childhood abuse

“The Newcomers” by Helen Thorpe

November 13, 2018 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: Finding Refuge, Friendship, and Hope in an American Classroom

Recommended to me by: My friend Linda K.

Helen Thorpe spent a year and a half observing and helping in an ELA (English Language Acquisition) class at South High School in Denver Colorado. Her journalist’s eye is both clear and compassionate as she watches a classroom of newly arrived teen refugees from around the world learn English basics.

I remember when ELA used to be called ESL, English as a Second Language, but it is an apt name change since some of these kids already speak three or four languages, and maybe read and write in three or four alphabets.

Both the school as a whole and the beginning ELA teacher Mr. Williams in particular are dedicated to welcoming kids from around the world and helping them succeed.

I was worried that the book would focus on the tragedy of young refugee lives, or look down on the kids, but the book celebrates them as strong, determined, resilient young people. Difficult circumstances and traumatic stories are described with a light touch, clearly and with compassion.

Helen Thorpe gets to know the kids by interacting with them in class (with the help of Google translate on their phones), interviewing them with hired translators, and visiting a few of them at home to talk with their parents. She also learns about the history of war and oppression that has caused these families (and some unaccompanied minors) to flee their homes, sometimes multiple times.

After the school year, she visits the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is still in crisis, and meets some relatives of one of the families she got to know.

The book was written in 2016. It shows both the dedication of the people who help refugees get oriented and settled in the US, and the worsening effect of Trump’s rhetoric on students who are harassed on city buses for wearing hijab or having dark skin. It ends with Trump’s election and the shock of knowing that refugees need help more than ever, but not having an incoming caseload because of Trump’s Muslim Ban.

Highly recommended! Learn about what refugees’ lives are really like, and how hard the lucky ones who make it into the US work to become established here, while enjoying getting to know this group of teens and the people around them.

Population Mountains – a way to visualize the population and surroundings of some of the cities the immigrants came from (not affiliated with the book).

Available at bookshop.org.

“Nurturing Resilience” by Kathy L. Kain and Stephen J. Terrell

October 27, 2018 by Sonia Connolly 1 Comment

Subtitle: Helping Clients Move Forward from Developmental Trauma, An Integrative Somatic Approach

Recommended to me by: Taking a class from Kathy Kain

I took a 3 day class from Kathy Kain last year and learned techniques that I use every day in my practice, so I was excited about this book. It turned out to be dry to read and only talked about a couple of techniques at the end, which I had already learned in the class. On the positive side, the extensive client examples include gay parents and genderqueer clients.

The first part introduces attachment, polyvagal theory, and neurological development. Interoception is perception of our internal state. Exteroception is perception of the external environment through vision, hearing, touch, etc. Neuroception is the perception of safety and threat. Interactions with parents and other caregivers help an infant make sense of incoming stimuli and assess safety vs. threat. Without playful and caring interactions, the infant develops a strong sense of what is a threat, but does not develop a sense of what feels safe.

They discuss the ACE study and the health effects of early trauma. The Window of Tolerance is the nervous system’s comfortable, functional, social state. Threats result in hyperarousal (fight or flight) and hypoarousal (freeze, immobility). Someone with a dysregulated nervous system has a very small window of tolerance. They may have a faux window of tolerance, where they manage to function despite being under physiological stress.

The second half of the book more directly discusses clinician interventions for clients with developmental trauma. The emphasis is on teaching the nervous system how to stay more regulated, and to offer co-regulation, where the client’s nervous system is steadied by the clinician’s regulation. The authors emphasize that developmental trauma is largely non-verbal, patterned in the body, so interventions need to address the body directly.

Interventions they discuss: gentle touch on the kidney area of the lower back, and helping the client practice noticing same/different around their triggers.

Recommended if you want a lot of information about developmental trauma, and don’t mind a somewhat uneven presentation.

Available at bookshop.org.

“The Deepest Well” by Nadine Burke Harris, MD

July 10, 2018 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity

Recommended to me by: listening to Nadine Burke Harris’s TED talk

This is a skillful blend of memoir and scientific information about the effects of trauma, presented for the layperson. Nadine Burke Harris shares how as a newly licensed doctor she founded a pediatric clinic in Bayview, the poorest section of San Francisco with the most at-risk patients, and how that clinic came to focus on trauma as the underlying cause of a lot of medical issues, especially for children. Later she founded the Center for Youth Wellness, also in San Francisco.

She does not dwell on the effects of being a Black woman, but she does not skip over them either. She notes the benefits of networking with other women and offering each other support. While marginalization and racism contribute to people’s load of trauma, trauma is not only a “poor, Black issue.” Privilege does not exempt people from trauma or its long-term effects.

