trauma

“It Didn’t Start With You” by Mark Wolynn

March 11, 2018 by Sonia Connolly 1 Comment

Subtitle: How inherited family trauma shapes who we are and how to end the cycle

Recommended to me by: a client

The book starts with Mark Wolynn’s story. He had sudden trouble with an eye and, fearing blindness, traveled in southeast Asia seeking gurus and healers who could help him. Finally, two separate gurus said, “Go home and call your mother and your father.” He went home, healed his relationship with his parents, felt much better, and incidentally his vision returned.

The next section reviews scientific research on epigenetics, how people’s cortisol levels and behaviors are affected by trauma experienced by their parents. When our grandmother is pregnant with our mother, the precursor cell of the egg that will become us is already formed. It makes sense that bodies would be prepared for a dangerous environment if the parents experience danger.

The next section has case histories of how an early break in the maternal relationship can cause ongoing problems. Parents are described as an ongoing source of the flow of life, so being estranged from them interrupts that flow. Since the author solved his problem by reconnecting with his parents, everyone should reconnect with their parents. Bizarrely, for a book about inherited trauma, actively abusive parents are never mentioned.

A person can unconsciously act out a parent’s or other relative’s story, even if they don’t know about the past events. Anything that is hidden can surface inside a relative.

The remedy, in addition to reconciling with your parents “even if you’d rather eat thumbtacks,” is to identify your core sentence and listen for echoes of past stories. Write down your worst fear, and look for phrases that are more intense or resonate with the past. When a family is affected by war or atrocities like the Holocaust, trauma can reverberate through the generations.

We can imagine making contact with past relatives, and respectfully return their feelings to them, and imagine them wishing us well. We can similarly imagine returning parents’ feelings to them if it is not safe to contact them directly.

Accepting our parents is important. As Martha Beck said in (I think) “Leaving the Saints,” it’s possible to accept a rattlesnake exactly as it is and stay respectfully out of range of its fangs.

Recommended as food for thought, as long as you remember that the author’s solution will not be the solution for everyone. Since my family tree has several branches chopped short by the Holocaust, it’s good to see an acknowledgment of the repercussions for later generations.

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.

“Trauma Is Really Strange” by Steve Haines, art by Sophie Standing

December 24, 2017 by Sonia Connolly 2 Comments

Recommended to me by: boxofdelights

This is a graphic “novel” (although it’s non-fiction) or comic, or graphic medicine book. Each page is divided into panels with drawings and word bubbles, sometimes with additional explanations in tiny red print at the bottom of the page.

This is a solid introduction to the nervous system and how it responds to stress, including the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems and Porges’ polyvagal theory, all in a friendly reassuring format. Trauma is defined as events that exceed our ability to cope with them. Healing is focused on being present and tolerating intense internal sensations, rather than reworking the past or experiencing big emotional catharsis. The goal is to tone down the reflexes of fight-or-flight and dissociation.

“Healing trauma is about meeting the body. In trauma, old parts of the brain change how the body works. By paying attention to feelings in the body and learning to self-regulate we can reboot the brain.”

The material is familiar to me, with a different emphasis than I’m used to, perhaps because the book is British.

The people in the drawings almost all come across as male. A few have more detail and come across as female. The people do have a wide range of skin colors, which is great. There is a drawing of a baby being born out of a disembodied blob – apparently it was too hard to draw a whole person giving birth. There was a surprisingly ableist use of “blindly” that brought me up short.

The book covers a lot of ground in a clear way. Of course it can’t cover everything. At the same time, I would have liked to see a disclaimer that everyone’s experience with trauma is different, and everyone’s healing path is different. Near the end, there is an entire page dedicated to Trauma Release Exercises (TRE), and the whole book feels skewed toward people for whom that’s the answer.

Yes, it’s less neat and reassuring to say, “This works for some people, not all,” but it is more honest, and more kind to those for whom it is all more complicated. The last thing a traumatized person needs is to hear, “This works for everyone,” when that thing doesn’t work for them.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Healing Trauma” by Peter A. Levine, PhD.

January 5, 2017 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: A Pioneering Program for Restoring the Wisdom of Your Body

Recommended to me by: a client

This is a practical, applied introduction to Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing work. After an introductory summary, he presents 12 exercises, starting with body awareness and grounding, continuing with awareness of felt senses in the body, and then moving into completion of fight, flight, and freeze responses. He includes orienting to a sense of normalcy and balance that may be new and unfamiliar. The approach is gentle, accepting, and warm.

A CD is included where he reads the exercises. It’s not really a guided meditation, because, for example, he says, “Tap your left hand … (notice, etc.), okay now move through the rest of the body.”

The exercises aren’t quite in the order I would present them, since starting with body awareness might be challenging for many people. I would start with grounding and resources first.

