Curious, Healing

Books about healing, business, and fun

psychology

“Coping with Trauma-Related Dissociation” by Suzette Boon, Kathy Steele, Onno van der Hart

by Leave a Comment

Subtitle: Skills training for patients and therapists

Recommended to me by: A client

This is a useful book packed full of detailed, compassionate information on dissociation. Since it is a group training manual, it is divided into short chapters meant for individual class sessions.

The authors often note that each person’s experience of dissociation and healing will be different, and techniques work for different people at different times. At the same time, there is a whiff of condescension in the training, with over-simplified explanations and implications that if you just work hard enough everything will get better. For example, improve your social skills and you won’t be isolated any more.

I’ve noticed that a feeling of loneliness can be a flashback to earlier isolation. This is the first book where I’ve seen that mentioned. The main suggested tools for healing are empathic observation, finding common ground among dissociative parts, taking small steps, and creating internal safety. There are several creative visualization exercises, for example visiting a store that is perfectly comfortable for you and where you can pick up anything you need to feel safer, for free.

I recommend this book for people who experience and/or work with dissociation. At more than 400 pages, it’s a good book to read gradually or dip into for ideas.

Available at bookshop.org.

“The Trauma Spectrum” by Robert Scaer

by Leave a Comment

Subtitle: Hidden Wounds and Human Resiliency

This book is a frustrating mix of interesting theories, solid information, and bigoted rants.

The author leads with some encouraging words about intersectionality and noticing how society’s defaults harm some people, but then devolves into “women returning to work after childbirth causes harm because babies need maternal care” and “fast-food advertising causes harm because traumatized morbidly obese people get triggered into eating even more.”

I am pro infants receiving attuned care and against subliminal advertising for any product, but his conclusions on these topics lack validity as well as compassion. Infants can receive attuned care from many people, not just the mother. Fat people don’t necessarily eat more than thin people.

There is also a lot of matter-of-fact reporting on cruel animal experiments. Perhaps some animal experiments are necessary, but we can at least regret the harm they do.

On the interesting side, keeping me from just discarding the book, he notices that his clients with whiplash show trauma symptoms and are helped by Somatic Experiencing and other trauma-resolution therapies. That sounds obvious when I type it out, but we think of whiplash as a soft-tissue injury (muscles and tendons) rather than a nervous system injury. He notes that severe whiplash in response to relatively minor motor vehicle crashes correlates with a past history of trauma.

He also talks about nervous system kindling, or neurosensitization, where the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems are out of balance and internal triggering keeps them out of balance. This explains, among other things, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity.

He speculates that fibromyalgia correlates with preverbal trauma, and disregulation of the nervous system.

He talks a lot about the structures in the brain that process trauma, and about the sense of being frozen in time that accompanies PTSD. Approach/avoidance dilemmas (double binds) are an obvious source of trauma. He talks about conditioning and trauma-based learning, and the need to extinguish the connections that get created during trauma to be able to come back into the present.

Robert Scaer has worked with many patients in his career and made careful observations along the way. Unfortunately he mixes them in with his personal biases in this book, so it reads more like someone’s personal blog than a trustworthy scholarly work.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me: A Graphic Memoir” by Ellen Forney

by Leave a Comment

The story and drawings quickly engaged me, despite the author’s sometimes bizarre, sometimes heavy journey through mania, depression, and eventually, balance. She has the fantastic support of her mom, friends, and psychiatrist, but still struggles for years before finding a set of meds that works for her.

In depression, she can barely get out of bed to sit under a blanket on the couch. At the same time, she still swims several times a week, goes to yoga, and draws her weekly comic strip. In mania, she struggles to control her racing thoughts and impulses. Her commitment to self-care is woven through the book, along with disarming candor about her daily experience.

