Micro-trauma: A psychoanalytic understanding of cumulative psychic injury explores the "micro-traumatic" or small, subtle psychic hurts that build up to undermine a person’s sense of self-worth, skewing his or her character and compromising his or her relatedness to others. These injuries amount to what has been previously called "cumulative" or "relational trauma." Until now, psychoanalysis has explained such negative influences in broad strokes, using general concepts like psychosexual urges, narcissistic needs, and separation-individuation aims, among others. Taking a fresh approach, Margaret Crastnopol identifies certain specific patterns of injurious relating that cause damage in predictable ways; she shows how these destructive processes can be identified, stopped in their tracks, and replaced by a healthier way of functioning. Seven different types of micro-trauma, all largely hidden in plain sight, are described in detail, and many others are discussed more briefly. Three of these micro-traumas—"psychic airbrushing and excessive niceness," "uneasy intimacy," and "connoisseurship gone awry"—have a predominantly positive emotional tone, while the other four—"unkind cutting back," "unbridled indignation," "chronic entrenchment," and "little murders"—have a distinctly negative one. Margaret Crastnopol shows how these toxic processes may take place within a dyadic relationship, a family group, or a social clique, causing collateral psychic damage all around as a consequence. Using illustrations drawn from psychoanalytic treatment, literary fiction, and everyday life, Micro-trauma : A psychoanalytic understanding of cumulative psychic injury outlines how each micro-traumatic pattern develops and manifests itself, and how it wreaks its damage. The book shows how an awareness of these patterns can give us the therapeutic leverage needed to reshape them for the good. This publication will be an invaluable resource for psychoanalysts, psychologists, psychiatrists, mental health counselors, social workers, marriage and family therapists, and for trainees and graduate students in these fields and related disciplines. Margaret Crastnopol (Peggy), Ph.D. is a faculty member of the Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, and a Supervisor of Psychotherapy at the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis & Psychology. She is also a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles. She writes and teaches nationally and internationally about the analyst's and patient's subjectivity; the vicissitudes of love, lust, and attachment drives; and varieties of micro-trauma. She is in private practice for the treatment of individuals and couples in Seattle, WA.

Challenging current definitions of trauma, this brief but comprehensive volume features significant new research and case studies looking at how regular exposure to subtle social discrimination in the form of microaggressions can, over time, elicit similar symptoms to severe trauma.

Cultivate resilience by incorporating small challenges (also known as micro-adversities) in your classroom with effective, trauma-informed strategies that are proven to improve behavior, increase engagement, and empower students to achieve. One in four children have witnessed or experienced a traumatic event by the age of 16 that can affect behavior and learning. Fortunately, educators of all grade levels can inspire resilience and grit that helps students adapt to change and overcome hardship with simple everyday activities. This book offers a breakthrough method for building community and empowering your students with a new strategy: micro-adversity. Micro-adversities in the classroom can be actionable activities, like trying to solve a puzzle that is intentionally missing a few pieces, or building emotional intelligence with conversation starters. By experiencing small failures, students learn to overcome them and thrive. Written by two teachers, one a former US Army Ranger, this method combines the extensively trained military perspective with the important foundations of trauma-informed education.

Get to know the sociopolitical context behind microaggressions Microaggressions are brief, everyday exchanges that send denigrating messages to certain individuals because of their group membership (e.g., race, gender, culture, religion, social class, sexual orientation, etc.). These daily, common manifestations of aggression leave many people feeling vulnerable, targeted, angry, and afraid. How has this become such a pervasive part of our social and political rhetoric, and what is the psychology behind it? In Microaggression Theory, the original research team that created the microaggressions taxonomy, Gina Torino, David Rivera, Christina Capodilupo, Kevin Nadal, and Derald Wing Sue, address these issues head-on in a fascinating work that explores the newest findings of microaggressions in their sociopolitical context. It delves into how the often invisible nature of this phenomenon prevents perpetrators from realizing and confronting their own complicity in creating psychological dilemmas for marginalized groups, and discusses how prejudice, privilege, safe spaces, and cultural appropriation have become themes in our contentious social and political discourse. Details the psychological effects of microaggressions in separate chapters covering clinical impact, trauma, related stress syndromes, and the effect on perpetrators Examines how microaggressions affect education, employment, health care, and the media Explores how social policies and practices can minimize the occurrence and impact of microaggressions in a range of environments Investigates how microaggressions relate to larger social movements If you come across the topic of microaggressions in your day-to-day life, you can keep the conversation going in a productive manner—with research to back it up!

This book explores how educational institutions have failed to recognize and effectively address the symptoms of trauma in students of all ages. Given the prevalence of traumatic events in our world, including the COVID-19 pandemic, Gross argues that it is time for educational institutions and those who work within them to change their approaches and responses to traumatic symptoms that manifest in students in schools and colleges. These changes can alter how and what we teach, how we train teachers, how we structure our calendars and create our schedules, how we address student behavior and disciplinary issues, and how we design our physical space. Drawing on real-life examples and scenarios that will be familiar to educators, this resource provides concrete suggestions to assist institutions in becoming trauma-responsive environments, including replicable macro- and microchanges. Book Features: Focuses on trauma within the early childhood-adult educational pipeline. Explains how trauma is often cumulative, with recent traumatic events often triggering a revival of traumatic symptomology from decades ago. Provides clarifications of currently used terms and scoring systems and offers new and alternative approaches to identifying and ameliorating trauma. Includes visual images to augment the descriptions in the text.

What happens in the trauma’s aftermath? How do its effects manifest differently on the individual, family, and community-wide levels? Stress, Trauma, and Posttraumatic Growth: Social Context, Environment, and Identities explores the way traumatic events are defined, classified, and understood throughout the life cycle, placing special emphasis on the complex intersections of diverse affiliations and characteristics such as age, class, culture, disability, race and ethnicity, gender identity and expression, immigration status, political ideology, religion, sex, and sexual orientation. The book gives its readers a solid basis for understanding traumatic events and treating their effects and also shows the varied ways that trauma is conceptualized across cultures. Both new and seasoned clinicians will come away from Stress, Trauma, and Posttraumatic Growth with a deep understanding of the principles that guide successful trauma treatment.

A concise, case-based clinical resource on the topic of imaging in spinal trauma, highly illustrated throughout.