Body Disorders

Licensed mental health therapist, somatic healer, and eating disorder specialist Alishia McCullough understands that for far too many Black women, racial trauma’s seismic impact has disrupted their most essential relationship: the one they have with their bodies—and by extension, with their food. African Americans are disproportionately impacted by disordered eating behaviors, yet their experiences are frequently neglected by doctors and mental health experts.

Anxiety affects more than forty million Americans—a number that continues to climb in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. While conventional medicine tends to view anxiety as a “neck-up” problem—that is, one of brain chemistry and psychology—the truth is that the origins of anxiety are rooted in the body. In The Anatomy of Anxiety, holistic psychiatrist Dr. Ellen Vora offers nothing less than a paradigm shift in our understanding of anxiety and mental health, suggesting that anxiety is not simply a brain disorder but a whole-body condition.

Have you ever felt like your body has failed you? Maybe you’re not as quick or as strong as you used to be, or an illness has wrecked your sense of self, or no matter what diet you follow, you still feel uncomfortable in your own skin. So you go to war with your body for what it can no longer do—when the truth is, our bodies are always on our side. In This Is Body Grief, disability advocate and recovery expert Jayne Mattingly lays out a groundbreaking approach to mourning and accepting one’s ever-changing body.

In this groundbreaking book, therapist Resmaa Menakem examines the damage caused by racism in America from the perspective of trauma and body-centered psychology. My Grandmother's Hands is a call to action for all of us to recognize that racism is not only about the head but about the body, and introduces an alternative view of what we can do to grow beyond our entrenched racialized divide.

In Trauma and Memory, best-selling author Dr. Peter Levine (creator of the Somatic Experiencing approach) tackles one of the most difficult and controversial questions of PTSD/trauma therapy: Can we trust our memories? While some argue that traumatic memories are unreliable and not useful, others insist that we absolutely must rely on memory to make sense of past experience. Dr. Levine suggests that there are elements of truth in both camps.

Mainstream health science has let you down. Weight loss is not the key to health, diet and exercise are not effective weight-loss strategies, and fatness is not a death sentence. Body Respect debunks common myths about weight, including the misconceptions that BMI can accurately measure health, that fatness necessarily leads to disease, and that dieting will improve health. The authors also help make sense of how poverty and oppression - such as racism, homophobia, and classism - affect life opportunity, self-worth, and even influence metabolism.

For years, we've understood the connection between trauma and mental health issues, such as depression and anxiety. But somatic psychology has recently shown that our bodies hold on to trauma, and trauma can manifest in physical symptoms. In addition, we now know that developmental trauma can result in profound emotional stress and lead to serious diseases. Building on this knowledge, this cutting-edge guide offers simple skills for connecting and calming your body, balancing your emotions, and rewiring old patterns of reactivity for better self-regulation.

After years of trying different therapies for his debilitating anxiety without success, Dr. Russell Kennedy had an epiphany: anxiety does not start in the brain. Anxiety starts in the body, where trauma is stored and physical and emotional perception begin. Alarm bells originating in the body are what trigger those anxious thoughts that we call anxiety, and Russ realized that true healing starts only when we learn not to conflate the two.

Clinical psychologist Dr. Arielle Schwartz has spent years helping those with complex PTSD—also referred to as C-PTSD—find their way to wholeness. She also knows the territory of the healing firsthand, having walked it herself. This audiobook provides a map to the complicated, and often overwhelming, terrain of C-PTSD with Dr. Schwartz’s knowledgeable guidance helping you find your way.

Asserting that the body is the main site of oppression in Western society, the contributors to this pioneering volume explore the complex issue of embodiment and how it relates to social inclusion and marginalization. In a culture where bodies of people who are brown, black, female, transgender, disabled, fat, or queer are often shamed, sexualized, ignored, and oppressed, what does it mean to live in a marginalized body? This anthology explores how power, privilege, oppression, and attempted disembodiment play out on the bodies of disparaged individuals.

Tally lives in a world where your 16th birthday brings aesthetic perfection: an operation that erases all your flaws, transforming you from an "Ugly" into a "Pretty". She is on the eve of this important event and cannot wait for her life to change. As well as guaranteeing supermodel looks, life as a Pretty seems to revolve around having a good time. But then she meets Shay, who is also 15 - but with a very different outlook on life.

Have you ever thought that if only you could change something about the way you looked, your life would be better? But the truth is that even if you were to magically attain the “perfect” body right now, your problems wouldn’t be solved. Because body image issues are never just about the body. Body image issues are always about something deeper, and they always serve some kind of purpose.

In the second book of the Uglies series, Tally's Pretty. And everything's changed. The new, Pretty Tally is totally happy right where she is. She doesn't think she needs any kind of cure at all. When someone from her Ugly life shows up with a message, Tally has a hard time listening. Did she really promise to give all this up? Is she bound by a promise she made when she was a different person?

From pioneering therapist Cathy A. Malchiodi, this book synthesizes the breadth of research on trauma and the brain and presents an innovative framework for treating trauma through the expressive arts.

Seventeen-year-old Elena is vanishing. Every day means renewed determination, so every day means fewer calories. This is the story of a girl whose armor against anxiety becomes artillery against herself as she battles on both sides of a lose-lose war in a struggle with anorexia.

A body-focused, trauma-informed art therapy that will appeal to art therapists, somatic experiencing practitioners, bodyworkers, artists, and mental health professionals

Lia and Cassie are best friends, wintergirls frozen in fragile bodies, competitors in a deadly contest to see who can be the thinnest. But then Cassie suffers the ultimate loss - her life - and Lia is left behind, haunted by her friend's memory and racked with guilt for not being able to help save her.

Today, we know more about mental health than ever before, but traditional medicine still mistakes subtle signs of trauma for stress, anxiety, or chronic disease—sometimes even retraumatizing patients with outdated and misguided methods. Treatment plans that focus on the mind are only addressing the downstream effects. Likewise, common medical approaches to manage symptoms fail to explore root causes and promote genuine recovery.

"Special Circumstances": The words have sent chills down Tally's spine since her days as a repellent, rebellious ugly. Back then Specials were a sinister rumor - frighteningly beautiful, dangerously strong, breathtakingly fast. Ordinary pretties might live their whole lives without meeting a Special. But Tally's never been ordinary. And now, in the third book in the series, Tally's been turned into a Special: a superamped fighting machine engineered to keep the uglies down and the pretties stupid.

Traumatic life experiences can be devastating, and they inevitably shape who you are. Such events can also become a powerful force that awakens you to an undercurrent of your own aliveness. Trauma recovery involves learning to trust in your capacity for new growth. In order to grow, we must make use of our suffering in order to find our happiness. Within this audiobook, you will find an invitation to see yourself as the hero or heroine of your own life journey. A hero's journey involves walking into the darkness on a quest for wholeness