Social Trauma

The Trouble with Trauma is the story of how the idea of psychological trauma appeals to the human mind. Trauma impacts many people psychologically, but the evidence on the long-term physical effect is incomplete. Theories that psychological trauma can permanently damage your brain, cause physical disease, and change your essential character have become staples of human thought worldwide.

In the thick of lockdown, 2020, poet, critic, and memoirist Jamie Hood published her debut, How to Be a Good Girl, an interrogation of modern femininity and the narratives of love, desire, and violence yoked to it. The Rumpus praised Hood’s “bold vulnerability,” and Vogue named it a Best Book of 2020. In Trauma Plot, Hood draws on disparate literary forms to tell the story that lurked in Good Girl’s margins—of three decades marred by sexual violence and the wreckage left behind.

Between October 2014 and November 2016, global terrorism expert Jessica Stern held a series of conversations in a prison cell in The Hague with Radovan Karadzic, a Bosnian Serb former politician who had been indicted for genocide and other war crimes during the Bosnian War. In My War Criminal, Jessica Stern brings to bear her incisive analysis and her own deeply considered reactions to her interactions with Karadzic, while also offering a deeply insightful and sometimes chilling account of the complex and even seductive powers of a magnetic leader.

When news outlets reveal church scandals or we hear stories about people leaving the church, it can seem as though we are in a bit of a crisis as the Body of Christ. In Being a Sanctuary, Pricelis Perreaux-Dominguez—who has experienced abuse, trauma, and racism within the church—takes us on an honest, biblical, and reflective journey as she examines the state of the church and offers us a hopeful path forward.

Each of us has a finite amount of mental bandwidth, the cognitive resources that are available for learning, development, work, and everything else we have to do. These "attentional resources" are not about how smart we are, but about how much of our brain power is available to us for the task at hand.

Racism from the dominant culture continues to impact our society in the 21st century. Discrimination and prejudice also occur among Black, Indigenous, and people of color based on factors such as skin complexion and hair texture. This complicates the issue beyond race and allows practices such as colorism to spread via internalized racism like a virulent social contagion.

David W. Powell enlisted for a tour of duty in April 1966 with the US Marines after receiving an imminent draft notice. Believing he would be able to leverage his existing skills as a computer programmer, he never thought all they would see on his resume was his Karate expertise. Even less that he would wind up serving as a Rocket man in the jungles of Da Nang and Chu Lai for a 13 month tour in hell. David's journey from naive civilian to battle-hardened combat veteran shows us all how fragile our humanity really is.

At school you were probably taught that our nervous system allows us to stimulate the voluntary and involuntary activities of our psychophysical apparatus; but know that it also has another significant function which is that of self-healing. Ask yourself this question: where did all the pains you experienced during your life originate from? From your mind, or rather from your brain! Well, know that there are some very simple exercises that allow the training of our vagus nerve with the aim of helping the nervous system to heal any kind of ailment.

Die spannende Autobiografie des weltweit führenden Trauma-Therapeuten. Diese bemerkenswerte Autobiografie enthüllt die innere Geschichte eines herausragenden Menschen, der die Art und Weise, wie Psycholog:innen, Ärzt:innen und Heiler:innen die Wunden von Trauma und Missbrauch verstehen und behandeln, grundlegend revolutioniert hat. Der renommierte Trauma-Therapeut Peter A. Levine half mit der von ihm entwickelten Methode Somatic Experiencing (SE) Tausenden von Menschen, bevor er Jahre später mithilfe dieses Ansatzes sein eigenes Trauma auflösen konnte.

As Black people, we are more likely to face a traumatic experience or suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). But being Black is about more than the violence that has been perpetrated against us. It also means living a life of dignity and self-worth. We can pull ourselves out of the fire of painful experiences and gain the psychological flexibility needed to thrive, not just survive. Jennifer Shepard Payne presents culturally tailored acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) skills to help you heal from trauma, so you can live a meaningful life that is in tune with your own values.

