Mental Trauma

After 9/11, mental health professionals flocked to New York to handle what everyone assumed would be a flood of trauma cases. Oddly, the flood never came. In The End of Trauma, pioneering psychologist George A. Bonanno argues that we failed to predict the psychological response to 9/11 because most of what we understand about trauma is wrong. For starters, it’s not nearly as common as we think.

Often, those who live through trauma come away with feelings of shame, guilt, anger, and despair. These are common, even normal, responses in the immediate aftermath. Left unaddressed, though, those feelings may develop into substance abuse problems, eating disorders, depression, or anxiety. Learning how to move on, to pick up and live life again, takes effort and guidance. Botwin guides listeners through the stories of others who have gone on to live fulfilling, happy lives, and provides tips and tools for healing and moving on.

By age thirty, Stephanie Foo was successful on paper: She had her dream job as an award-winning radio producer at This American Life and a loving boyfriend. But behind her office door, she was having panic attacks and sobbing at her desk every morning. After years of questioning what was wrong with herself, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD—a condition that occurs when trauma happens continuously, over the course of years.

In this culmination of his life’s work, Peter A. Levine draws on his broad experience as a clinician, a student of comparative brain research, a stress scientist and a keen observer of the naturalistic animal world to explain the nature and transformation of trauma in the body, brain and psyche. In an Unspoken Voice is based on the idea that trauma is neither a disease nor a disorder, but rather an injury caused by fright, helplessness and loss that can be healed by engaging our innate capacity to self-regulate high states of arousal and intense emotions.

If you've experienced physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, your past trauma could affect how you care for yourself today. You may struggle with difficult thoughts and feelings, and reach for food to soothe your emotions when feeling sad, anxious, or stressed. You aren't alone. Healing Emotional Eating for Trauma Survivors offers an innovative, trauma-informed approach to overcoming emotional eating using the principles of mindfulness, self-compassion, and neuroscience.

Hailed as the most important method to emerge in psychotherapy in decades, EMDR has successfully treated psychological problems and illnesses in more than one million sufferers worldwide, with a rapidity that defies belief. In a new introduction, Shapiro presents the new applications of this remarkable therapy and the latest scientific research that demonstrates its efficacy.

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.

Inside your body at this very moment lives a unique configuration of "stuck" energy called your "Trauma Code." This energy was stored by your body, in response to events of your past, that were beyond your capacity to process. This stuck energy controls how you feel, it controls the way you think, it controls what you do and say. This book offers a way out. It offers a map to move beyond the controlling effects of trauma and get on the path to living your life's true purpose.

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.

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

In this game-changing book, trauma therapist and mental health expert Dr. Anita Phillips reveals how embracing emotion is the key to living your most powerful life. Just as gardens thrive in good ground, the abundant life you’ve been seeking can only be grown in the soil of your heart.

From Dr. Mariel Buqué, a leading trauma psychologist, comes this groundbreaking guide to transforming intergenerational pain into intergenerational abundance. With Break the Cycle, she delivers the definitive guide to healing inherited trauma. Weaving together scientific research with practical exercises and stories from the therapy room, Dr. Buqué teaches readers how trauma is transmitted from one generation to the next and how they can break the cycle through tangible therapeutic practices, learning to pass down strength instead of pain to future generations.

An insatiable need for sex and love. Periods of overeating or starving. A pattern of unstable and painful relationships. Does this sound painfully familiar? Trauma counselor Kelly McDaniel has seen these traits over and over in clients who feel trapped in cycles of harmful behaviors - and are unable to stop. Many of us find ourselves stuck in unhealthy habits simply because we don't see a better way. With Mother Hunger, McDaniel helps women break the cycle of destructive behavior by taking a fresh look at childhood trauma and its lasting impact.

Brittany Piper spent most of her life sitting across from conventional therapists recalling the painful stories of her trauma. But rehashing each harrowing event—being put into foster care as a baby, losing her brother in a car accident, enduring a brutal rape and a very public trial, and more—made her even more stuck. At a crossroads, she took her recovery into her own hands. On this journey, Brittany discovered emerging science that explains how and why trauma lives in our bodies, not in the story of what happened to us.

With Quiet, Susan Cain urged our society to cultivate space for the undervalued, indispensable introverts among us, thereby revealing an un­tapped power hidden in plain sight. Now she em­ploys the same mix of research, storytelling, and memoir to explore why we experience sorrow and longing, and how embracing the bittersweetness at the heart of life is the true path to creativity, con­nection, and transcendence.

The SMART (Sensory Motor Arousal Regulation Treatment) program addresses three key processes that can be derailed by developmental trauma—somatic regulation, trauma processing, and attachment-building—and uses movement and sensation to target the neurological structures that support emotional and behavioral regulation.

A large segment of the therapy population consist of those who are in denial or retreat from their traumatic experiences. Here, drawing on attachment-based research, the author provides clinical techniques, specific intervention strategies, and practical advice for successfully addressing the often intractable issues of trauma. Trauma and the Avoidant Client will enhance the skills of all mental health practitioners and trauma workers, and will serve as a valuable, useful resource to facilitate change and progress in psychotherapy.

An essential work that centers colonial and historical trauma in a framework for healing, Decolonizing Therapy illuminates that all therapy is—and always has been—inherently political. To better understand the mental health oppression and institutional violence that exists today, we must become familiar with the root of disembodiment from our histories, homelands, and healing practices. Only then will listeners see how colonial, historical, and intergenerational legacies have always played a role in the treatment of mental health.

Traumatic experiences happen to nearly everyone, at some time, in some form. The aftereffects—depression, anxiety, addiction, panic attacks, insomnia, and more—can affect us for years or even a lifetime. But the brokenness following a traumatic event is never a life sentence. We are all changed by trauma, but we do not have to be defined by it.

The premise of Trauma and the Body is that, by adding body-oriented interventions to their repertoire, traditionally trained therapists can increase the depth and efficacy of their clinical work. Sensorimotor psychotherapy is an approach that builds on traditional psychotherapeutic understanding but includes the body as central in the therapeutic field of awareness, using observational skills, theories, and interventions not usually practiced in psychodynamic psychotherapy.