What is trauma?

  • Bessel van der Kolk, The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. (2014)
  • Peter A. Levine, Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma : The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences. (1997)
  • Stephen Porges, The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. (2011)
  • Pat Ogden, Kekuni Minton, and Clare Pain, Trauma and the body: A sensorimotor approach to psychotherapy. (2006)
  • Intergenerational trauma: Rachel Yehuda, a neuroscientist, has written extensively about intergenerational trauma. Her studies of Holocaust survivors and their descendants, has focused on trauma, PTSD, and its transmission across generations. She has provided groundbreaking insights into how trauma can be passed down epigenetically.
  • Historical trauma: see the work of Native American scholar and social worker Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart.
  • Vicarious trauma: recommended text about navigating vicarious trauma is Laura van Dernoot Lipsky and Connie Burk, Trauma stewardship: an everyday guide to caring for self while caring for others. (2009)
  • “Big T” and “small t” trauma: Gabor Mate talks about 'Big T' and 'Small t' trauma in several of his books, including In the realm of hungry ghosts: Close encounters with addiction (2008), When the body says no: The cost of hidden stress (2003), The myth of normal: Trauma, illness, and healing in a toxic culture (2022). Peter Leine points to this idea, without using this terminology in Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997) and In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness (2010), as does Bessel Van de Kolk in The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma (2014)
  • Gabor Maté and Daniel Maté, The myth of normal: trauma, illness & healing in a toxic culture (2022)
  • Deb Dana, The polyvagal theory in therapy: Engaging the rhythm of regulation. (2018)
  • Daniel J. Siegel, The developing mind: How relationships and the brain interact to shape who we are (1999)
  • We all have a window of tolerance and it can be widened. This is where self-care practices and practices that strengthen our Parasympathetic Nervous System can be helpful. I feel this understanding of the nervous system is helpful for all humans. If you are interested in this further, look up resources by polyvagal theory expert Deb Dana. I particularly like her experiential book Anchored: How to Befriend Your Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory (2021)