Life After Trauma: A Workbook for Healing

The book contains no figures.

Trauma can turn a person's world upside down:afterward, nothing may look safe or familiar. This supportive workbook helps trauma survivors find and use crucial skills for coping, self-understanding, and self-care. Even when the worst has happened, this book shows how it is possible to feel good again. Filled with comforting activities, relaxation techniques, self-evaluation questionnaires, and exercises, the workbook explains how and why trauma can throw you for a loop and what survivors can do now to cope. Chapters guide readers step-by-step toward reclaiming a basic sense of safety, self-worth, and control over their lives, as well as the capacity to trust and be close to others. Readers learn how to protect themselves from overwhelming memories and to heal from trauma-related reactions that may be disturbing their day-to-day lives. Written by experts in treating trauma and based on extensive research, the workbook can be used on its own or in conjunction with psychotherapy.

Trauma can turn your world upside down--afterward, nothing may look safe or familiar. This compassionate workbook has already helped tens of thousands of trauma survivors start rebuilding their lives. Full of practical strategies for coping and self-care, the book guides you toward reclaiming a solid sense of safety, self-worth, trust, and control, as well as the capacity to be close to others. The focus is on finding the way forward in your life today, no matter what has happened in the past. The updated second edition has a new section on managing emotions through mindfulness and an appendix on easing the stress of health care visits. Dozens of step-by-step questionnaires and exercises are included.

David J. Dries

In this manual the authors describe emotional reconstruction after various forms of physical and emotional injury. It is written to provide lay readers with information about common responses to horrific events. The victim of trauma of various kinds is an appropriate reader for this work. The authors are clinical psychologists with over a decade of experience working on emotional instability in victims of various kinds of injury. Eight chapters and an epilogue are included in the 350 pages of this attractive workbook. A conversational style directed to the patient is maintained throughout. The authors begin by establishing the type of stress encountered by the victim of injury. They then organize this workbook in such a way that it may be used independently as a self-help tool. In early chapters they describe the emotional effects of trauma and provide the reader with a means to begin processing this experience. Issues including feelings of safety, trust, and regaining control are reviewed at length. In each case, the reader is taken through the steps of gathering evidence from his or her life to address a particular need. In later chapters the authors review a process of resurrection of self-worth and relationships to others. In the epilogue they provide long-term guidance for later stages of recovery. Three appendixes include directed readings related to the subject matter of this book, general comments on psychotherapy, and a guide for mental health professionals utilizing this tool. Chapters including subheadings and specific exercises are detailed in the table of contents. Subject matter including case studies is also accessible in the detailed index. This is excellentself-help tool for the motivated and sophisticated victim of physical and emotional injury. Unfortunately, many of the exercises in this work are beyond the emotional and intellectual resources of victims of injury. This is a guide for clinicians meeting the emotional needs of their patients after injury.

Dena Rosenbloom, PhD, a clinical psychologist in private practice in Glastonbury, Connecticut, specializes in helping people who are trying to cope following traumatic life events. She also conducts critical incident stress debriefings for groups of people who have experienced a shared trauma, such as a natural disaster or the death of a coworker on the job, and runs trainings and workshops for trauma survivors and mental health and medical professionals.

Mary Beth Williams, PhD, LCSW, CTS, works with trauma survivors in private practice in Warrenton, Virginia, and is a school social worker in Falls Church, Virginia. Dr. Williams is President of the Association of Traumatic Stress Specialists and a staff member of the National Training Program for Post-Trauma Therapists in Finland. She is the author of numerous publications on trauma and its treatment.

Barbara E. Watkins is a writer and editor living in Boston.