Mental Trauma

Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world’s foremost experts on trauma, has spent more than three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers’ capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust.

Have you ever wondered "Why did I do that?" or "Why can't I just control my behavior?" Others may judge our reactions and think, "What's wrong with that person?" When questioning our emotions, it's easy to place the blame on ourselves; holding ourselves and those around us to an impossible standard. It's time we started asking a different question. Through deeply personal conversations, Oprah Winfrey and renowned brain and trauma expert Dr. Bruce Perry offer a groundbreaking and profound shift from asking “What’s wrong with you?” to “What happened to you?”

Explaining that an impaired capacity for connection to self and to others underlies most psychological and many physiological problems, clinicians Laurence Heller, PhD, and Aline LaPierre, PsyD, introduce the NeuroAffective Relational Model™ (NARM), a unified approach to developmental, attachment, and shock trauma that emphasizes working in the present moment. NARM is a somatically based psychotherapy that helps bring into awareness the parts of self that are disorganized and dysfunctional.

Imagine, if you will, a disease - one that has only subtle outward symptoms but can hijack your entire body without notice; one that transfers easily between parent and child; one that can last a lifetime if untreated. According to Dr. Paul Conti, this is exactly how society should conceptualize trauma: as an out-of-control epidemic with a potentially fatal prognosis. In Trauma: The Invisible Epidemic, Dr. Conti examines the most recent research, clinical best practices, and dozens of real-life stories to present a deeper, richer, and more urgent view of trauma.

This training manual for patients who have a trauma-related dissociative disorder includes short educational pieces, homework sheets, and exercises that address ways in which dissociation interferes with essential emotional and life skills, and support inner communication and collaboration with dissociative parts of the personality.

The concepts and interventions introduced in this book are designed as an adjunct to, and in support of, other methods of treatment rather than as a stand-alone treatment or manualized approach. By drawing on the therapeutic relationship and adjusting interventions to the particular needs of each client, thoughtful attention to what is being spoken beneath the words through the body can heighten the intimacy of the therapist/client journey and help change take place more easily in the hidden recesses of the self.

The simple truth is that PTSD can be extremely debilitating - not just for the person who has experienced trauma firsthand, but for their partners, as well. And while there are many books written for those suffering from PTSD, there are few written for the people who love them. In Loving Someone with PTSD, renowned trauma expert Aphrodite Matsakis presents concrete skills and strategies for the partners of those with PTSD.

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.

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.

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.

In this revolutionary book, renowned physician Gabor Maté eloquently dissects how in Western countries that pride themselves on their healthcare systems, chronic illness and general ill health are on the rise. Nearly 70 percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug; more than half take two. In Canada, every fifth person has high blood pressure. In Europe, hypertension is diagnosed in more than 30 percent of the population. And everywhere, adolescent mental illness is on the rise. So what is really “normal” when it comes to health?

In Trauma and the Soul, Donald Kalsched continues the exploration he began in his first book, The Inner World of Trauma (1996)—this time going further into the mystical or spiritual moments that often occur around the intimacies of psychoanalytic work. Through extended clinical vignettes, including therapeutic dialogue and dreams, he shows how depth psychotherapy with trauma’s survivors can open both analytic partners to "another world" of non-ordinary reality in which daimonic powers reside, both light and dark.

Understanding addiction is no longer just about understanding neurons or genes, broken brain functioning, learning, or faulty choices. Oliver J. Morgan provides a fresh take on addiction and recovery by presenting a more inclusive framework than traditional understanding. Cutting-edge work in attachment, interpersonal neurobiology, and trauma is integrated with ecological-systems thinking to provide a consilient and comprehensive picture of addiction.

Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors integrates a neurobiologically informed understanding of trauma, dissociation, and attachment with a practical approach to treatment, all communicated in straightforward language accessible to both client and therapist. Listeners will be exposed to a model that emphasizes "resolution" - a transformation in the relationship to one's self, replacing shame, self-loathing, and assumptions of guilt with compassionate acceptance.

A new model of therapeutic action, one that heals trauma and dissociation, is overtaking the mental-health field. It is not just trauma, but the dissociation of the self, that causes emotional pain and difficulties in functioning. This book discusses how people are universally subject to trauma, what trauma is, and how to understand and work with normative as well as extreme dissociation. In this new model, the client and the practitioner are both traumatized and flawed human beings who affect each other in the mutual process that the promotes the healing of the client-psychotherapy.

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.

Our lives and their pathways are not fixed in stone; instead they are shaped by story. The ways in which we understand and share the stories of our lives therefore make all the difference. The book invites listeners to take a new look at their own stories and to find solutions to problems and predicaments in unexpected places.

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.

Spiritual teacher Thomas Hübl has spent years investigating why it is that old and seemingly disconnected traumas can seed their way through communities and across generations. His work culminates in Healing Collective Trauma, a new perspective on trauma that addresses both its visible effects and its most hidden roots. Thomas combines deep knowledge of mystical traditions with the latest scientific research. "In this way", writes Thomas, "we are weaving a double helix between ancient wisdom and contemporary understanding".

From elementary schools to psychotherapy offices, mindfulness meditation is an increasingly mainstream practice. At the same time, trauma remains a fact of life. Drawing on a decade of research and clinical experience, psychotherapist and educator David Treleaven shows that mindfulness meditation - practiced without an awareness of trauma - can exacerbate symptoms of traumatic stress. This raises a crucial question: How can we minimize the potential dangers of mindfulness for survivors while leveraging its powerful benefits?