Category: About Trauma

The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist’s Notebook — What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Love, and Healing

The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook -- What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Love, and Healing

By Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD. (Author), with Maia Szalavitz. (2017).

From Amazon.com: “In this instant classic of developmental psychology, a renowned psychiatrist examines the effect that trauma can have on a child, reveals how PTSD impacts the developing mind, and outlines the path to recovery.

What happens when a young brain is traumatized? How does terror, abuse, or disaster affect a child’s mind — and how can that mind recover? Child psychiatrist Dr. Bruce D. Perry has helped children faced with unimaginable horror: genocide survivors, murder witnesses, kidnapped teenagers, and victims of family violence.

In The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, Dr. Perry tells their stories of trauma and transformation through the lens of science, revealing the brain’s astonishing capacity for healing. Deftly combining unforgettable case histories with his own compassionate, insightful strategies for rehabilitation, Perry explains what exactly happens to the brain when a child is exposed to extreme stress — and reveals the unexpected measures that can be taken to ease a child’s pain and help him grow into a healthy adult. As a senior fellow at the Child Trauma Academy, Dr. Perry and his clinical group worked with hundreds who endured severe childhood neglect and abuse with incredible resilience and strength. Through the stories of children who recover — physically, mentally, and emotionally — from the most devastating circumstances, Perry shows how simple things like surroundings, affection, language, and touch can deeply impact the developing brain, for better or for worse. In this deeply informed and moving book, Bruce Perry dramatically demonstrates that only when we understand the science of the mind can we hope to heal the spirit of even the most wounded child.”

Transforming The Living Legacy of Trauma: A Workbook for Survivors and Therapists

By Janina Fisher, PhD. (February 1, 2021)

From Amazon.com: “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 re-telling 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. To transform traumatic experiences, survivors need to understand their symptoms and reactions as normal responses to abnormal events. They need ways to work with the symptoms that intrude on their daily activities, preventing a life beyond trauma.

Dr. Janina Fisher, international expert on trauma, has spent over 40 years working with survivors, helping them to navigate the healing journey. In Transforming the Living Legacy of Trauma, she shows how the legacy of symptoms helped them survive and offers:

  • Step-by-step strategies that can be used on their own or in collaboration with a therapist
  • Simple diagrams that make sense of the confusing feelings and physical reactions survivors experience
  • Worksheets to practice the skills that bring relief and ultimately healing”

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.”

Trauma and Memory: Brain and Body in a Search for the Living Past: A Practical Guide for Understanding and Working with Traumatic Memory

By Peter A. Levine Ph.D. (Author), Bessel A. van der Kolk M.D. (Foreword) (2015)

From Amazon.com: “In Trauma and Memory, bestselling author Dr. Peter Levine (creator of the Somatic Experiencing approach) tackles one of the most difficult and controversial questions of PTSD/trauma therapy: Can we trust our memories? While some argue that traumatic memories are unreliable and not useful, others insist that we absolutely must rely on memory to make sense of past experience. Building on his 45 years of successful treatment of trauma and utilizing case studies from his own practice, Dr. Levine suggests that there are elements of truth in both camps. While acknowledging that memory can be trusted, he argues that the only truly useful memories are those that might initially seem to be the least reliable: memories stored in the body and not necessarily accessible by our conscious mind.

While much work has been done in the field of trauma studies to address “explicit” traumatic memories in the brain (such as intrusive thoughts or flashbacks), much less attention has been paid to how the body itself stores “implicit” memory, and how much of what we think of as “memory” actually comes to us through our (often unconsciously accessed) felt sense. By learning how to better understand this complex interplay of past and present, brain and body, we can adjust our relationship to past trauma and move into a more balanced, relaxed state of being. Written for trauma sufferers as well as mental health care practitioners, Trauma and Memory is a groundbreaking look at how memory is constructed and how influential memories are on our present state of being”.

Can you process a trauma that you don’t remember?

March 27, 2019

Irene Lyon

One of the more common confusions is how one heals a trauma, or a lifetime of traumas, when there is ZERO memory of it, or them. In this vlog I get into this. The key is working with the body, the somatic self, and also with the survival stress. Enjoy! Resources I Mention In The Vlog: – 9 Common Human Experiences That Can Be Traumatic (but are often seen as not): https://irenelyon.com/2019/01/15/9-co… -Trauma and Memory: Brain and Body in a Search for the Living Past: A Practical Guide for Understanding and Working with Traumatic Memory https://www.amazon.ca/Trauma-Memory-P… -The Story of Teddy (how early trauma impacts all of us) https://youtu.be/dNts7T8_Vig __ Thank you for watching this video and continuing to follow me here on my YouTube channel. I’d love for you to leave a comment and let me know how this impacted you and what you have learned. ► Subscribe to my channel here: https://www.youtube.com/IreneLyon ► Check out my website here: https://irenelyon.com __ Irene Lyon, MSC. and nervous system expert, teaches people around the world how to work with the nervous system to transform trauma, heal body and mind, and live full, creative lives. To date her online programs have reached people in over 63 countries – but you can often find her teaching with Elia Mrak at their signature Up & Down workshops or hiking in the mountains or along the Pacific ocean in her hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia. She has her Master’s in Biomedical and Health Science and also has a knack for making complex info easy for ALL of us to understand and apply to our lives. She has extensively studied and practices the works of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais, Peter Levine (founder of Somatic Experiencing) and Kathy Kain (founder of Somatic Practice). __ Follow Irene Here Online: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/irenelyon/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lyonirene Twitter: https://twitter.com/irene_lyon LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/irenelyon/ Medium: https://medium.com/@irenelyon SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/irenelyon Website: https://irenelyon.com Work With Irene & Her Team: ► Self-Study Course: https://irenelyon.com/tuneup/ ► Intensive 12-Week Program: https://www.smartbodysmartmind.com/ ► Up & Down Workshop: https://www.updownworkshop.com/ __ Email Us: https://irenelyon.com/contact/ or support@irenelyon.com __ Grab A Free Resource: 4 steps to calm overwhelm and out of control emotions https://irenelyon.com/4-steps-to-calm…