Kast writes about the mourning process using dreams as a way to understand the different stages in the mourning process.
Healing Into Life and Death, Stephen Levine.
Levine provides techniques and meditations for working with pain and grief.
On Children and Death, Elisabeth Kubler Ross.
A book for those who have lost or are in the process of losing their child.
On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, David Kessler.
This is an update to Kubler-Ross’ classic book on the various stages associated with grief and mourning.
Growing Up Again: Parenting Ourselves, Parenting Our Children, Clarke and Dawson.
This book is a non-academic treatment of a child’s developmental stages, offering examples and strategies on how to parent effectively.
Parenting from the Inside Out, Daniel Siegel and Mary Hartzell.
An accessible and interesting book that shows how a deeper self-understanding helps you raise children who thrive.
Positive Discipline for Teenagers, Jane Nelsen and Lynn Lott.
This book gives advice on how to empower your teen and yourself through kind and consistent parenting.
Parent as Coach, Diana Haskins.
This book teaches parents how to convert parent-teen relationships of conflict and pain into enjoyable and harmonious partnerships of encouragement and support.
Uncommon Sense for Parents with Teenagers, Michael Riera.
This book offers parents uncommon appreciation for this special developmental stage of life; helps parents empower their teenagers.
In Quest of the Mythical Mate, Ellyn Bader and Peter Pearson.
Bader and Pearson help make sense of the growing pains we experience in intimate relationships as we try to deal with our desire both for connectedness as well as independence and individuality. The book puts the subject matter into a developmental context.
Recreating Partnership, Ziegler and Hiller.
This book offers solution focused approach to couples counseling, of benefit to both therapists and couples.
The Eden Project: In Search of the Magical Other, James Hollis.
Hollis writes about the ways in which cultural fantasies about intimate relationships have skewed what many of us seek in a partner, particularly for those who look to their partner to rescue them as opposed to entering into relationship as a way to take on greater personal responsibility for self.
The Family Crucible: The Intense Experience of Family Therapy, Augustus Y. Napier, Ph.D.
A client-friendly book, Napier illustrates common family patterns and the family therapy experience.
The Seven Principles For Making Marriage Work, John M. Gottman.
A classic, easy to read text, on what makes a marriage work.
The Wounded Woman, Linda Schierse Leonard.
Leonard is a Jungian analyst who shares through dreams, fairy tales, and myth the ways in which the father-daughter relationship can affect a woman’s ability to relate to herself professionally, intellectually, sexually, and socially
Guide to Getting it On, edited by Paul Joannides.
This is a classic guide for all sexual orientations on sex.
The Ethical Slut, Easton and Liszt.
This book is a comprehensive look at having a non-monogamous life.
The Erotic Mind, Jack Morin, PhD.
Jack Morin offers new opportunities for intimate partners to appreciate the depth and richness of each other through their sexuality.
Your Perfect Lips, Stuart Sovatsky.
Sovatsky offers a memoir where modern lovers discover the spiritual eroticism of gender worship.
Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes, William Bridges.
The title says it. An orientation to the stages one can expect to deal with when we face big changes, whether they’re brought on by us, or dealt to us by life.
The Survivor's Guide to Sex, Staci Haines.
This is a very respectful and thoughtful self-help book, geared specifically towards those who have lived through childhood sexual abuse and their partners. The author is a survivor of sexual abuse herself, as well as a somatic therapist and the former manager of Good Vibrations. She brings a heartfelt mix of therapeutic understanding of the healing process and a sex-positive approach to human sexuality, and creates a very compelling and helpful primer for having a fabulous sex life even in the face of difficult embodied memories.
Trauma & Recovery, Judith L. Herman.
This is a wonderful and important "must read" for anyone who has experienced prolonged trauma. The author wisely, compassionately and strongly describes and illustrates the complex process of healing from psychological trauma. She powerfully puts trauma in its social and political context, and thus creates a very empowering, non-pathologizing framework for survivors of trauma. Especially helpful for survivors of childhood sexual abuse, holocaust survivors and war veterans.
Waking the Tiger, Peter Levine.
Levine’s work has become one of the most important books on how the mind and body are affected by trauma. The book explains the symptoms associated with trauma and explains the steps to heal the traumatic wound.
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Blue Oak Therapy Center
3101 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94705 Phone: (510) 649-9818
Clinical director is Stuart Sovatsky, PhD, MFT Licensed #MFC 19173.