Category: Childhood Trauma

Truth and Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice 

 

By Judith Lewis Herman, MD. (Author), Stacey Glemboski (Narrator). (2023)

From Amazon.com:  “From one of America’s most influential psychiatrists, a powerful manifesto for reimagining justice, based on the testimony of trauma survivors

The #MeToo movement brought worldwide attention to sexual violence, but while the media focused on the fates of a few notorious predators who were put on trial, we heard far less about the outcomes of those trials for the survivors of their abuse. 
  
The conventional retributive process fails to serve most survivors; it was never designed for them. Renowned trauma expert Judith L. Herman argues that the first step toward a better form of justice is simply to ask survivors what would make things as right as possible for them. In Truth and Repair, she commits the radical act of listening to survivors. Recounting their stories, she offers an alternative vision of justice as healing for survivors and their communities. 
  
Deeply researched and compassionately told, Truth and Repair envisions a new path to justice for all.”

The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture 

The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture by [Gabor Maté]

By Gabor Maté, MD. 2022.

From Amazon.com: “The instant New York Times bestseller

By the acclaimed author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, a groundbreaking investigation into the causes of illness, a bracing critique of how our society breeds disease, and a pathway to health and healing.

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?

Over four decades of clinical experience, Maté has come to recognize the prevailing understanding of “normal” as false, neglecting the roles that trauma and stress, and the pressures of modern-day living, exert on our bodies and our minds at the expense of good health. For all our expertise and technological sophistication, Western medicine often fails to treat the whole person, ignoring how today’s culture stresses the body, burdens the immune system, and undermines emotional balance. Now Maté brings his perspective to the great untangling of common myths about what makes us sick, connects the dots between the maladies of individuals and the declining soundness of society—and offers a compassionate guide for health and healing. Cowritten with his son Daniel, The Myth Of Normal is Maté’s most ambitious and urgent book yet.”

The Song of Our Scars: The Untold Story of Pain 

By Haider Warraich (Author, Narrator), Fajer Al-Kaisi (Narrator), Basic Books (Publisher)

From Amazon.com:  A doctor’s personal and unsparing account of how modern medicine’s failure to understand pain has made care less effective

In The Song of Our Scars, physician Haider Warraich offers a bold reexamination of the nature of pain, not as a simple physical sensation, but as a cultural experience.

Warraich, himself a sufferer of chronic pain, considers the ways our notions of pain have been shaped not just by science but by politics and power, by whose suffering mattered and whose didn’t. He weaves a provocative history from the Renaissance, when pain transformed into a medical issue, through the racial legacy of pain tolerance, to the opiate epidemics of both the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries, to the cutting edge of present-day pain science. The conclusion is clear: only by reckoning with both pain’s complicated history and its biology can today’s doctors adequately treat their patients’ suffering.

Trenchant and deeply felt, The Song of Our Scars is an indictment of a broken system and a plea for a more holistic understanding of the human body.”

Managing Your Distress in the Aftermath of a Shooting

You may be struggling to understand how a shooting rampage could take place in a community, even a workplace or military base, and why such a terrible thing would happen.

This tip sheet was made possible with help from the following APA members: Dewey Cornell, PhD, Richard A. Heaps, PhD, Jana Martin, PhD, H. Katherine O’Neill, PhD, Karen Settle, PhD, Peter Sheras, PhD, Phyllis Koch-Sheras, PhD, and members of Div. 17.

Date created: July 29, 2019

4 min read

https://www.apa.org/topics/gun-violence-crime/mass-shooting

(apa – The American Psychological Association)

Trauma Through a Child’s Eyes: Awakening the Ordinary Miracle of Healing

By Peter A. Levine Ph.D. and Maggie Kline. (2006

From Amazon.com: “An essential guide for recognizing, preventing, and healing childhood trauma, from infancy through adolescence—what parents, educators, and health professionals can do.

Trauma can result not only from catastrophic events such as abuse, violence, or loss of loved ones, but from natural disasters and everyday incidents like auto accidents, medical procedures, divorce, or even falling off a bicycle. At the core of this book is the understanding of how trauma is imprinted on the body, brain, and spirit—often resulting in anxiety, nightmares, depression, physical illnesses, addictions, hyperactivity, and aggression.

Rich with case studies and hands-on activities, Trauma Through a Child’s Eyes gives insight into children’s innate ability to rebound with the appropriate support, and provides their caregivers with tools to overcome and prevent trauma.”