Beyond the Trauma Vortex: The Media's Role in Healing Fear, Terror, and Violence (Paperback)

by Gina Ross (Author) "In the last century, we have experienced a staggering number of major and extraordinarily traumatic events that have affected 90 percent of the world's population-two..." (more)
Key Phrases: trauma vortex, secondhand trauma, healing vortex, New York, Middle East, Peter Levine (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"The power of this book lies in its passionate appeal to news and entertainment media for their help in turning the horrors of history into healing and peace. Beyond the Trauma Vortex clarifies how reactions to trauma can influence reporting in ways that distort news coverage for readers and viewers, adding to their confusion and helplessness rather than informing and moving them to constructive action."
—Migael M. Scherer, Journalist, teacher, and author of Still Loved by the Sun: A Rape Survivor’s Journal

"Gina Ross has produced a must-read that illuminates people’s ability to constructively understand, recognize, and heal their own traumas, whether witnessed directly or secondhand. Beyond the Trauma Vortex alerts us to trauma’s being a root cause of violence and advises us to look at political conflicts between groups and nations through the trauma lens. Making us aware of what she calls the 'trauma vortex' is her eye-opening prelude to the 'healing vortex,' our inner resources that allow us to move beyond events we might like to lay to rest but are unable to. I can attest that the "healing vortex" works. During a time of great peril and extreme stress in my life, I was able to draw on many of the healing resources Gina describes so accurately in this book. Consider this review an endorsement and a testimonial as well."
—Jerry Levin, Former CNN Middle East bureau chief.

"In our post-9/11 world, no one escapes emotional trauma; its effects are only a matter of degree. Beyond the Trauma Vortex is a sorely needed examination of the origins and nature of trauma, and how we can heal from it. This is a very wise book that deserves a wide readership – for the sake of our country and our world."
—Larry Dossey, M.D., Author of Healing Beyond the Body and Reinventing Medicine

"There’s a really important message in this book. A great worldwide benefit will come as a result of our better understanding of the impact of trauma and the process of personal and collective healing and response that is possible. This well-researched work offers insight and tools for all those involved in transforming old problems into new solutions."
—Jack Kornfield, Author, meditation teacher, and co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society

Product Description
In The Media's Role in Secondhand Trauma, the author proposes a collaboration between the media, helping professionals, and trauma researchers to stem the tide of trauma. The media, Ross suggests, can use its influence to promote messages of peace over violence and be used as a tool in the restoration and rebuilding of wounded psyches, communities, and nations. Convincing media professionals to apply healing tools to their own lives can create positive cycles that will benefit everyone.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 232 pages
• Publisher: North Atlantic Books (April 9, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1556434464
• ISBN-13: 978-1556434464
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #841,213 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Author takes on the Media in Reporting Methods, October 7, 2003

By A Customer

Gina Ross presents a unique outlook on the role the media plays in interpreting and affecting our perceptionos of traumatic events and our reactions to them. When overwhelming traumatic events impacts us, our nervous system becomes deregulated and the brain chemistry changes. As a consequence, a variety of symptoms may develop. We may lose our ability to self-regulate the nervous system and become prey to agitation, panic attacks, hyper-vigilance and loss of the ability to concentrate and to learn. We may lose the ability to contain emotions and feel out of control. We may be at the mercy of mood swings, emotional outbursts of anger, sadness, fear depression and apathy. We may lose the control over our actions, engaging in obsessive, repetitive defensive patterns or addictions, as a way of self-medicating the uncontrolled activation, and/or repetition of traumatic events (such as a series of accidents, rapes, abuse, etc.). We may lose our ability to reason and our shrinking becomes polarized, black or white, intolerant of differences, blaming and judging, leading to demonizing and dehumanizing behavior. People under the impact of trauma are easily re-triggered by other traumatic events, even by innocuous events that are vaguely similar to the original event.

The media has the ability, through responsible reporting, has the ability to change these aspects. Additionally Ross addresses the "secondhand" trauma of reporting. Trauma's impact on the people who surround victims has not been well understood. In addition to the physical destruction of trauma, there is the psychic deterioration - breakdown start, rippling, stressing the system and exhausting its resources. Efforts are spent on (stress management and catastrophe fixing) managing and coping, rather than building and creating, creating a system of deficits rather than assets, which makes the family community or group lose its resiliency, become more vulnerable to further disorganization at the next traumatic events.

When resources are already low, and the system is placed under further stress by poverty, lack of democracy, instability through ethnic religious mobilization, the system become more vulnerable its collapse more likely.

Our actions therefore are run by out of control emotions, rather than by a stable, integrated, thinking process. Actions become more impulsive, less thought out; more risks are taken, endangering behaviors are rampant. Family and community networks breakdown. Paranoid thinking (the "sound" of threat) is internalized, engendering paranoia, negative confused thinking; Cynicism disenchantment affects reality assessment. Blaming and judging replace communication and exchange. The most dangerous aspects of the trauma vortex is that "bad feels right," the disconnection from any other possible reality becomes prevalent and the focus of reality becomes very narrow and trauma driven, fed by paranoia.

The ethical self takes a back seat to a survival mechanism gone awry, unrealistic and destructive emotions are exaggerated. Danger is exaggerated, insufferable profound helplessness transforms into any kind of action that will relieve it, accepting and justifying violence for normal peace-seeking people. Furthermore, the raw and exaggerated emotions become over-coupled, mixed in a messy amalgam, where every activation of the nervous system is connected to feelings of fear and terror, blaming of the "other" hair-trigger situation from a hair-trigger nervous system.

A macro trauma vortex is further exacerbated by the reactions it provokes: empathy without judgment (assessment) fear and counter-reaction, paralysis, and passivity, unconscious reactions to the trauma vortex amplifies it many times fold.
Only the capacity to hold both positions: empathy and judgment.
The focus on the possible outcome disappears - the "other" becomes a stereotyped, generalized negative figure. Distrust of anything originating from the other is couched as autonomy.

Ross addresses these issues and suggests productive mechanisms to change the trauma vortex into a healing vortex. A must read for all media personnel, students of journalism, and the general public who believe things could be reported in a much better way. Sunny Sherat

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating Read, June 3, 2003

By	Roger Brandiss - See all my reviews

Gina Ross's book is a learned and engaging study of the causes and effects of trauma in society.

The book introduces a fascinating premise: if we understand the root causes of trauma, how it is generated and repeated, both wittingly and unwittingly, then we can find ways of effectively controlling or mitigating its effects.

The central portion of the book deals with the primary source of trauma's proliferation, the modern media. Especially in a post-9/11 world, what the media chooses to discuss and how its thousands of journalists, reporters, and anchors represent various instances of trauma--terror, murder, rape, violence--is key to how the rest of us see, internalize, and ultimately repeat trauma.

Beyond the Trauma Vortex makes its case passionately, articulately, and intelligently. Its approach to applying insights from psycho-therapy to the culture at large presents a powerful model for us all and the media at large to follow. Its timing couldn't be better.

RB

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent approach, November 19, 2003

By	Shlomo Arad (Jerusalem, Israel) - See all my reviews

This book is the best tool I've ever met to deal with trauma's result. It enables you to totally discharge the negative energy restored by your body as a result of traumatic expirience. I used it on my wife after a car accident and it worked excellently. I highly reccomand it to anyone. It can surely help the peoples in the middle-east to find peace.