The Body Keeps the Score

The Body Keeps the Score PDF

Author: Bessel van der Kolk

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2014-09-25

Total Pages: 523

ISBN-13: 0141978627

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THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER - OVER 3 MILLION COPIES SOLD 'Dr. van der Kolk's masterpiece combines the boundless curiosity of the scientist, the erudition of the scholar, and the passion of the truth teller' Judith Herman, author of Trauma and Recovery The effects of trauma can be devastating for sufferers, their families and future generations. Here one of the world's experts on traumatic stress offers a bold new paradigm for treatment, moving away from standard talking and drug therapies and towards an alternative approach that heals mind, brain and body. 'Fascinating, hard to put down, and filled with powerful case histories. . . . the most important series of breakthroughs in mental health in the last thirty years' Norman Doidge, author of The Brain that Changes Itself 'An astonishing and important book. The trauma Bible. I cannot recommend it enough for anyone struggling with...well...anything' Tara Westover

Traumatic Stress

Traumatic Stress PDF

Author: Bessel A. Van der Kolk

Publisher: Guilford Press

Published: 1996-05-03

Total Pages: 632

ISBN-13: 9781572300880

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This book should be of value to all mental health professionals, researchers, and students interested in traumatic stress, as well as legal professionals dealing with PTSD-related issues.

Healing Trauma

Healing Trauma PDF

Author: Peter A. Levine

Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 134

ISBN-13: 1427099634

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Medical researchers have known for decades that survivors of accidents, disaster, and childhood trauma often endure life-long symptoms ranging from anxiety and depression to unexplained physical pain and harmful acting out behaviors. Drawing on nature's lessons, Dr. Levine teaches you each of the essential principles of his four-phase process: you will learn how and where you are storing unresolved distress; how to become more aware of your body's physiological responses to danger; and specific methods to free yourself from trauma.

Overcoming Trauma through Yoga

Overcoming Trauma through Yoga PDF

Author: David Emerson

Publisher: North Atlantic Books

Published: 2012-01-10

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 1583945334

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Survivors of trauma—whether abuse, accidents, or war—can end up profoundly wounded, betrayed by their bodies that failed to get them to safety and that are a source of pain. In order to fully heal from trauma, a connection must be made with oneself, including one’s body. The trauma-sensitive yoga described in this book moves beyond traditional talk therapies that focus on the mind, by bringing the body actively into the healing process. This allows trauma survivors to cultivate a more positive relationship to their body through gentle breath, mindfulness, and movement practices. 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. The book begins with an in-depth description of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), including a description of how trauma is held in the body and the need for body-based treatment. It offers a brief history of yoga, describes various styles of yoga commonly found in Western practice, and identifies four key themes of trauma-sensitive yoga. Chair-based exercises are described that can be incorporated into individual or group therapy, targeting specific treatment goals, and modifications are offered for mat-based yoga classes. Each exercise includes trauma-sensitive language to introduce the practice, as well as photographs to illustrate the poses. The practices have been offered to a wide range of individuals and groups, including men and women, teens, returning veterans, and others. Rounded out by valuable quotes and case stories, the book presents mindfulness, breathing, and yoga exercises that can be used by home practitioners, yoga teachers, and therapists as a way to cultivate awareness, tolerance, and an increased acceptance of the self.

Psychological Trauma

Psychological Trauma PDF

Author: Bessel A. Van der Kolk

Publisher: American Psychiatric Pub

Published: 2003-05-01

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9781585621620

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How many of your psychiatric patients have a history of severe physical or psychological abuse or other psychological trauma? These patients often present diagnostic dilemmas, get a variety of diagnoses, and frequently prove difficult-to-treat. They may have syndromes that are reminiscent of the post-traumatic sequelae in adults, such as physiological hyperactivity, a sense of loss of control, passivity alternating with uncontrolled violence, and sleep disturbances including nightmares. Investigating the impact of the traumatic event in connection with the development of the disorder is essential to an effective treatment approach. Psychological Trauma provides a basis for understanding human response to trauma. The consequences of specific traumas have usually been described as separate entities. This is the first book to examine human response to trauma as a whole. In this thorough study of the biologic, psychodynamic and social consequences of trauma, separate chapters explore: * The impact of separation from the parental figure on a child's development, including cognitive and neurological disturbances* The psychobiology of traumatic response* Traumatic antecedents of borderline personality disorder* The effect of trauma on the family unit* Amnesia and dissociation as response to trauma* A stress management approach that can be incorporated into the treatment of patients