Recommended for people who want to tools to work with their own trauma, and/or who want to understand the nuts and bolts of Somatic Experiencing.

Available at bookshop.org.

“The Art of Healing from Sexual Trauma” by Naomi Ardea

September 21, 2016 by Sonia Connolly 1 Comment

Subtitle: Tending Body and Soul through Creativity, Nature, and Intuition

Recommended to me by: Robyn Posin

As I started reading, I was relieved to discover that Naomi Ardea has thoughtfully structured her book so that it is inviting rather than overwhelming. Stories about her healing process are interspersed with her abstract paintings, peaceful nature photographs, and practical healing tools. The book feels spacious, gentle, respectful.

She calls out minimizing language around abuse, strongly naming its destructive effects. She affirms our right to feel all our emotions. She details how we get caught up in self-blame, and offers tools to lift it away. We get glimpses of the hard parts of her process, including healing her sexuality, and the tools she uses to manage difficult times, including time with forests and flowing water. Her healing is body-centered, naming sensations and being with them.

I felt comforted by the parts of her process that are similar to mine – the murky confusion that only slowly yields to clear narratives, the difficulties in finding compassionate practitioners, the sense of having to regrow boundaries from the ground up. I felt curious about the differences – her use of essential oils, and EMDR, and expressive finger painting.

I highly recommend this book for survivors and anyone who works with survivors. It bears witness to the possibility of healing while naming the daily difficult work it requires, and shares practical tools to smooth the reader’s path.

Book excerpt showing the spacious layout and full color photos and paintings.

Available direct from Naomi Ardea.

“The Polyvagal Theory” by Stephen W. Porges

June 21, 2016 by Sonia Connolly 1 Comment

Subtitle: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation

Recommended to me by: Joshua Sylvae

This book is a chronological collection of Stephen Porges’ scientific research papers about vagal nerves and their functions, written in technical, medical language. Later papers summarize earlier research and even define some terms, so the book gets easier to read as it goes along.

The vagal nerve, also known as the tenth cranial nerve, originates in the brainstem and branches to the lungs, heart, digestive system, and face, independent of the spinal cord. It makes up most of the parasympathetic nervous system. It has both efferent (motor, from the brain to the periphery) neurons and afferent (sensory, from the periphery to the brain) neurons, creating a system that tends to stay in a given operating range (homeostasis) via negative feedback.

It is bilateral, one on each side of the body, and the two sides have slightly different functions, since we are not internally symmetrical, with the heart tilted to the left and the stomach on the left, etc.

As well as being bilateral, there are also two separate systems, thus “poly vagal theory”, many vagal nerves: an ancient system that all vertebrates have, and an additional newer system that mammals have. When the newer system is active, it suppresses the older system.

The ancient system is dorsal (originating toward the back of the brainstem) and unmyelinated (not sheathed).

Reptiles have this ancient vagal system, and a sympathetic system. They have a low resting metabolic rate. Under stress, their sympathetic system speeds up heart rate and breathing. If that doesn’t fix the problem, the dorsal vagal system puts them into freeze, dropping heart rate (bradycardia) and breathing rate (apnea). This works well to convince predators they are dead, or extend the time they can stay underwater.

The newer vagal system is ventral (originating toward the front of the brainstem) and myelinated (sheathed). It controls facial expressions, vocalizations (speech, singing, and other sounds), and coordinates breathing with vocalizing and swallowing. It tightens the muscles of the middle ear to filter out low frequency sounds that might drown out speech frequencies.

Mammals have a high resting metabolic rate, and a high requirement for a consistent oxygen supply. The newer vagal system is a “brake” on the sympathetic nervous system, gently reducing heart rate and breathing rate and allowing a focus on social signals. Under stress, the brake is removed, giving control to the sympathetic nervous system and instantaneously raising heart and breathing rate. If that does not take care of the problem, control goes to the ancient vagal system, sharply dropping heart rate (bradycardia) and breathing rate (apnea), which can be fatal for mammals.

The vagal brake can be engaged and disengaged at the speed of thought, unlike the sympathetic nervous system which works via adrenal hormones and other circulating chemicals that take a while to clear out of the body.

When the vagal system is busy telling the diaphragm to breathe in, the heart gets less of a “brake” signal and speeds up slightly. The brake is restored on the out-breath, slowing the heart slightly. This is RSA – Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia. It can be used as a non-invasive indicator of vagal tone. The greater the difference in heart rate while breathing in versus breathing out, the more vagal tone there is.

The ancient vagal system has been partially recruited for pro-social immobility – accepting an embrace, for example.

The ancient vagal system also explains the immobility many people experience during rape. Understanding the neurological basis helps to reduce shame about not fighting back.

Available at bookshop.org.