Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence--from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror Paperback – November 1, 2022

I have suffered from severe, debilitating depression for several years as a result of a trauma that is actually completely unrelated to what this book focuses on. Despite not having suffered trauma due to a rape, war or kidnapping, I found this book to be life-changing. I looked and searched endlessly for in-depth information to explain why I feel the way I do, and until this book, there was absolutely nothing out there. I came across countless webpages, medical literature, books, shows, blogs, essays, research papers, medical sites, and none explained WHY. A great deal of them focused on symptoms, but only general symptoms that could apply to a great deal of things. Besides, I already knew what my symptoms were. Another significant portion were dedicated to veterans and PTSD. I would read them, but again, they would still only discuss things on a very superficial basis. Blogs would talk about what medications people took, and arguments would ensue about who had the worse story. Medical literature would delve into explanations of which receptor and which brain lobe shrunk or expanded, and shock rates of rats. Why was there no simple explanation for why people feel these symptoms when suffering from trauma? I even asked my psychiatrist that I see twice a week -I would beg him to explain to me in detail what I had, why I had this, when I would get better, and why I experienced these awful symptoms. He would always respond the same way.... that I had "complicated depression," "complicated grief," and that I had "experienced a severe trauma." Any symptom I specifically asked about, was just a "symptom common in trauma." Was there just NO explanation?Based on my past experience with being let down, I had little faith this book would be able to explain what I have been going through for several years now, ESPECIALLY because it focuses on trauma related to rape, war, kidnapping. "Trauma and Recovery," however, explains trauma in a way that relates to EVERYONE and explains it in GREAT DETAIL. The detail and depth was beyond any hope I had or anything I could have imagined. It brought up points that I did not even consider, and thoughts that made me learn a great deal about my affliction. In fact, this book brought to light answers and closure for issues that I had tried to address with my $300/hr psychiatrist for the past 3 years. I thought to myself, "wtf?! what took my doctor so long and why has he been torturing me about this???!" Yes - this book WILL drum up emotions, and it did cost me plenty of tears and opening of wounds that were supposedly healed over, however, I definitely needed to understand the answers to these questions in order to move on.This is an ideal book to have your family, spouse, significant other, or other supportive individual read. A great struggle for me, and one that has brought me much pain, is feeling as though I constantly have to explain myself and my actions/affliction to my family. They are actually the most supportive people anyone could ever hope for, yet they STILL can't understand what it is that I am going through or why I do the things I do. It is an awful feeling. I begged them to read this book, they didn't unfortunately, but I truly believe that if you love someone who is going through PTSD, depression/trauma/grief, you would show amazing support in reading this to help them.In terms of what I have, and how this helped me.... I have experienced ups/downs, cycles of feeling great, then feeling terrible, not being able to get out of bed or my home for days even weeks, withdrawing socially, unable to work for several years, feeling unbelievably overwhelmed by the littlest of things, losing track of time, barely able to keep up with anything, uninterested in anything, no form of romantic relationships whatsoever, flashbacks to the event(s), extreme fatigue, uncontrollable sobbing, anxiety, hopelessness, chest pain, accelerated aging, feeling like something in me has permanently changed and I'm not "me", indifference, guilt. This is the foremost work in bringing to light the underlying cause(s) for these symptoms and why/how trauma affects us differently that just plain depression.If you need this book, I send you my prayers and wish you the best in your or your loved one's recovery.

This book was instrumental in providing me with a lot of insights that changed the way I understand misfortune.Many intellectuals who borrowed from psychoanalysis, including Erich Fromm, Kleinians and others I read whilst studying for my thesis, implied indirectly that the symptoms of trauma were a result of moral failure. Indeed, I was only reminded of the nature of this association last night, when I watched the World War One drama, DOWNTOWN ABBEY. What can be worse that being killed? To be killed for cowardice. So a household servant is informed that her relative died in the war, but it was "worse than that". The ideology of "moral fiber" that is central to the 19th Century has not been overturned by the early part of the next. Rather, there was a notion that some possessed moral fiber, whereas others did not.You would be able to see this ideology regarding the all-conquering character who makes no excuses, in Nietzsche. I'd like to think that my thesis on Marechera, who also has much of the Nietzschean spirit of wanting to conquer the world, but in an entirely different context, which did not permit permanent or definitive success, corrects previous suppositions about the structures of the psyche. The ability to persist in dangerous situations is certainly laudable, however, in contradiction to the 19th Century view we must now assume that such determination to persist when all the odds are against one will take its toll on the mind. This extraction of a cost nothing to do with anyone's innate capacity to follow through on an extremely difficult task. Rather, as we know today, everybody, even the strongest, has a breaking point. Some people may last longer than others under extreme duress, but more those of more rational views would frame this as a psychological issue, not a moral one*.Judith Herman puts everything into context when she shows that those who suffer from trauma suffer not from their own limitations but from the limitations of those who should be part of their nearest communities. To take a brave risk is one thing, but if your community doesn't back you up, you are probably going to suffer from psychological trauma. Herman is certainly not suggesting a hippy-dippy attitude, where "community" is the answer to all wrongs. Rather, what she seems to suggest is that we are all interconnected. If you withdraw the human connection -- that is, the lifeline -- from somebody who has taken a risk, they are going to feel more in danger. The betrayal of trust will compute, at a psychological level, as trauma.So it's not that the particular individual from whom you withdrew your moral support has some intrinsic moral lack.The origin of the trauma is that you withdrew your support.------------------------------------*These days we seem to have flipped into biologism which, on the surface at least, seems exactly the opposite of the 19th Century view. In other words, biological "reasons" are invoked for people to take various chemicals to make them "normal". The problem is no longer a moral one, but one pertaining to one's unique, individual biological make-up. This view is as false as the 19th Century one -- even if it seems to offer the sufferer less difficulty in the short-term -- because the demand to unquestioningly conform to social norms remains as an unethical pressure.