Widen the Window

Widen the Window PDF

Author: Elizabeth A. Stanley, PhD

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2019-09-24

Total Pages: 498

ISBN-13: 0735216592

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"I don't think I've ever read a book that paints such a complex and accurate landscape of what it is like to live with the legacy of trauma as this book does, while offering a comprehensive approach to healing." --from the foreword by Bessel van der Kolk A pioneering researcher gives us a new understanding of stress and trauma, as well as the tools to heal and thrive Stress is our internal response to an experience that our brain perceives as threatening or challenging. Trauma is our response to an experience in which we feel powerless or lacking agency. Until now, researchers have treated these conditions as different, but they actually lie along a continuum. Dr. Elizabeth Stanley explains the significance of this continuum, how it affects our resilience in the face of challenge, and why an event that's stressful for one person can be traumatizing for another. This groundbreaking book examines the cultural norms that impede resilience in America, especially our collective tendency to disconnect stress from its potentially extreme consequences and override our need to recover. It explains the science of how to direct our attention to perform under stress and recover from trauma. With training, we can access agency, even in extreme-stress environments. In fact, any maladaptive behavior or response conditioned through stress or trauma can, with intentionality and understanding, be reconditioned and healed. The key is to use strategies that access not just the thinking brain but also the survival brain. By directing our attention in particular ways, we can widen the window within which our thinking brain and survival brain work together cooperatively. When we use awareness to regulate our biology this way, we can access our best, uniquely human qualities: our compassion, courage, curiosity, creativity, and connection with others. By building our resilience, we can train ourselves to make wise decisions and access choice--even during times of incredible stress, uncertainty, and change. With stories from men and women Dr. Stanley has trained in settings as varied as military bases, healthcare facilities, and Capitol Hill, as well as her own striking experiences with stress and trauma, she gives readers hands-on strategies they can use themselves, whether they want to perform under pressure or heal from traumatic experience, while at the same time pointing our understanding in a new direction.

Trauma and Memory

Trauma and Memory PDF

Author: Peter A. Levine, Ph.D.

Publisher: North Atlantic Books

Published: 2015-10-27

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 1583949941

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Designed for psychotherapists and their clients, Peter Levine's latest best-seller continues his groundbreaking exploration of the central role of the body in processing—and healing—trauma. With foreword by Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score 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.

Denial

Denial PDF

Author: Jessica Stern

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2011-06-07

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 006162666X

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Hailed by critics and readers alike, Jessica Stern's riveting memoir examines the horrors of trauma and denial as she investigates her own unsolved adolescent sexual assault at the hands of a serial rapist. Alone in an unlocked house, in a safe suburban Massachusetts town, two good, obedient girls, Jessica Stern, fifteen, and her sister, fourteen, were raped on the night of October 1, 1973. The rapist was never caught. For over thirty years, Stern denied the pain and the trauma of the assault. Following the example of her family, Stern—who lost her mother at the age of three, and whose father was a Holocaust survivor—focused on her work instead of her terror. She became a world-class expert on terrorism and post-traumatic stress disorder who interviewed extremists around the globe. But while her career took off, her success hinged on her symptoms. After her ordeal, she no longer felt fear in normally frightening situations. Stern believed she'd disassociated from the trauma altogether, until a dedicated police lieutenant reopened the case. With the help of the lieutenant, Stern began her own investigation to uncover the truth about the town of Concord, her own family, and her own mind. The result is Denial, a candid, courageous, and ultimately hopeful look at a trauma and its aftermath.

The Myth of Normal

The Myth of Normal PDF

Author: Gabor Maté, MD

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2022-09-13

Total Pages: 560

ISBN-13: 059308389X

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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.