Highly recommended to learn about one woman’s experience with bipolar disorder and creativity.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Daring Greatly” by Brene Brown

by 3 Comments

Subtitle: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

This book recapitulates Brene Brown’s previous books The Gifts of Imperfection and I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn’t) and adds material on vulnerability and worthiness as it applies to community, work, and parenting. This book feels more complete and at the same time less academic than the prior books. Her research supports her points rather than distancing from them.

Those who feel lovable, who love, and who experience belonging simply believe they are worthy of love and belonging. They don’t have better or easier lives, they don’t have fewer struggles with addiction or depression, and they haven’t survived fewer traumas or bankruptcies or divorces. (emphasis in the original)

The opposite of scarcity is enough, and we are already enough. Wholehearted living includes showing up and being vulnerable. Vulnerability is not weakness. There is no “get out of vulnerability free” card. Vulnerability is not the same as letting it all hang out.

The Viking-or-Victim worldview divides the world into winners and losers, and has very little room for vulnerability. The worldview is useful in life-threatening or traumatic situations, but prevents connection when the emergency is over.

The book touches on cruelty, how not to be cruel, and how to respond to cruelty. Our culture of narcissism is fed by shaming each other and avoiding vulnerability. As more of us become willing to be vulnerable and authentic, the hope is that bullying will diminish. I wish there were a more concrete, powerful answer.

The book encourages us to dare greatly and be vulnerable despite the fear and shame that arises. Vulnerability is the gateway to joy.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Belonging Here” by Judith Blackstone, Ph.D.

by Leave a Comment

Subtitle: A Guide for the Spiritually Sensitive Person

Judith Blackstone helps people get more present in their bodies to realize their spiritual goals. She specifically helps spiritually sensitive people. I hadn’t encountered that phrase before, but it fits with my ideas about sensitivity in general: permeability and attentiveness to the environment and surrounding people.

Her emphasis on lived experience rather than imagined visualizations resonates for me. Her process matches my intuition about going “down and in” rather than “up and out” to meet my spiritual self. She writes that the answer to permeability is to inhabit ourselves more fully, not attempt to wall ourselves off. “When we experience life from within the body rather than from its surface, we find that we can relax our protective vigilance to the world around us.”

She describes a set of exercises called the Realization Process and gives several examples of assisting people to do them.

The exercises start with getting present in one’s feet. Not just aware, but present. When I do that, it feels wonderfully like being a gorilla, walking around on my hands. I can get present in my legs while biking, and feel them alternately rising and pushing down.

Recommended for anyone who feels they don’t quite belong here and would like to feel more connected to their body and their life.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Saber es Poder” by Maxine Harris, Fabiana Wallis, Hortensia Amaro

by 2 Comments

Subtitle: Modelo de Trauma y Recuperación para Mujeres Latinas

Translation: Knowledge is Power: Model of Trauma and Recovery for Latina Women

Recommended to me by: Fabiana Wallis’ bio at Conexiones

This book is a curriculum for a 25-session trauma recovery support group for Latina women. Since I hope to work with Conexiones Center for Trauma Recovery as a practitioner, my goal was to refresh my Spanish language skills and learn the vocabulary associated with trauma and recovery. It served that goal well.

The book also included specific information about Latino/a culture and issues for immigrants.

I read this book as both a practitioner helping people recover from trauma, and as a daughter of immigrants from Latin America who experienced trauma. I fit the target reader in some ways and not in others, especially since the book assumes a sharp separation between facilitators and group members.

The information was very basic, aimed at group participants who had never thought about trauma and its connection to present behaviors. There was recurring emphasis on the issues of drug use, prostitution, and unprotected sex. There was no discussion of the mechanisms of PTSD in the body.

In the various units, I saw identification of the damage wrought by trauma, but less help in building new skills than I expected. I imagine a woman reaching the end of the support group and thinking, “Now what?!” At the same time, I imagine that the opportunity to speak about past trauma and receive support would be healing in itself.

When used by knowledgeable and compassionate group facilitators, I think this book would form the basis for a useful, culturally aware support group for Latina survivors of abuse.