liamnewsom202

Books on understanding and dealing with childhood trauma

12 posts in this topic

Hey, not sure if here or the Relationships and Dating section is the right place to ask but could anyone recommend some high quality conscious books or resources on understanding family/social relationships and childhood trauma? Id love to dig more into why I feel the ways I do and get more of a bigger picture understanding to the root of a lot of my insecure neurosis. 

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It's not about family or relational systems per se, but The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk is one I really enjoyed.  Deals with trauma.  Waking the Tiger is decent as well.  If you check out Internal Family Systems therapy, and its founder Richard Shwartz, I've been doing something like that for a while and have found a lot of benefits and stuff within myself.  It's not exactly as it may sound, as in not specifically dealing with groups of people or families, but instead deal with different subpersonalities within oneself and the conflicts that can arise between them.  Seems like some form of shadow work.  But I've found it very insightful, and it can be applied to relationships with other people as well (in that it seems to me like our external relationships are reflection of relationships we have with our subpersonalities within us: all our relationships are within us - type of deal).  


"Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down"   --   Marry Poppins

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I'll upload a video here tomorrow with a few that I have been reading & working through! I ordered 15+ books to really broaden my understanding of the theory behind trauma, ptsd, attachment, love in relationships, etc. and I have only read through a tiny chunk of that so far but that's because the content is dense so it's opening me up to more and more opportunities for integration, recovery & growth. I'm at a point where every moment in life & every insight I have is recovering more and more of myself and understanding more and more of myself, while also expanding my mind beyond the reaches of the "self" being recovered so it's a two-fold compound affect of understanding my attachments & detachments, while also becoming non-attached to both, and seeing both from a perspective beyond the "self" being recovered. It really is a rollercoaster of a process but I'm finding that consciousness work is the only thing that directly decreases suffering from past trauma for me personally, because I am able to heal the trauma from the root rather than trimming the leaves which I used to think were "ugly" or "unacceptable" so to speak. Anyways, will elaborate more and share some resources here soon. May your journey bring you home if you choose so.
 

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4 hours ago, ertopolice said:

Check out Teal Swan's books

I would highly recommend the same.

The Completion Process by Teal Swan was quite helpful in my experience.

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I've been reading "the body keeps the score" - brain mind and body on the healing of trauma. Very in depth book, I recommend ?

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Top Notch books I've read:

  • Teal Swan - The Completion Process (a little theory + powerful exercise)
  • Teal Swan - Anatomy of Loneliness (in depth theory + exercises)
  • John Bradshaw - Healing the Shame that Binds You (in depth theory + exercises)
  • Trauma and Memory: Brain and Body in a Search for the Living Past - Peter A. Levine & Bessel A. Van Der Kolk, 2015 (examples + powerful exercise)
  • Complex PTSD: From Surviving To Thriving - Pete Walker, 2018 (in depth theory)

Keep in mind these are not academic books, so the theory presented in them doesn't encompass everything from A to Z and with a lot of technical info.

Check my other posts on the forum to gain further info about healing traumas.

The best approach is a top down + bottom up approach.

These are the best method I tried.

Top down: talk therapy (classic psychotherapy), Journaling

Bottom up: Somatic Experiencing/Somatic Psychotherapy, Trauma Release Exercises (TRE), Bioenergetics, Shamanic Breathing/Holotropic Breathwork, NLP, Parts Work, Yoga, Inner Child Work.

If you want specific theories, go for Internal Family System (IFS), Gestalt Therapy, Inner Child Work, Common Defense Mechanisms, Ego-State theory (underlined the most practical and results-oriented).


Been on the healing journey for 5 committed years: traumas, deep wounds, negative beliefs, emotional blockages, internal fragmentation, blocked chakras, tight muscles, deep tensions, dysfunctional relationship dynamics. --> Check out my posts for info on how to heal:

https://www.actualized.org/forum/topic/82579-what-causes-anhedonia-how-can-it-be-cured/?page=2#comment-1167003

 

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Books written by Alice Miller. The Drama of the Gifted Child is very short and packs a truckload of punch.
Previously mentioned John Bradshaw is also good. I read some of his "Homecoming". Very good.

Edited by tsuki

Bearing with the conditioned in gentleness, fording the river with resolution, not neglecting what is distant, not regarding one's companions; thus one may manage to walk in the middle. H11L2

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Complex PTSD from surviving to thriving by Pete walker or drama of the gifted child by Alice Miller 

Edited by Renee_7777

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