Study Journal

—

Chase Hughes — The Behavior Ops Manual

Where the project started, and where it drew its clearest line.

—

Jim Camp / Camp Negotiation Institute — Start with No

Emotional discipline as the actual negotiating skill.

—

Robert Cialdini — Influence & Pre-Suasion

Seven levers, taught both ways: genuine use and recognition.

—

Chris Voss — Never Split the Difference

FBI-tested tactical empathy.

—

Marshall Rosenberg — Nonviolent Communication

Already known deeply — the curriculum's expression half.

—

Motivational Interviewing (Miller & Rollnick)

The coaching relationship's actual operating mode.

—

Gavin de Becker — The Gift of Fear

The evidentiary backbone for trusting the something's-off feeling.

—

Lundy Bancroft / Evan Stark — Coercive Control

Relationship-specific control patterns, on firm clinical/legal ground.

—

Steven Hassan — The BITE Model

A practical framework for assessing high-control groups, now with a primary interview.

—

Daniel Kahneman — Thinking, Fast and Slow

The mechanism layer underneath most of the other sources: why System 1's shortcuts work at all.

—

Kahneman, Sibony & Sunstein — Noise

The overlooked twin of bias: unwanted variability, and how organizations can measure and reduce it.

—

Donella Meadows — Thinking in Systems

A structural lens, not a tactic: stocks, feedback loops, system traps, and leverage points.

—

Stephen Porges — The Polyvagal Theory

The physiological floor under the Composure Spectrum and the recognition guide's freeze/fawn material.

—

Deborah Dana — Anchored

The applied companion to Porges: glimmers, home away from home, and concrete regulation practice.

—

Bessel van der Kolk — The Body Keeps the Score

The clinical and developmental case: attachment, the ACE study, IFS, and trauma's population-level scope.

—

Porges & Onderko — Safe and Sound

The applied clinical protocol built from polyvagal theory, plus a reusable self-directed Regulation Toolbox.

—

John Bowlby — The Making and Breaking of Affectional Bonds

The secure base, self-reliance, and the therapist's own presence as part of the intervention — from the 1970s.

—

Robert C. Scaer — The Body Bears the Burden

A neurologist on whiplash, the undischarged freeze response, and trauma sourced from the medical encounter itself.

—

David Butler & Lorimer Moseley — Explain Pain

Pain-neuroscience education, central to the founder's own clinical practice for years.

—

David Butler — The Sensitive Nervous System

The denser clinical text underneath Explain Pain's popular presentation.

—

Fabrizio Benedetti — Placebo Effects

The open/hidden administration paradigm: controlled experimental evidence that a clinician's presence is itself an active treatment variable.

—

Dr. Sue Johnson — Hold Me Tight

Bowlby's attachment theory applied directly to adult romantic partnership — EFT's popular presentation.

—

Daniel Siegel — Mindsight

The proper source for “window of tolerance,” plus Mary Main's four-category attachment update to Bowlby.

—

Daniel Siegel — The Mindful Brain

The denser technical grounding behind the Wheel of Awareness and the definition of mindfulness itself.

—

Daniel Siegel — The Mindful Therapist

Presence and attunement written for practitioners directly — and an honest flag on the mirror-neuron material.

—

Daniel Siegel — The Developing Mind

The original academic source: the AAI's real scoring criteria, and the nine domains of integration.

—

Robert Jay Lifton — Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism

The eight criteria of ideological totalism — the psychological mechanism underneath Hassan's BITE checklist.

—

Judith Herman — Trauma and Recovery

Why coercive control works, the three-stage recovery model, and the real answer to "why didn't they leave."

—

Jennifer Freyd & Pamela Birrell — Blind to Betrayal

Why betrayal fails to register at all, and what makes an institution's response its own separate harm.

—

Lisa Feldman Barrett — How Emotions Are Made & Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain

Emotions as constructed, predictive body-budgeting — independent grounding for the pain/trauma layer and a sourced case for retiring "lizard brain" language.

—

Anil Seth — Being You: A New Science of Consciousness

Controlled hallucination and the predictive brain — background grounding for perception and the something's-off feeling, sized as theory, not technique.

—

Hugo Mercier — Not Born Yesterday

Why mass persuasion mostly fails, and the baseline-vs-degraded-capacity synthesis that explains why the recognition guide is still right to focus on isolation and dysregulation.