Sometimes you need to search for the next roads to take in your life; other times these roads approach you. I was looking for new ways to use my long-term communication and mental health advocacy skills and then, sadly, the Sandy Hook shooting occurred. I immediately wanted to help community members ease their pain and assist cities nationwide to greatly improve their disaster mental health response. I never expected a pandemic would arrive only two months after I published, making my book all the more important. Now climate change is exacerbating our already stressful times, and we must act to stem mental health issues before they become out of hand.
Bob Schmidt is a licensed professional counselor in Sandy Hook, Connecticut who has worked diligently to help shooting survivors and their families as well as others in the community with their emotional needs. He is known for utilizing state-of-the-art trauma therapy such as “Tapping,” (Emotional Freedom Technique), which has proven successful in treating PTSD. This book includes a wealth of examples of wellness techniques and trauma-response activities that have proven helpful in relieving high levels of stress and PTSD. These activities make individuals more resilient, so they are better prepared to face life’s challenges and learn to accept the ones they cannot change. Resiliency is one of the keys to happiness, and is increasingly found as a productive way to prepare for any possible disturbing event in the future.
Life is, and has always been, a series of challenges. Some challenges can be resolved easily, some are more difficult, and a few cannot be fixed at all. Resilient individuals are better prepared to deal with life’s challenges and learn to accept the ones they cannot change. Resiliency is one of the keys to happiness, and is found by learning a variety of coping skills and wellness techniques, as well as philosophy from experts in the counseling field. These are the same skills and approaches that I have successfully used with my clients in my private practice in Sandy Hook,…
I have always been fascinated by people and I love stories. All we are is who we are to each other. Our childhoods are such a formative time and they echo into our future. We never really leave them behind. If we have a childhood wound we have to fix it. Childhood trauma and recovering from it is such a fascinating topic. Psychology has always intrigued me. We can suppress memories and then, boom!, they hit us and we have to deal with the fallout. I have read so many books on the topic and I look forward to reading more in the future.
Ripple Effect has the perfect title as it shows how the things that happen in our past ripple through into our adulthood. N. A. Cooper does such a superb job of telling the story of Erin who had an affair with a teacher when she was only fifteen years old. Trapped in an unhappy marriage, her past starts to haunt her after she is attacked in the park and left notes about what happened all of those years ago.
Haunted by her past and unable to allow herself to be happy Erin gets in her own way. Can she learn the truth about what really happened? I loved this book.
“Outstanding . . . one of the best books I have read.” —Beechclose, five stars
A long-ago illicit relationship continues to upend lives in this taut psychological suspense novel . . .
Fifteen years ago, teenage Erin had an affair with her teacher that led to tragedy and changed Erin’s life. Today, she’s a married woman who keeps to herself and stays close to home, still scarred by the experience.
When she’s attacked while running in the park, Erin doesn’t tell her husband—but she does confide in Nick, the man who came to her rescue. Then letters start to arrive,…
Character, character, character. A great novel is built on vivid and memorable characters, and Erin Bow delivers and then some with this funny, tender, and quirky book about a boy who moves to a small town in an effort to help him recover from PTSD.
I loved getting to know Simon, Agate, and Kevin, laughing at their madcap schemes, and suffering and healing with each of them in turn.
It is not often that a perfectly paced, brilliantly crafted middle-grade novel comes along. As both a writer and a reader, I applaud Bow on an impeccable novel. This book deserves every accolade.
Longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature
“Funny, poignant and—most important—hopeful.” —New York Times
For fans of Kate DiCamillo and Jack Gantos, a hilarious, wrenching, hopeful novel about finding your friends, healing your heart, and speaking your truth.
Simon O’Keeffe’s biggest claim to fame should be the time his dad accidentally gave a squirrel a holy sacrament. Or maybe the alpaca disaster that went viral on YouTube. But the story the whole world wants to tell about Simon is the one he’d do anything to forget: the one starring Simon as a famous survivor of gun violence…
As a trauma therapist and dedicated researcher, I love uncovering valuable insights within lesser-known books. There are hidden gems, free from the pressure of commercial success, crafted by authors deeply committed to research, understanding, and the art of writing itself. Their dedication resonates with me, as I believe in the profound value of information and the power of critical thinking. Through my own book, Traumatization and Its Aftermath, I aim to emphasize that psychological concepts often lose their depth in translation and my mission is spreading awareness and fostering a deeper understanding of trauma and its intricate facets. With that idea in mind, I chose these five titles.
A fresh take on the difference between trauma and hardship in order to help accurately spot the difference and avoid over-generalizations.
The book integrates the latest findings in brain science, child development, psycho-social context, theory, and clinical experiences to make the case that trauma is much more than a cluster of symptoms to be tamed, but instead best understood as development gone off course, away from growth and towards (only) survival.
