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A review by qualiareedauthor
Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma: The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences by Peter A. Levine
3.0
In Waking The Tiger, Peter Levine brings us an approach to looking at trauma that is not widely discussed in conventional medicine.
The author describes the three reactions to trauma as: Fight, Flight, and Freeze. It is the freeze reaction that Levine describes as the root cause of long term affects of a traumatic experience.
What if, during a traumatic experience, our neurological systems freeze and become blocked, leaving us unable to complete the experience in our minds, thus creating a sort of feedback loop that we can be forever stuck in.
This feedback loop, he theorizes, is what keeps people from moving on past the trauma, thus resulting in continuing depression, anxiety and so forth. He points to examples where one member of a group, moves beyond the frozen state of blockage, and in some cases is moved to heroic actions and is thus less affected by the trauma in the long term.
This book is one way of looking at trauma, and working with patients to recover from it and is not intended to be used solely and by itself. The inspirational quotes he has peppered the book with are almost reason enough to read this. While I may not be sold on his methods, or his writing style, he does offer some interesting food for thought about what trauma means to me and how I perceive it.
Something that I took away immediately that I have to point out is that the author states that because the human being is an animal, that we should react to trauma like animals and leave that trauma behind as soon as it is over. But is this correct? I offer that we have enough research on cats/dogs/ and many other mammalian species, that when they are traumatized, it can be a lifetime of work to get them over it. Take behaviours noted in rescue animals for example. Even a dog rescued from an abusive home as a puppy can take years or even a lifetime of work to help them get past the early trauma.
Still a worthy read though as it generated some interesting discussion and made me rethink my views on trauma. If a book can get me thinking, then it is worth a read.
The author describes the three reactions to trauma as: Fight, Flight, and Freeze. It is the freeze reaction that Levine describes as the root cause of long term affects of a traumatic experience.
What if, during a traumatic experience, our neurological systems freeze and become blocked, leaving us unable to complete the experience in our minds, thus creating a sort of feedback loop that we can be forever stuck in.
This feedback loop, he theorizes, is what keeps people from moving on past the trauma, thus resulting in continuing depression, anxiety and so forth. He points to examples where one member of a group, moves beyond the frozen state of blockage, and in some cases is moved to heroic actions and is thus less affected by the trauma in the long term.
This book is one way of looking at trauma, and working with patients to recover from it and is not intended to be used solely and by itself. The inspirational quotes he has peppered the book with are almost reason enough to read this. While I may not be sold on his methods, or his writing style, he does offer some interesting food for thought about what trauma means to me and how I perceive it.
Something that I took away immediately that I have to point out is that the author states that because the human being is an animal, that we should react to trauma like animals and leave that trauma behind as soon as it is over. But is this correct? I offer that we have enough research on cats/dogs/ and many other mammalian species, that when they are traumatized, it can be a lifetime of work to get them over it. Take behaviours noted in rescue animals for example. Even a dog rescued from an abusive home as a puppy can take years or even a lifetime of work to help them get past the early trauma.
Still a worthy read though as it generated some interesting discussion and made me rethink my views on trauma. If a book can get me thinking, then it is worth a read.