Trauma

Everyone has experienced trauma.  Some situation has exceeded our capacity to cope.  As professionals, friends, and community members, we’ve encountered others who are overwhelmed by life.  Becoming Trauma Informed focuses on helping us respond to t...

The relationship between our mind and our body is an ever-evolving story. We continue to learn how our mind and our bodies are inextricably linked. In The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma , Bessel van der Kolk walks ...

Trauma is – in more ways than one – that unspoken voice.  In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness is what Gabor Mate describes (in the intro) as Peter Levine’s magnum opus .  Gabor Mate is no stranger to trauma work, h...

I was speaking with a friend when Gabor Maté’s work came up.  The friend had seen a session and suggested that Maté had some good insight into trauma.  That’s what led me to the oddly-titled The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic...

I was born with a genetic defect.  It’s never been officially diagnosed, but I know it’s a limitation.  I’ve been born without the “fan” gene.  That is, fan in its real meaning of “fanatic.”  I knew Jewel’s music and appreciated it.  Music is for me like...

It didn’t start with the name “posttraumatic growth” (PTG).  It started at the dawn of man, when countless of our ancestors faced challenges, setbacks, and tragedies and then grew from them.  Posttraumatic Growth: Theory, Research, and Applications may b...

Sanctuary is a place of safety.  It’s a place where the weak and wounded can grow and heal.  It’s the way that we should describe every system designed to help people, but all too frequently, those places we turn to for help are the very ones that harm ...

Just because you’re in a prison doesn’t mean you’re a prisoner.  It’s the first highlight of a book that seeks to teach the difference between the conditions that you were – or are – in and the way that you process it, label it, and let it change you. ...

Most people know about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).  They’ve read an article or blog post or heard a podcast about how people are struggling to cope after a traumatic event.  However, there’s another story to be told.  Transformed by Trauma...

It would be easy to dismiss Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence – From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror for a wide variety of traumas, because it is very focused on domestic abuse.  There’s a clear focus on this tragic type of trauma – bu...

Everyone has trauma.  Everyone has experienced something that has hurt them and from which they need to recover – and they may never recover completely.  There may always be that soft spot in their soul where they were hurt so deeply that no healing can...

Trauma is everywhere. It spares no one. The constant march of time propels it forward without end. It’s The Trauma of Everyday Life  that Buddha spoke of when he used the word dukkha . It’s the suffering that we all face. Mark Epstein in The Trauma ...

It’s an honor and gift to be trusted by people in their most challenging moments.  The moments when they’re in the greatest distress and vulnerability are a sacred space.  They’re a space where we have the opportunity to be the best of what it is to b...

Traumatic experiences have the capacity to change us at a genetic level.  We can be so burdened by our traumas that we’re unable to appreciate the gift of the present.  Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society i...