Relationship Trauma

If you're constantly feeling on edge, forever working to appease your spouse to little avail and feel like you're constantly being chipped away at with their abusive behavior, then I can understand how emotionally shattering it feels to live this way. If, in the same breath, it breaks your heart to even consider leaving them because you can't imagine life without them, then I can understand that feeling too - because I was trauma bonded to my abusive ex.

Explaining that an impaired capacity for connection to self and to others underlies most psychological and many physiological problems, clinicians Laurence Heller, PhD, and Aline LaPierre, PsyD, introduce the NeuroAffective Relational Model™ (NARM), a unified approach to developmental, attachment, and shock trauma that emphasizes working in the present moment. NARM is a somatically based psychotherapy that helps bring into awareness the parts of self that are disorganized and dysfunctional.

Toxic relationships exert a power over us like few things in life can, but that doesn’t mean you have to settle for them. In fact, by simply deciding you want more from life, you can start to reclaim your worth and take action. The problem is that this is so much easier said than done. If only you could stumble across a step-by-step guide that would show you how to reclaim your life and rebuild from the ground up.

Images and sounds of war, natural disasters, and human-made devastation explicitly surround us and implicitly leave their imprint in our muscles, our belly and heart, our nervous systems, and the brains in our skulls. We each experience more digital data than we are capable of processing in a day, and this is leading to a loss of empathy and human contact. This loss of leisurely, sustained, face-to-face connection is making true presence a rare experience for many of us, and is neurally ingraining fast pace and split attention as the norm.

The simple truth is that PTSD can be extremely debilitating - not just for the person who has experienced trauma firsthand, but for their partners, as well. And while there are many books written for those suffering from PTSD, there are few written for the people who love them. In Loving Someone with PTSD, renowned trauma expert Aphrodite Matsakis presents concrete skills and strategies for the partners of those with PTSD.

Therapist and meditation teacher Ralph De La Rosa places the innovative, evidence-based model of Internal Family Systems (IFS) in the context of Buddhist meditation to show that the process of healing trauma can lead you to your deepest spiritual nature. This book offers clear conceptual frameworks to understand trauma, post-traumatic growth, and the close relationship between healing trauma and spirituality. The many journal prompts, experiential practices, and guided meditations will teach you how to

For the past decade, author Tian Dayton has been researching trauma and addiction, and how psychodrama (or sociometry group psychotherapy) can be used in their treatment. This latest book identifies the interconnection of trauma and addictive behavior, and shows why they can become an unending cycle. This groundbreaking audiobook offers listeners effective ways to work through their traumas in order to heal their addictions and their predilection toward what clinicians call self-medicating.

Written in plain English and packed with sensitive, authoritative information, Codependency for Dummies, 2nd Edition describes the history, symptoms, causes, and relationship dynamics of codependency. The majority of the book is devoted to healing and lays out a clear plan for recovery with exercises, practical advice, and daily reminders to help you know, honor, protect, and express yourself, with new chapters on working the 12 Steps to recover from codependency and how therapists/coaches/nurses are affected by codependency.

In The Betrayal Bond, Patrick Carnes presents an in-depth study of these relationships, why they form, who is most susceptible, and how they become so powerful. He shows how to recognize when traumatic bonding has occurred and gives a checklist for examining relationships. He then provides steps to safely extricate from these relationships. This is a book you will turn to again and again for inspiration and insight, while professionals will find it an invaluable reference work.

Is it possible to feel better - and make it last? Renowned physician, psychiatrist, brain-imaging researcher, and founder of Amen Clinics Dr. Daniel Amen understands how critical it is for you to know what will help you feel better fast, now and later. In Feel Better Fast and Make It Last, you'll discover new, powerful brain-based strategies to quickly gain control over anxiety, worry, sadness, stress, and anger, strengthening your resilience and giving you joy and purpose for a lifetime.

This 21-day workbook offers a journey into the depths of your subconscious. You’ll confront and heal the parts of yourself that keep you stuck, using proven tools to release repressed emotions, break self-sabotaging patterns, and awaken your true potential.

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.

William Avers takes us on an honest and revealing journey that will help us understand trauma bonding and its multiple faces, from unhealthy attachment to the normalization of the abuse to the concealment and later denial of the truth. William Avers explores the human condition without prejudice or bias because traumatic bonds may occur to anyone. Contrary to most people’s belief that abusers prey on the weak and foolish, abusers also prey on capable and attractive people because they seek the challenge too.

This guide is a powerful tool for women ready to heal their inner child, though it may speak to anyone seeking emotional wellness. You don’t need to know about psychology or have experience with therapy. Easy-to-follow instructions for using shadow work and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) will start you on your own immersive healing experience.

Our brains are doing their best to help us out, but sometimes we get hurt instead. And sometimes we hurt people we love, too, because we just don’t know what to do with all of our feelings. With humor and patience, Dr. Faith G. Harper shows you the science behind why your brain is acting up and ideas for new ways to respond when you’re feeling scared, sad, anxious, or angry. You can train your brain to be your friend and help you live a happy, calm, and healthy life.

Do you use substances or engage in compulsive activities to regulate your mood? Do you reach for something sweet, a couple of drinks, or a pack of cigarettes after a difficult day because you can't unwind without them? Do you race to the stores to spend away the day's frustrations or run around in circles taking more time to get less done? If these self-defeating habits sound familiar, Emotional Sobriety will shed light on why and how these coping mechanisms threaten your health and impact resilience

Trauma Bonds is motivational, inspirational, and full of hope. Like reading a woman’s diary, the author lets you in on her reflective thoughts throughout. She offers guidance, introspection, and recovery as she walks you through her memoir.

Writer Peg Streep lays out seven distinct but interconnected stages on the path to reclaim your life from the effects of a toxic childhood: "discover", "discernment", "distinguish", "disarm", "reclaim", "redirect", and "recover". Each step is clearly explained and richly detailed with the stories of other women. With approaches drawn from psychology and other disciplines and with unique exercises, the book will help the listener tackle her own self-doubt and become consciously aware of how her mother's treatment continues to shape her behavior.

Combining insights from mainstream science, psychology, and subtle healing modalities, this book provides a truly holistic approach to recovery. Renowned author and spiritual healer Cyndi Dale shares an impressive array of techniques for resolving challenging energetic and spiritual issues. Trauma and pain caused by environmental, physical, psychological, and spiritual forces can have major effects on every aspect of your life. Join Cyndi as she shows how to align with spirit guides, work with the chakras, locate hidden inner wounds, release other peoples' energies, and much more.

The number of anxious, depressed, hyperactive, and withdrawn children is staggering—and still growing! Millions have experienced bullying, violence (real or in the media), abuse, or sexual molestation. Many other kids have been traumatized from more “ordinary” ordeals such as terrifying medical procedures, accidents, loss, and divorce. Trauma-Proofing Your Kids sends a lifeline to parents who wonder how they can help their worried and troubled children now.