Reconstructing Meaning After Trauma: Theory, Research, and Practice informs actual therapeutic work with clients who present with traumas or other life disruptions by providing clinicians with information on the construction of meaning. It includes material on diverse mechanisms of clinical change and positive-promoting processes. The book covers identifiable treatments and specific lines of research in assisting clients in developing new meaning, such as posttraumatic growth (after sexual assault, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer, destructive natural phenomena, such as hurricanes, and refugee experiences), and finding benefit (in the context of loss—loss of health, or loss of a loved one). - Addresses a specific treatment or line of research - Includes extended case vignettes at the beginning of each chapter - Describes the associated theoretical background for each method - Summarizes the research supporting each mechanism - Concludes with a discussion of future directions for treatment, research, and theory

Repressive regimes, regardless of their nature and geographic location, have a destructive and dehumanizing effect on people’s lives. Oppression and political violence shatter victims’ identities, their relationships, communities and the meaning of their world as a safe and coherent place. However, while some people suffer traumatising long term effects, others become stronger and more resilient, able to rebuild their lives in the aftermath of tragedy. Reconstructing Trauma and Meaning is an invitation to revisit, bear witness and listen to the stories of suffering and healing of survivors of apartheid repression in South Africa. This work is an exploration of the life trajectories of former victims of gross human rights violations during apartheid and their creative ways of reconstructing meaning after trauma. Their life narratives, shaped by social, political and cultural realities, are a valuable contribution to the collective memory of the nation, as an intrinsic part of the continuous process of reconciliation and transformation in South Africa.

A prominent theme presented in this volume is that symptoms in the bereaved individual have meaning-making significance and that meaning reconstruction in response to loss is the central process in grieving. More scientifically oriented readers will find comprehensive discussions of research programs supporting these tenets, particularly those linking grief with responses to loss involved in trauma. Practitioners will find clinically informed models and ample case descriptions to bridge concepts with real people suffering real loss. All will find new paradigms for approaching loss and reconstruction of meaning in a respectful, revealing way that has significance both personally and professionally. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved).

In this groundbreaking book, a leading clinical psychiatrist redefines how we think about and treat victims of trauma. A "stunning achievement" that remains a "classic for our generation." (Bessel van der Kolk, M.D., author of The Body Keeps the Score). Trauma and Recovery is revered as the seminal text on understanding trauma survivors. By placing individual experience in a broader political frame, Harvard psychiatrist Judith Herman argues that psychological trauma is inseparable from its social and political context. Drawing on her own research on incest, as well as a vast literature on combat veterans and victims of political terror, she shows surprising parallels between private horrors like child abuse and public horrors like war. Hailed by the New York Times as "one of the most important psychiatry works to be published since Freud," Trauma and Recovery is essential reading for anyone who seeks to understand how we heal and are healed.

How to release anger and reconnect to yourself using mindfulness techniques. Anger is one the most common human emotions, so if you’re not feeling it, then you’re probably unconsciously burying it. But anger that is buried isn’t actually gone. In fact, hidden or covert anger may be just as damaging as the overt, outwardly destructive kind, only it wreaks havoc from the inside-out. All sorts of physical and emotional problems can stem from suppressed anger: headaches, digestive problems, insomnia, just to name a few. Buried anger is expressed in a continuum, with rage and aggression at the top, and frustration, annoyance, irritation at the bottom, and everything in between. Unless this anger is addressed, it is impossible to overcome. This book urges readers to practice mindfulness-deliberately allowing physical sensations and emotions to surface so they can be examined and released. This sort of processing of anger-fully felt in the body as it happens, moved out through appropriate expression, and let go-will allow readers to process anger before it becomes unhealthy. Whether for you or your clients, this book offers simple tools of mindfulness to strengthen your connection with your inner world and learn to explore your anger, paying heed to the important messages it is sending.

This new edition offers new case studies, new empirical evaluation, modern philosophical roots of forgiveness therapy, and new measurement techniques.

Promoting Positive Processes After Trauma targets one of the most damaging effects of trauma, ongoing impairment across the whole of "living." Viewing clients with trauma histories from the perspectives of their shared experiences is the foundation for the application of six strengths and virtues studied by positive psychology: hope, positive emotions, resilience, forgiveness, spirituality and religiosity, and meaning-making. The lived trauma experience of the contributing author illustrates actual means of change - Presents foundational information and newest findings from trauma and from positive psychology - Covers strengths and virtues that can be directly targeted in treatment or used as ancillary treatment goals - Provides further readings suitable for clients and for clinicians - Concludes with an integrative exploration of the organization of positive processes and their integration into portfolios.