There is a strong correlation between Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and health issues caused by the body’s ongoing stress response. The stress response can be buffered by strong relationships with caring adults.

Nadine Burke Harris developed a screening tool that asks a parent about the number of a child’s ACEs, but does not ask them to disclose the stories involved. She advocates for this screening tool to be used everywhere, just as infants are now universally screened for hypothyroid and jaundice.

The treatments for a body dysregulated by trauma are sleep, mental health, healthy relationships, exercise, nutrition, and meditation. Schools that help children regulate their nervous systems rather than punishing them for “acting out” enjoy both a more peaceful atmosphere and higher success rates by every measure.

(While screening is catching on in medical offices, I hear from nurses that treatment is catching on less quickly, leaving them in the frustrating position of knowing that people’s issues are caused by trauma, but not having the time and resources to help them.)

Highly recommended both for the information about the effects on trauma, and the memoir of a groundbreaking scientist and doctor who is radically improving how we care for both children and adults affected by trauma.

Available at bookshop.org.

“The Night Child” by Anna Quinn

February 12, 2018 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Recommended to me by: Katherine Macomber Millman

A powerful, heartbreaking book about a woman slowly remembering and coming to terms with the childhood abuse she endured.

It reminded me of Susan Palwick’s “Flying In Place” in the way her pain is visible to the people around her, and she receives a lot of skilled, kind help. For many people, the process is less visible and they receive less assistance.

Anna Quinn has skillfully fictionalized her memoir, with lots of present-time sensory details to balance the horror of remembered abuse. The focus is on recovery, not the abuse itself.

Highly recommended if you want to read about an emotionally intense healing process which clearly shows the lasting harm done by abuse and the hard work it takes to recover.

Anna Quinn’s blog post When Your Memoir Wants To Be A Novel

Available at bookshop.org.

“8” by Amy Fusselman

August 8, 2017 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Recommended to me by: a client

This is a book about healing, rather than a book about trauma.

Amy Fusselman layers incidents with “her pedophile” among meditations about the nature of time, parenting, relationships, healing, bodywork, therapy, New York City cab rides, and writing in a coffee shop when celebrities walk by. She loops among the topics gracefully, like the figure skater she was as a girl.

Recommended for one person’s perspective on the effects of childhood sexual abuse, putting it in its (admittedly important) place among the rest of the events in a life. Recommended for touching on the topic of abuse forthrightly, and then going on to something else, rather than sinking into it more and more deeply. This is how healing works.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Childhood Disrupted” by Donna Jackson Nakazawa

November 27, 2015 by Sonia Connolly 1 Comment

Subtitle: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology, and How You Can Heal

Recommended to me by: a friend

Science journalist Donna Jackson Nakazawa carefully researches and clearly describes how Chronic Unpredictable Toxic Stress changes the growing brain of a child, pruning neurons and stunting growth in some areas. Because the toxic stress is unpredictable, the fight or flight response remains activated, bathing the body in an ongoing soup of inflammatory chemicals. She covers research that says girls’ brains are more susceptible, although I suspect correlation rather than causation at work there.

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are linked as strongly with later auto-immune diseases and other health issues as smoking is linked with cancer, or unprotected sex is linked with pregnancy. Here is the original ACE study. You can go ahead and take the 10-question ACE questionnaire. There is also a resilience questionnaire with some factors that can shield a child from the negative effects of chronic unpredictable toxic stress.

The book contains many people’s stories, and some suggestions for healing as well. Fortunately the brain is plastic, and at least some of the negative effects can be reversed.

The briefly covered suggestions for healing are: take the ACE questionnaire and resilience questionnaire, write to heal, draw it, mindfulness meditation, tai chi and qigong, mindsight (self-awareness/empathy/integration), loving-kindness, forgiveness, mending the body/moving the body (yoga, trauma release exercises, bodywork), managing the mind through the gut, and only connect (supportive relationships).

Professional help is also recommended, with therapy, somatic experiencing, guided imagery and hypnosis, neurofeedback, and EMDR.

For parents who want to protect and help their children as best they can, suggestions include: manage your own “baggage”, look into your child’s eyes, validate and normalize their experience, apologize as needed, amplify the good feelings, name emotions, hug them, have safe and open conversations about what’s happening, bring more safe adults into their lives, teach them mindfulness.

Highly recommended book! The section on trauma’s specific effects was depressingly long, and had a lot of sense of inevitability in it. The “how to heal” section was shorter and less specific. I was both reassured and disappointed to see that I’m doing a lot of the recommendations already. Being on the right track is good, and I guess there’s no magic wand to speed up the process.

Available at bookshop.org.