Black women continue to have a complex and convoluted relationship with their hair. From grammar and high schools to corporate boardrooms and military squadrons, Black and Afro Latina natural hair continues to confound, transfix, and enrage members of White American society. Why, in 2022, is this still the case? Why have we not moved beyond that perennial racist emblem? And why are women so disproportionately affected?

"Vielleicht hat es doch geschadet ..." Die Psychologin Sophie Lauenroth (@psychologin_sophie) klärt auf, wie viele Sprüche, die wir von klein auf gehört haben, uns geprägt haben. Wir alle werden von dem beeinflusst, was wir in der Kindheit erlebt haben. Kleine und große Traumata machen sich oft erst im Erwachsenenalter bemerkbar. Den meisten Menschen ist nicht bewusst, dass innere Wunden, verzerrte oder unterdrückte Erinnerungen uns in vielen Alltagssituationen lenken.

When Dr. Tim Lewis was twenty-eight years old, his father shot his mother while she was sleeping in his childhood bedroom, and then he turned the gun on himself. As he sat in the hospital waiting room while his mother clung to her life, his friends and family seemed to have only one question for him: "Why?" This book is his attempt at an answer. While Daddy is the story of Dr. Lewis's trauma, substance abuse, and his lifelong dedication to PTSD research as a clinical psychologist, it turns out it is also the story of America and American men.

In Black Psychedelic Revolution, Dr. Nick Powers charts how psychedelics can heal historical, intergenerational, and racialized trauma. He shows how these medicines unlock a return to one’s self, facilitating an embodied experience of safety, peace, and beingness otherwise disrupted by whiteness—and explores psychedelics’ ability to transform individual wellness even as they transcend it. Drugs taken with therapy can heal. But drugs taken with a social movement can heal a nation.

The Black community has been suffering from racial discrimination for centuries, and the death of George Floyd sparked a rallying cry that traveled to every corner of the world.

Survived physical abuse. Witnessed community violence. Conquered the streets. Saved by education. This is Dr. Maysa Akbar’s story. A story of overcoming urban trauma. It’s easy to look down at urban communities and wonder why economic and social disparities still exist when so many people of color, despite facing severe adversity, have done better.

Having a pet dragon is so much fun! He can sit, roll over, and play. He can candle a birthday cake, light a campfire, or so many other cool things! But what if your dragon experienced a traumatic event? What if he’s constantly having bad dreams about the terrible thing he experienced? What if he wasn’t able to rest well and telling you his tummy hurts? What if he tried to run away but couldn’t escape from his thoughts of the awful thing that happened? What if he didn’t want to share with you or to talk about the terrible thing he saw? 

Should this book have been written? Should it be read? Why is there still so much stigma, shame and taboo associated with mental health? Why do men struggle so much to talk about their problems? Are we adequately equipped? In the workplace, in your home, in the church, in society? The introduction in this book briefly explains how our brains work, it is a powerful organ. Are you trapped in a negative mindset? This book will change the way that you think.

For millions of women, shame is a vicious predator. It tells us we are less than, that we are unworthy. We try everything to escape shame—ignoring it, intellectualizing it, and even, ironically, shaming ourselves for feeling it. The reality is that women experience shame more frequently and more intensely than men—a direct result, as acclaimed journalist Melissa Petro explains, of a patriarchal culture that “urges women to feel bad about themselves, and then punishes them when they do.” Why can’t we figure out how to break the shame cycle once and for all?

Muchas personas no llegan a vivir su sexualidad en congruencia con su identidad por haber sufrido traumas sexuales, traumas de relación y traumas de amor. Confunden su identidad con la identificación con otros, en muchos casos con el autor de su trauma. Su sexualidad está marcada por esa identificación. En esta obra el autor, al cual avala una experiencia de veinticinco años como terapeuta, expone que hay muchos más traumas sexuales de los que creemos, puesto que muchas veces los abusos sexuales tienen lugar en el propio seno de la familia.