This book prompts a profound shift in perception, inviting to view trauma as an intricate and diverse experience, a point of view that ultimately leads to sharper treatment and, hopefully, more healing. It encourages a transition from asking, "What happened to you?" to the deeper question, "What is your relationship with what happened to you?"
Traumatization and Its Aftermath: A Systemic Approach to Understanding and Treating Trauma Disorders
The book is comprehensive, bold, and practical-a much-needed resource for the assessment and treatment of trauma. Instead of the traditional focus on the overall importance of healing, Traumatization and its Aftermath decodes why some people don't heal as easily as others, analyzes the various failures of diagnosis, and explains how to make therapeutic interventions truly effective.
This book offers a systemic deep dive into traumatization that clarifies myths and misinformation about the entire spectrum of trauma and provides both clinicians and non-clinicians with the right level of validation, preventive measures, conceptualization methodology, assessment tools, and healing facts that have not…
I was blown away by this debut novel and the skill of its writer. It covered multiple perspectives, times, and locations, giving layered and deep insights into the Chinese invasion and annexation of Tibet, and its effects on Tibetans forced to become refugees, first in Nepal then in Canada.
A small clay statue, or ku, plays a central role endowed with profound meaning about cultural belonging, ownership, and appropriation. Through the varied interpretations of its form and facial expressions, it is both a character itself and a symbol of what other characters experience. I found this to be a beautifully written, well-constructed, powerful, and moving tale of displacement, emphasizing the essential nature of homeland, how place shapes and defines us all, with much resonance in American Indigeneity.
For readers of Homegoing and The Leavers, a compelling and profound debut novel about a Tibetan family's journey through exile.
International Bestseller Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize Shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize
In the wake of China's invasion of Tibet throughout the 1950s, Lhamo and her younger sister, Tenkyi, arrive at a refugee camp in Nepal. They survived the dangerous journey across the Himalayas, but their parents did not. As Lhamo-haunted by the loss of her homeland and her mother, a village oracle-tries to rebuild a life amid a shattered community, hope arrives in the…
Ora North is the author of I Don’t Want To Be An Empath Anymore: How to Reclaim Your Power Over Emotional Overload, Maintain Boundaries, and Live Your Best Life, and the upcoming book Mood Magick: Wellness Spells and Rituals to Find Balance in an Uncertain World. A seasoned spiritual teacher and healer, she helps people unpack their emotional trauma and work with it in a creative and regenerative way.
An expert in approaching your dream life with beautiful and imaginative consciousness, Robert Moss shows you how to use your dreams, both figurative and literal, as the backdrop for immense personal discovery and growth, and as a powerful tool in reclaiming yourself after trauma.
In this extraordinary book, shamanic dream teacher Robert Moss shows us how to become shamans of our own souls and healers of our own lives.
The greatest contribution of the ancient shamans to modern healing is the understanding that in the course of any life we are liable to suffer soul loss — the loss of parts of our vital energy and identity — and that to be whole and well, we must find the means of soul recovery. Moss teaches that our dreams give us maps we can use to find and bring home our lost or stolen soul…
In my freshman year at the University of Missouri-Columbia I started out as a journalism major. I joined Sigma Kappa where I met my “sister” Anne who worked at KBIA. I worked with her the rest of that year. Back home in Ellenville, NY, I convinced the station manager to hire me. I was the very first female radio announcer and engineer to work at the station. When my best friend was killed in a tragic accident, I needed to heal my loss by using the only method I knew would help; writing. Combining my experiences and passion for radio I wrote Red Wine for Breakfast to honor her memory.
Nathaniel Branden’s account of his relationship with Rand is honest and deeply emotional. For a psychologist who writes mainly on the theme of self-esteem, this book is a bit of a departure from his usual works, but for any fan of Rand and her volatile relationship with a man nearly half her age, it is well worth the read.
Previous Praise for Nathaniel Branden"Relentlessly revealing...the myth of Ayn Rand gives way to a full-sized portrait in contrasting colors, appealing and appalling, potent and paradoxical...it takes a special kind of nerve to write such a book." - Norman Cousins, author of Head First and The Healing HeartAyn Rand's Atlas Shrugged is one of the most influential books of the twentieth century-its popular impact ranked second only to the Bible in a major poll. Millions know Rand as one of this century's great thinkers, writers, and philosophers, yet much about the private Ayn Rand remains shrouded in mystery.Who was Ayn Rand?My…
As a teacher and historian, I’m interested in the collision of cultures that resulted from western intervention in Asia during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For young Asian nationalists, historical writing was a weapon to be wielded in the fight against imperialism. It is equally important for us to understand the forces that shape our collective memories and to recognize that historians don’t just uncover the past—they produce it.
