Mental Trauma

Images and sounds of war, natural disasters, and human-made devastation explicitly surround us and implicitly leave their imprint in our muscles, our belly and heart, our nervous systems, and the brains in our skulls. We each experience more digital data than we are capable of processing in a day, and this is leading to a loss of empathy and human contact. This loss of leisurely, sustained, face-to-face connection is making true presence a rare experience for many of us, and is neurally ingraining fast pace and split attention as the norm.

Traumatic experiences leave a “living legacy” of effects that often persist for years and decades after the events are over. Historically, it has always been assumed that retelling the story of what happened would resolve these effects. However, survivors report a different experience: Telling and re-telling the story of what happened to them often reactivates their trauma responses, overwhelming them rather than resolving the trauma.

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.

Author, mental health expert, and professor David Bedrick helps us understand how shame shows up—and offers a revolutionary, stigma-free model to help us unshame and release its hold on our happiness. Shame is more than feeling guilty, sad, or responsible. It develops when we experience a trauma but can’t access the tools or freedom to express how we feel—or are denied the ability to ask for the care we need. It shows up when we aren’t witnessed—whether by a loved one, our community, our culture, or anyone from whom we need to hear.

This groundbreaking book provides a comprehensive overview of the anatomy of racial trauma and the debilitating hidden wounds associated with it. Racially sensitive trauma-informed interventions and strategies that centralize race and racial oppression in every facet of the therapeutic process and relationship are meticulously highlighted, making this a must-listen resource for all practicing and aspiring clinicians.

Heal trauma. Reclaim your body. Live with wholeness. These are the gifts of utilizing the power of fundamental consciousness-a subtle field of awareness that lies within each of us. In Trauma and the Unbound Body, Dr. Judith Blackstone explores how we can resolve the mental, physical, and emotional struggles of trauma through the power of fundamental consciousness.

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.

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.

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.

Amid collective trauma, it helps to know that our bodies are built to respond to stress and what we might do to shift those reflexes. Having studied brain-based and body-based approaches to wellbeing, Dr. Christy Gibson teaches listeners how to embrace their innate power and catalyze community wisdom. Drawing on her work with people suffering from stress and societal challenges, Dr. Gibson shares practical and effective mental health advice you can personalize.

Have you suffered trauma in the past? Have you been wanting to relieve unusual symptoms but can’t seem to get to the bottom of it? Stored trauma can often lead to physical pain and the psychological anguish that comes along with it. Want to say good-bye to all of the overwhelming and complex info out there and discover what easily works for you? You see, using somatic healing to your benefit doesn't have to be difficult, even if you feel like you've already tried everything. In fact, it's easier than you think.

Step 1: You admit that you're powerless over your addiction. Now what? Twelve-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA) have helped countless people on the path to recovery. But many still feel that 12-step programs aren't for them: that the spiritual emphasis is too narrow, the modality too old-school, the setting too triggering, or the space too exclusive. Some struggle with an addict label that can eclipse the histories, traumas, and experiences that feed into addiction, or dismisses the effects of adverse experiences like trauma in the first place.

Trauma recovery is tricky; however, there are several key principles that can help make the process safe and effective. This book gives self-help listeners, therapy clients, and therapists alike the skills to understand and implement eight keys to successful trauma healing: mindful identification of what is helpful, recognizing survival, having the option to not remember, creating a supportive inner dialogue, forgiving not being able to stop the trauma, understanding and sharing shame, finding your own recovery pace; mobilizing your body, and helping others.

The NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM) is an integrated mind-body framework that focuses on relational, attachment, developmental, cultural, and intergenerational trauma. NARM helps clients resolve C-PTSD, recover from adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), and facilitate post-traumatic growth.

Overcoming Trauma Through Yoga is a book for survivors, clinicians, and yoga instructors who are interested in mind/body healing. It introduces trauma-sensitive yoga, a modified approach to yoga developed in collaboration between yoga teachers and clinicians at the Trauma Center at Justice Resource Institute, led by yoga teacher David Emerson, along with medical doctor Bessel van der Kolk.

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.

When someone suffers through trauma, can healing happen? And, if yes, how does it happen? Dr. Diane Langberg tackles these complex and difficult questions with the insights she has gained through more than 40 years of counseling those whose lives have been destroyed by trauma and abuse. Her answer carefully explained in Suffering and the Heart of God is Yes, what trauma destroys, Jesus can and does restore.

Heal from trauma and PTSD with the martial art of jiu-jitsu - written for survivors, mental health therapists, and trauma-informed martial arts instructors.

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.

Gretchen Schmelzer watched too many people quit during treatment for trauma recovery. They found it too difficult or too frightening or just decided that for them it was too late. But as a therapist and trauma survivor herself, Dr. Schmelzer wants us to know that it is never too late to heal from trauma, whether it is the suffering caused within an abusive relationship or PTSD resulting from combat.