Looking at Trauma: A Tool Kit for Clinicians is an easy-to-use, engaging resource designed to address the challenges health care professionals face in providing much-needed trauma psychoeducation to clients with histories of childhood trauma. Developed by trauma therapists Abby Hershler and Lesley Hughes in collaboration with artist Patricia Nguyen and biomedical communications specialist Shelley Wall, this book presents twelve trauma treatment models accompanied by innovative and engaging comics. The models help clinicians provide practical information about the impacts of trauma to their clients—and support those clients in understanding and managing their distressing symptoms. Topics covered include complex posttraumatic stress disorder, emotion regulation, memory, relationship patterns, and self-care. Each chapter features step-by-step instructions on how to use the treatment models with clients; practical educational tips from experienced clinicians in the field of childhood trauma; interactive trauma education comics; a foundational framework focused on care for the provider; and references for further study. Intended for use in therapeutic, clinical, and classroom settings, this book is a valuable resource for all healthcare workers. In particular, social workers, psychotherapists, spiritual care providers, nurses, occupational therapists, psychologists, primary care physicians, and psychiatrists will find this tool kit indispensable.

Dr Paulsen's narrative and 100 cartoons assist therapists and clients to understand trauma and dissociation, from giving a voice to disowned parts of self, to stabilizing and detoxifying memories.

"Man, I've seen, believe it or not, a head-on accident in the parking lot of a Macy's sale. What do they have, those white sales, is that what they have? The parking lot was completely barren except these two cars that hit each other head on. This little old lady and some other idiot. How do you do that?! A barren parking lot! Completely empty, morning, nobody there, and somehow they managed to hit each other head on. Well, it was just enough trauma to kill her, you know? Barely any damage but, you know, a little old lady driving a big car, a big old gnarly steering wheel and that's enough to kill an elderly person and stuff ." As they race to and from emergency calls, as they wait and watch, and as they administer aid to the traumatized, paramedics tell stories. Their tales disclose much about how they view their own profession. Their duties are much more complex than the dramatic portrayals that reach the living room via the television screen. This book reports what really goes on behind the scenes. The reader of Talking Trauma has a virtual front seat in the ambulance. Here the focus is not on the mechanics of the job but rather on paramedics' work culture and their well-established storytelling tradition. The stories they tell are cynical, flip, and profane--the very antithesis of "heroic" in the romantic sense. Their narratives evince an "anti-epic" quality that intentionally trivializes the conventional immensities of pain and horror. Paramedics present the gothic as "business as usual," and mainly their stories are intended only for the ears of other paramedics. Their stories afford a shocking glimpse into a chaotic urban underworld where prostitution, drug abuse, assault, and murder are daily fare. Outsiders may expect their tales to be only about horrific mutilation and death. However compelling such topics may be to the layperson, the actual repertory is most often commentary on personal experience and revelation of the "why" behind the stories paramedics tell. Talking Trauma provides an intimate look into a work culture deliberately kept hidden from public view. It is not centered on individuals the public may stereotype as streetwise, hardened caregivers but upon the stories of self-presentation by which paramedics structure past events to fit into their identity. This fascinating book reveals how storytelling equips these professionals to exert control over chaos and to withstand encounters with suffering, death, and mayhem on a daily basis. At the University of California, Los Angeles, Timothy R. Tangherlini is an assistant professor in the Scandinavian Section and affiliated with the Folklore and Mythology Program.

Born out of the excitement of a convergence of ideas and passions, this book provides a synthesis of the work of researchers, clinicians, and theoreticians who are leaders in the field of trauma, attachment, and psychotherapy. As we move into the third millennium, the field of mental health is in an exciting position to bring together diverse ideas from a range of disciplines that illuminate our understanding of human experience: neurobiology, developmental psychology, traumatology, and systems theory. The contributors emphasize the ways in which the social environment, including relationships of childhood, adulthood, and the treatment milieu change aspects of the structure of the brain and ultimately alter the mind.

Originally published by Viking Penguin, 2014.

In Treating Complex Trauma, renowned clinicians Mary Jo Barrett and Linda Stone Fish present the Collaborative Change Model (CCM), a clinically evaluated model that facilitates client and practitioner collaboration and provides invaluable tools for clients struggling with the impact and effects of complex trauma. A practical guide, Treating Complex Trauma organizes clinical theory, outcome research, and decades of experiential wisdom into a manageable blueprint for treatment. With an emphasis on relationships, the model helps clients move from survival mindstates to engaged mindstates, and as a sequential and organized model, the CCM can be used by helping professionals in a wide array of disciplines and settings. Utilization of the CCM in collaboration with clients and other trauma-informed practitioners helps prevent the re-traumatization of clients and the compassion fatigue of the practitioner so that they can work together to build a hopeful and meaningful vision of the future.

Designed for psychotherapists and their clients, Peter Levine's latest best-seller continues his groundbreaking exploration of the central role of the body in processing—and healing—trauma. With foreword by Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score In Trauma and Memory, bestselling author Dr. Peter Levine (creator of the Somatic Experiencing approach) tackles one of the most difficult and controversial questions of PTSD/trauma therapy: Can we trust our memories? While some argue that traumatic memories are unreliable and not useful, others insist that we absolutely must rely on memory to make sense of past experience. Building on his 45 years of successful treatment of trauma and utilizing case studies from his own practice, Dr. Levine suggests that there are elements of truth in both camps. While acknowledging that memory can be trusted, he argues that the only truly useful memories are those that might initially seem to be the least reliable: memories stored in the body and not necessarily accessible by our conscious mind. While much work has been done in the field of trauma studies to address "explicit" traumatic memories in the brain (such as intrusive thoughts or flashbacks), much less attention has been paid to how the body itself stores "implicit" memory, and how much of what we think of as "memory" actually comes to us through our (often unconsciously accessed) felt sense. By learning how to better understand this complex interplay of past and present, brain and body, we can adjust our relationship to past trauma and move into a more balanced, relaxed state of being. Written for trauma sufferers as well as mental health care practitioners, Trauma and Memory is a groundbreaking look at how memory is constructed and how influential memories are on our present state of being.