Life After Trauma: A Workbook for Healing [Paperback]

Dena Rosenbloom (Author), Mary Beth Williams (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1572302399 | ISBN-13: 978-1572302396 | Publication Date: April 19, 1999 | Edition: 1st

Trauma can turn a person's world upside down - afterward, nothing may look safe or familiar. This supportive workbook helps trauma survivors find and use crucial skills for coping, self-understanding, and self-care. Even when the worst has happened, this book shows how it is possible to feel good again. Filled with comforting activities, relaxation techniques, self-evaluation questionnaires, and exercises, the workbook explains how and why trauma can throw you for a loop and what survivors can do now to cope. Chapters guide readers step-by-step toward reclaiming step-by-step toward reclaiming a basic sense of safety, self-worth, and control over their lives, as well as the capacity to trust and be close to others.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This is an important new self-help resource for trauma survivors. It constitutes a significant contribution to survivors of all types of trauma who seek information about how to cope with their reactions and symptoms and how to feel better. The authors use the knowledge they have gained from clinical practice to provide information and exercises in an accessible and user-friendly format. Traumatized individuals will be assisted in their recovery efforts and are sure to find the authors' guidance reassuring and empowering." --Christine Courtois, PhD, Clinical Director, The CENTER: Posttraumatic Disorder Program, The Psychiatric Institute of Washington, Author of Healing the Incest Wound, and Recollections of Sexual Abuse

"Life After Trauma presents a solid base that survivors can stand upon. It offers hope as well as specific tools for the process of healing....Drs. Dena Rosenbloom and Mary Beth Williams are clinical psychologists who have walked through the terror with survivor clients for a decade. Their combined research and clinical experience has provided them with an understanding of the many elements of recovery. Both have served as gentle guides to people in distress. Both have lent their hearts, heads, and hands to survivors who have walked through shame and fear in order to create a new reality that includes, but is not dominated by, a traumatic past....Readers will find many of their difficulties illuminated in these pages." --From the Foreword by Laurie Anne Pearlman, PhD, Traumatic Stress Institute/Center for Adult and Adolescent Psychotherapy, South Windsor, CT

"To date, there are very few self-help resources for trauma survivors. Far more about psychological trauma has been made available to researchers and clinicians than to lay readers. Life After Trauma presents a solid base that survivors can stand upon. It offers hope as well as specific tools for the process of healing....In my relationships with Dena Rosenbloom and Mary Beth Williams, I have been impressed by their commitment to survivors, their sensitivity to survivors' needs, and their understanding of the complexities of healing. I thank them for this workbook, which I believe will make a difference in the lives of the survivors who use it." --From the Foreword by Laurie Anne Pearlman, PhD, Traumatic Stress Institute/Center for Adult and Adolescent Psychotherapy, South Windsor, CT

"Comprehensive and thorough, Life After Trauma offers an array of useful exercises to guide both survivors and clinicians safely through the process of healing. Rosenbloom and Williams offer readers a kind-hearted and confident approach to resolving traumatic life events. An excellent resource for anyone coping with the effects of trauma." --Debra Whiting Alexander, PhD, LMFT, CTS, author of Children Changed by Trauma, Something Bad Happened, and the The Way I Feel series; Executive Director, Center for Community Counseling, Eugene, OR

"This book will help survivors of trauma process their experiences in a meaningful and safe way. The authors' experience working with trauma is evident in their step-by-step approach to empowering individuals to gain control of their lives. Useful and succinctly crafted exercises focus on helping readers access and utilize internal and external resources, restoring a sense of self-esteem, trust, power, and affiliation. Throughout, the authors convey hope and optimism for the healing journey." --Eliana Gil, PhD, Coordinator, Abused Children's Treatment Program, Inova Kellar Center, Fairfax, VA

"Traumatic experiences can feel overwhelming and terrifying. It is often hard to find the energy to go on from day to day, and harder still to know how to recover and regain strength. This book offers a careful and clear guide to reclaiming your life. It provides step-by-step suggestions for rebuilding your sense of self, trust, safety, power, control, and connection to others. The authors know how to help: They anticipate your problems and concerns and they address them. Most important, they have seen many others recover from painful experiences, and they convey hope, optimism, and support for your healing journey." --Eliana Gil, PhD, Coordinator, Abused Children's Treatment Program, Inova Kellar Center, Fairfax, VA

About the Author

Dena Rosenbloom, PhD, a clinical psychologist in private practice in Glastonbury, Connecticut, specializes in helping people who are trying to cope following traumatic life events. She also conducts critical incident stress debriefings for groups of people who have experienced a shared trauma, such as a natural disaster or the death of a coworker on the job, and runs trainings and workshops for trauma survivors and mental health and medical professionals.

