A review by herelieshenry
Heal Your Nervous System: The 5–Stage Plan to Reverse Nervous System Dysregulation by Linnea Passaler

informative slow-paced

2.25

In the interest of full disclosure, this review is specifically regarding a DRC copy of the book from Net Galley, so while I imagine this eBook was pretty close to finalized, some details may have been changed between my copy and the official release.

I would recommend this book to people who know they’re dealing with dysregulation but are unsure where to start in determining their needs and how to meet them, with a huge caveat that this isn’t a handbook for treatment of anything. The strongest aspect to me would be the included exercises and the accompanying resources more than the text in itself. The weakest is the notable failure to touch on the topic of mental illness and other neurodivergencies; it feels like a major oversight considering the subject matter that is almost too glaring not to be intentional. I think this book could be improved with more awareness of neurodiversity beyond “identifying as a trauma survivor is bad, but identifying as a highly sensitive person is good”. Either way, I personally have no interest in reading this author’s work going forward.

The text is coherent overall, but it’s a bit of a slow read. Its structure was a bit clunky at times, with the flow having some issues on account of rephrasing the same things several times per chapter. A majority of the chapters themselves are necessary for the book, though the last handful focused on the author rather than the topic of the book feels like it could have all been condensed into one afterword. Some of the language encouraged versus discouraged in this book gives me pause. As I harkened to earlier, the Highly Sensitive Person concept is founded on obscuring and erasing other, more specific labels (frequently Autism and C-PTSD) that can lend more support and resources to someone, and the amount of emphasis placed on that here while seemingly shaming people for identifying as a survivor sits with me wrong. I feel like there are ways of communicating the concept of someone having more complex regulatory needs, and the idea that we do not have to be inherently trapped with our trauma even though it has shaped us, etc without being so callous.