Understanding and Healing Emotional Trauma

Book excerpt: Understanding and Healing Emotional Trauma is an interdisciplinary book which explores our current understanding of the forces involved in both the creation and healing of emotional trauma. Through engaging conversations with pioneering clinicians and researchers, Daniela F. Sieff offers accessible yet substantial answers to questions such as: What is emotional trauma? What are the causes? What are its consequences? What does it mean to heal emotional trauma? and How can healing be achieved? These questions are addressed through three interrelated perspectives: psychotherapy, neurobiology and evolution. Psychotherapeutic perspectives take us inside the world of the unconscious mind and body to illuminate how emotional trauma distorts our relationships with ourselves and with other people (Donald Kalsched, Bruce Lloyd, Tina Stromsted, Marion Woodman). Neurobiological perspectives explore how trauma impacts the systems that mediate our emotional lives and well-being (Ellert Nijenhuis, Allan Schore, Daniel Siegel). And evolutionary perspectives contextualise emotional trauma in terms of the legacy we have inherited from our distant ancestors (James Chisholm, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Randolph Nesse). Transforming lives affected by emotional trauma is possible, but it can be a difficult process. The insights shared in these lively and informative conversations can support and facilitate that process.This book will therefore be a valuable resource for psychotherapists, psychologists, counsellors and other mental health professionals in practice and training, and also for members of the general public who are endeavouring to find ways through their own emotional trauma. In addition, because emotional trauma often has its roots in childhood, this book will also be of interest and value to parents, teachers and anyone concerned with the care of children.