Reviews tagging 'Emotional abuse'

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk

230 reviews

nonbinarian_librarian's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective medium-paced

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual violence, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, and Suicide

Moderate: Bullying, Cancer, Panic attacks/disorders, War, Chronic illness, Abandonment, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Toxic relationship, Alcoholism, Incest, and Rape

yaelm's review against another edition

challenging dark informative reflective sad tense

3.0

מבינה מה הכותב אומר ובסה״כ מדובר בספר עשיר במידע וקולח, אבל השפה בה הוא משתמש מאוד בעייתית (אנשים נורמליים לעומת אנשים עם פוסט טראומה, למשל) ולפעמים כואבת.

יש לו גם כל מיני הבחנות מכאיבות מאוד לגבי הורות עם פוסט טראומה. אני לא הורה בעצמי אבל זה כאב לי בכל הגוף. היו עוד כל מיני כאלו לאורך הספר.

מעבר לזה, מבוסס (בחלקו) על מדע שכבר אינו עדכני ולדעתי גם בתקופת הכתיבה של הספר לא היה מדויק (הצד הימני של המוח הוא היצירתי והשמאלי הוא השכלתני וכו׳).

מלאאא בטריגרים כמובן, כל דבר שיכול לגרום לפוסט טראומה. כמה מהמקרים שהוא מציג כטראומטיים מאוד מקוממים (אדם שביצע פשעים נוראיים כלפי נשים וילדים וחזר מהמלחמה עם טראומה, למשל. אין לי ספק שהוא באמת חזר בטראומה, אבל זה עבר בלי ביקורת בכלל. ברור לי שכפסיכיאטר התפקיד שלו הוא לא להפעיל שיפוט מוסרי, ועדיין אפשר היה לכתוב איזו מילה וחצי כמו שהוא עשה במקרים אחרים ופחות שחורים מוסרית)

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Confinement, Adult/minor relationship, Body shaming, Bullying, Car accident, Child abuse, Death of parent, Drug abuse, Eating disorder, Genocide, Fire/Fire injury, Alcoholism, Fatphobia, Domestic abuse, Infidelity, Medical trauma, Antisemitism, Chronic illness, Emotional abuse, Ableism, Addiction, Grief, and Drug use

nicmargan's review against another edition

challenging dark informative slow-paced

3.5

 I took a detour from natural-disaster books to learn about trauma this month.

At the start of the book, we meet a soldier who won’t take his pills because he feels he must remain a living memorial to the friends he lost, so their deaths won’t have been in vain. This introduces the idea that some part of traumatised people remains stuck in the past.

This idea is borne out in studies presented later, in which it is shown that the bodies of some people after a traumatic event will continue to secrete stress hormones long after any threat has passed. This emotional information can make rationalising difficult, so that a small problem can be blown out of proportion because of the inability to self-regulate.

One of the main features of what makes an event potentially traumatic is if the event endangers the person’s sense of safety around other people. This could be from experiencing the horror of what people are capable of in war, or the horror of being sent to war by a government you trusted, or abuse or neglect by a carer or loved one. One study showed that the security of children’s attachments to their mothers consistently predicted the amount of morphine children in a burns unit needed to control their pain.

Trauma can also affect memory. The details of events become repressed or are experienced unlike other memories (in a sequence or narrative), but in sharply exposed, jumbled and incomplete sensations. Historically, trauma has been deemed made-up or the fault of the victim. When soldiers after World War II were treated for PTSD, doctors ‘almost invariably found the root cause in pre-war experience: the sick men were not first-grade fighting material… The military proposition is [that it is] not war which make men sick, but that sick men can not fight wars.’

Most of the second half of the book looks at treatment options and I appreciated that so much space was given to solutions.

Though I struggled at times with the long, technical and heavy nature of this book, it achieved the admirable task of identifying a set of social problems that are so pervasive they are often regarded as normal, and giving a roadmap as to how they don’t have to be. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child abuse, Domestic abuse, and Emotional abuse

dreamingpages's review against another edition

informative reflective medium-paced

4.5

Extremely informative and insightful. I like that the book includes information on the shortcomings of psychiatric drugs and government policies. My only small complaint is that I was taken aback by some the really extreme examples of trauma. I think I would have liked a warning for some of them. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abandonment, Pedophilia, Rape, Torture, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Medical trauma, Physical abuse, Child abuse, Incest, Self harm, Sexual assault, and Sexual violence

danilippert's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative inspiring slow-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Incest, Mental illness, and Self harm

Moderate: Emotional abuse, Mass/school shootings, Hate crime, Bullying, Alcoholism, Abandonment, Addiction, Drug use, and Grief

bethboo's review against another edition

emotional informative inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

4.5

This book has so much information. It's a lot longer and in depth than a quick personal growth read. This is a book I definitely wouldn't have gotten so much out of had I not been reading it in tandem with the information given to me by my therapist. It is so much more than a simple book on trauma and therapy techniques. It's the history of diagnoses, therapies, techniques, studies, training, patients, doctors, and experiences surrounding trauma. The author must be fucking immortal because he had first hand experience from ages ago and gave stories and examples and information for every single one he spoke of. I got a lot personally from the EMDR section and the structured Family Therapy or whatever and the beginning sections describing the brain and trauma and how it's all connected. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Mental illness, Emotional abuse, Domestic abuse, Sexual assault, Physical abuse, Panic attacks/disorders, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Suicide, Sexual violence, Self harm, Pedophilia, Child abuse, Suicide attempt, Suicidal thoughts, Rape, Injury/Injury detail, Incest, Eating disorder, Drug abuse, and Alcoholism

lafreier's review against another edition

dark hopeful informative slow-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug abuse, Domestic abuse, Sexual assault, Physical abuse, Emotional abuse, Sexual violence, and Child abuse

beklovesbooks's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad tense slow-paced

5.0

An excellent textbook on trauma and the science-backed approaches to healing from it. Also an interesting journey through the author’s professional experiences that led to his outstanding knowledge on the subject. 

Read the trigger warnings and take them seriously. He often gives details about horrific abuse and sensitive information about patients, later illustrating their growth, but I would imagine it would be too much for many people with backgrounds touched by abuse, neglect, suicide etc.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Drug use, Infidelity, Medical content, Medical trauma, Dementia, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Hate crime, Incest, Rape, War, Drug abuse, Mass/school shootings, Panic attacks/disorders, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Grief, Gun violence, and Suicidal thoughts

Moderate: Blood, Mass/school shootings, Pedophilia, Pregnancy, Religious bigotry, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Suicide attempt, Suicide, Toxic friendship, Toxic relationship, Violence, Confinement, Dysphoria, Torture, War, Biphobia, and Eating disorder

indiana_sorell's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring sad slow-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Incest, Panic attacks/disorders, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual assault, Medical content, Medical trauma, Child abuse, Dysphoria, and Eating disorder

evalunny's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content, Sexual violence, Physical abuse, Incest, Medical trauma, Sexual assault, Domestic abuse, Child abuse, Blood, Alcoholism, Addiction, Abandonment, Violence, War, Suicide attempt, Torture, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, Self harm, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Eating disorder, Drug abuse, Death, Suicide, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Pedophilia, Panic attacks/disorders, Medical content, Emotional abuse, Cursing, Death of parent, Child death, Toxic relationship, Rape, Drug use, Adult/minor relationship, and Mental illness