REQUIRED READING!!!

This book should be added to the school curriculum so everyone gets to take it in.

so powerful!

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Useful and informative, but heavy going at times.

I found the developmental information very helpful and informative, in terms of thinking about how attachment styles develop and how people develop their presentation, communication and coping styles.
I especially found it interesting and enlightening to learn about addressing trauma not only from the cognitive but also in the body and the nervous system, where the "bottom up" is addressed and not just "top down".
However, it was heavy going a lot of the time and the narration felt monotonous and not very engaging.
It took a lot of discipline to listen to, and probably a lot of drifting off occurred.
I think this audiobook is probably more useful to academics who have a specific interest in this area, maybe from a clinical practice or medical perspective.
I'm not sure whether it suits those who are just looking for accessible information about trauma in general and how to/they can address it.

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15 people found this helpful

Applicable

Thorough and available information, the study and cases are in type. Work that was well referenced and suitably aimed at higher educated readers but not restricted to professions in psychology.

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12 people found this helpful

Excellent, challenging, engaging.

This challenged my perception of my experiences in therapy. I have always had a dreadful experience even when fully connected and feeling secure with the psychotherapist. The NARM approach says this is because it is 're-traumatizing'; in traditional therapy models I have been told this is necessary in order to get better. NARM goes against that model and creates an effective recovery program for those that are open minded. It would probably suit someone with a background in meditation/prayer/spirituality; but it is not necessary, nor does it require you to have a belief system. I have found listening to this book (which would be different to attending therapy), retraumatising however, so if you are in the throngs of PTSD behavior be mindful that this introduction to NARM may not be for you. Why do I feel this? Because he describes types of adaptive behaviours that are based on childhood neglect. This is mainly intended for therapists. Can be a little convoluted with psychological terms at times because of this, so you just need perseverance if you're not familiar with the specific terminologies, etc. I personally thought it was OK.

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12 people found this helpful

Resonated deeply, poignant find

What a relief to find this book. For years I've put together scraps of it and finally this puts it all together and explains it all, taking it seriously and validating everything I have already figured out. Definitely going down as one of my most poignant finds!

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7 people found this helpful

Thought provoking

Interesting approach which brings together humanistic skills such as empathy and intuition with biological knowledge of brain development and function, along with up to date knowledge of attachment and trauma. My only complaint is the rather prescriptive and presumptive links between psychological stress and particular illnesses which to my mind need a firmer evidence base

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3 people found this helpful

Profound information on the roots of our problems

I bought this book on the basis of the infograhics from the book. They hit the nail on the head of what I have been working to describe, crystalise from my personal journey's insights into my own cptsd and from my insights in my work supporting transformations in clients.
Unfortunately the pdf accompanying the audio book edition is incomplete, which I only found out by going through the illustrations in my epub copy.

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Only one type of trauma is covered in detail

I was enthused to recognise myself in one of the types of trauma that they describe in the beginning of the book and I was looking forward to listening on how to heal that type of trauma in the rest of the book. Sadly, they only concentrated on Connection trauma for the next 7 hours of the book to my great disappointment.
I must say also that the book is heavily geared towards trained professionals as the jargon is highly professional and I only would understand because I myself have psychology degree otherwise a lot of the book would go over my head.
It was a useful ‘read’ and an interesting perspective but has a lot of room for improvement to make it well-rounded and more accessible to general public.

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Informative

After constantly hearing throughout this audio how this form of therapy was something new and how what psychotherapists have been doing is lacking, I tried to understand what was so different about this approach. The authors say this approach is top down as well as bottom up as if this is radical and portray 'traditional' Psychotherapy as being preoccupied with the past. However as a Psychotherapist I wouldn't be doing right by my clients nor would they be returning if I only focused on the past. The past helps people understand how they developed coping strategies and patterns of reacting. Then of course we have to look at how to be doing things differently today, with looking at how to soothe the self and bring in more effective skills and using gentle challenge.
Psychotherapists are constantly integrating new ideas and learning skills to help in the here and now so it would be nieve to portray otherwise. Personally I believe skills are very useful but the relationship brings about healing and the relationship isn't developed as quickly as a technique. The relationship with skills of coping is the best combination. This book does offer skills and I will be listening to it again. Yet they are not skills that are so new to what I have done in Psychotherapy, ie.. asking somebody to look at their relationship with anger. I would recommend this book but I would also like practitioners to consider whether they want to buy into the dismissive attitude towards other styles and approaches.

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only useful for dissociation/disconnect with body

Exceptional for disconnection with oneself in terms of bodily sensations,feelings and signals, but mediocre otherwise. It doesn't dwell on other mentioned types of early developmental trauma and does not provide treatment recommendations for them either. If one identifies with issues pertaining to other types of developmental trauma than the connection type, there is no need to proceed with reading further than the categorization that helps place oneself into a type. While the narration is well fit for the book contents, I feel like the title is deceptive due to the hyperfocus on one developmental trauma and its treatment only so I rated it 3 stars overall.

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