Mary Beth Williams, PhD, LCSW, CTS, works with trauma survivors in private practice in Warrenton, Virginia, and is a school social worker in Falls Church, Virginia. Dr. Williams is President of the Association of Traumatic Stress Specialists and a staff member of the National Training Program for Post-Trauma Therapists in Finland. She is the author of numerous publications on trauma and its treatment.

Barbara E. Watkins is a writer and editor living in Boston.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Guilford Press; 1st edition (April 19, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1572302399
• ISBN-13: 978-1572302396
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #103,405 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #62 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Mental Health > Post-traumatic Stress Disorder

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

62 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Healing, Helpful book, May 27, 2001

By 

Patience H Mason (High Springs, FL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Life After Trauma: A Workbook for Healing (Paperback)

Dena Rosenbloom, Ph.D., and Mary Beth Williams Ph.D have written an extremely helpful book for trauma survivors. They work from the premise that: "Trauma affects us by undermining five basic human needs. These are: •The need to be safe •The need to trust •The need to feel some control over one’s life •The need to feel of value •The need to feel close to others." Life After Trauma is designed to help survivors learn to meet these needs. It can be used at home or in conjunction with therapy. The authors do not feel that every one needs therapy even though they are therapists trained in dealing with trauma. They believe, however, that trauma changes survivors’ basic beliefs, sometimes in ways of which they are not aware. This book is designed to increase a survivor’s awareness of core beliefs, to help survivors test their validity, and to help find more healing beliefs if the survivor so desires. Life After Trauma is about dealing with life today, not for working through the trauma. The prologue discusses how the workbook can help survivors. The authors stress finding support, learning self-care strategies, affirmations and soothing self-talk. They discuss when to set the workbook aside and coping with triggers. I found all these suggestions very helpful in dealing with some emotional upheavals I was having at the time. Chapter One, “After Trauma: Why you feel thrown for a loop,” discusses physical, mental, emotional and behavioral reactions to trauma and ways of checking in with yourself and learning to relax. The second chapter, “Ways of Coping After the Trauma,” contains several coping checklists and questions you can ask yourself for analyzing how you cope, followed by suggestions on how to cope more effectively. They even point out that dissociation can be an effective coping tool if you can evoke it as needed. Chapter Three, “Thinking Things Through,” discusses how to separate facts from reactions and meanings/interpretations, how these may change after trauma and a system for thinking them through. The next five chapters explore in detail how to meet the five needs, safety, trust, control, value and intimacy. Part of this is identifying beliefs, checking their validity, finding possible alternate explanations or interpretations, and so forth. There are also reminders of self care activities and relaxations exercises throughout the book. Here’s a quote "You can shift your physical and emotional state by, first, reminding yourself that you are in a different time and place from when you experienced trauma initially. You probably have greater choice and control now that you did then. Second, find ways to comfort and soothe yourself. We have provided ideas for doing this throughout the book, such as relaxation exercises. You may not think they can be much help, but consider this: It is not possible to be tense and completely relaxed at the same time. Learning to relax will directly relieve your tension and anxiety, even if for brief periods initially. Learning to relax can help you feel more in control as well as calmer. The feelings you learn to evoke through self-care and self-comforting exercises are, in many ways, the opposite of those evoked by the trauma. You can learn to use them to help counter and manage negative feelings that now seem out of your control." There is also a very good appendix on readings, one on finding good trauma therapy, and one for therapists who might want to use this book with clients. I can’t recommend this book too highly. It is healing, deals with the kind of daily problems that trauma survivors face in a sensible, thoughtful, and above all, hopeful way. Things can change one little step at a time. The book offers a lot of steps a survivor can take, always with an emphasis on safety and self care. This review first appeared in the Post-Traumatic Gazette, a newsletter with a healing perspective for all trauma survivors. ...This book has that healing perspective.

36 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Living in the Present, April 21, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Life After Trauma: A Workbook for Healing (Paperback)

I was expecting this book to be about unraveling the past, understanding it, and generally spending a lot of time in territory I wasn't interested in revisiting... Thankfully, it is about being aware of feelings taking place in the present. This book is geared toward increasing self-awareness and self-knowledge, especially important for those who have disassociated in some way or don't feel like "themselves". What a great thing! The format and style are comfortable and easy to use, and I found myself gaining insight as the book went along, without adding more stress to my life! Thank you for this wonderful workbook.

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The healing starts here, March 21, 2000

By 

BCJ (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Life After Trauma: A Workbook for Healing (Paperback)

I wanted to read this book after a car crash resulted in general anxiety. When I began to read it, I felt as though the authors really undertood how I was feeling. I felt as though someone were holding my hand, letting me know that there is a light at the end of this dark tunnel.