What happens when a society is unwilling to acknowledge acts of barbarism in its past? In 1976, while leading a student protest at Thammasat University, Thongchai Winichakul watched in horror as government forces and rightist elements stormed the campus, killing over eighty of his fellow students and committing unspeakable acts on the living and the dead. He wrote this book to help process memories of an atrocity that took the lives of his friends and haunted his career as a Thai historian. To this day, the Thammasat massacre is marked only by silence from official sources. As a result, Thongchai observes that Thai society is trapped in a state of ‘unforgetting,’ unable to either remember or forget the trauma.
The massacre on October 6, 1976, in Bangkok was brutal and violent, its savagery unprecedented in modern Thai history. Four decades later there has been no investigation into the atrocity; information remains limited, the truth unknown. There has been no collective coming to terms with what happened or who is responsible. Thai society still refuses to confront this dark page in its history.
Moments of Silence focuses on the silence that surrounds the October 6 massacre. Silence, the book argues, is not forgetting. Rather it signals an inability to forget or remember-or to articulate a socially meaningful memory. It is…
I am a recovered (not “recovering”) addict and writer. These days I write historical fiction because I enjoy an escape from present-day reality, and research is fun. But I started writing as a way to make sense of my chaotic world and in hopes of healing myself. Something was broken inside me, and I didn’t know how to fix it. So I wrote about the shadowy realms of my life and kept on writing until somehow I was able to let go of the past and create a different life, one which would not land me upside down in a ditch with my neck broken and my tires spinning.
I read this book sitting on the balcony of a condo at the beach. I got a sunburn because I couldn’t put it down.
Cheryl’s trek along the PCT is weirdly harrowing and heart-warming as she meets creeps, clowns, and kindred folk. But what makes the book so compelling for me is how Cheryl delves into her need for this test of her resolve, which is to figure out what went wrong with her life after her mother’s death and how to fix it.
I was with her every step of the way and felt as if I, too, had conquered the PCT and overcome my misbegotten past. The honesty of her self-examination nailed this book to my heart.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again.
At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the…
This is not your average haunted house story––not by a
long shot.
This abandoned house is alive and salivates, built with wood,
bricks, hatred, and soaked in murder throughout the ages. Three women went in,
but only two returned, both remembering a completely different set of details
of victimization by the other. Three years later, the house calls them back to
finish what it started.
Rumfitt’s writing style at times reads like a fever
dream, she even describes one event simultaneously from two different
perceptions. Its subject matter is not for everyone; it highlights the darkest
parts of fascist-born damage, PTSD, self-harm, and internalized shame. It’s
dirty, it’s gory, and it’s fantastic.
Three years ago, Alice spent one night in an abandoned house with her friends Ila and Hannah. Since then, things have not been going well. Alice is living a haunted existence, selling videos of herself cleaning for money, drinking herself to sleep. She hasn't spoken to Ila since they went into the House. She hasn't seen Hannah either. Memories of that night torment her mind and her flesh, but when Ila asks her to return to the House, past the KEEP OUT sign, over the sick earth where teenagers dare each other to venture, she knows she must go. Together…
I remember being a kid and wanting to know everything about everything. After I’d been teaching yoga for several years, and finding myself struggling with stress and trauma that the yoga wasn’t helping, I really started to dive into the world of Energy. That world is fascinating, endless, and powerful. And the more I study and learn, the better my life gets. I’ve created my own teaching methodology from all the studies I’ve done and helped thousands of people find their own inner strength and healing. I love learning how other people overcame their struggles and how at the root, we basically all want to help each other! That's the kind of world I aspire to.
If you want your mind blown, and want to cultivate a new understanding of how the universe works: buy this book! Eileen opens up the cosmology that we all learned and shows us that there is another way to view how the world works. And with that understanding, we have a way to see ourselves as part of the world instead of separate from it. This connection is the start of healing. And all of that is only the first half of the book.
She then takes the reader on a wild ride into understanding how the field that surrounds the body – called the aura or the biofield – works, holds information, and also holds one of the keys to healing and well-being. This book is engaging, inspirational, and totally not what you were expecting!
A guide to the basics of Biofield Tuning, using tuning forks to clear trauma stored in the human energy field
* Provides a precise map of the energetic biofield that surrounds the body, showing where specific emotions, memories, traumas, and pain are stored
* Details how to locate stored trauma in the biofield with a tuning fork and clear it
* Winner of the 2015 Nautilus Silver Award
When Eileen McKusick began offering sound therapy in her massage practice she soon discovered she could use tuning forks to locate and hear disturbances in the energy field, or biofield, that surrounded…
