The Little Book of Trauma Healing

by Yoder, Carolyn P.

• ISBN13: 9781561485079
• ISBN10: 1561485071
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-01-30
• Publisher: Good Book Pub Co

Summary

Following the staggering events of September 11, 2001, the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University was asked to help, by officials overseeing clean-up and recovery efforts in New York. The staff and faculty proposed Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR) programs in response. In the years since then, those ideas have been put into practice, re-tooled, and used successfully again and again. Now, STAR director, Carolyn Yoder, has shaped the strategies and learnings from those experiences into a book for all who have known terrorism and threatened security. This Little Book addresses communities and societies caught in cycles of victimhood and/or violence. . . in other words, those of us who have been traumatized by terrorists or tsunamis, by unsafe and ongoing occupation or oppression. This Little Book looks at: - Breaking free to safety; - Taking risks successfully; - Recognizing our interdependence. Says Yoder, "The primary premise and challenge of this Little Book is that traumatic events and times have the potential to awaken the human spirit and, indeed, the global family. But this requires acknowledging our own history and that of the enemy, honestly searching for root causes, and shifting our emphasis from national security to human security."A startlingly helpful approach.

Author Biography

Carolyn Yoder directs Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR), a joint program of Eastern Mennonite

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	3	(5)
Introduction	5	(4)
Trauma as a call to change and transformation	6	(1)
About this book	6	(3)
Defining Trauma: The Causes and Types	9	(8)
Ongoing and structurally-induced trauma	11	(1)
Societal or collective trauma	12	(1)
Historical trauma transferred through generations	13	(1)
Secondary trauma	14	(1)
Participation-induced trauma	14	(1)
In summary	15	(2)
Common Responses to Traumatic Events	17	(13)
Trauma affects us physiologically	19	(5)
Trauma shatters meaning	24	(1)
Trauma creates needs	25	(2)
Ongoing trauma	27	(1)
Large-group trauma	28	(2)
Continuing the Cycles: Unhealed Trauma	30	(15)
Limitations of defining unhealed trauma through a PTSD frame	31	(1)
Reenactment and trigger events	32	(2)
Impaired functioning	34	(1)
Incomplete grieving	35	(2)
The enemy/aggressor cycle	37	(3)
Good-vs.-evil narratives	40	(1)
Redemptive-violence narratives	41	(1)
The role of leaders	41	(2)
The cycles across generations	43	(2)
Breaking the Cycles: The Journey to Healing and Security	45	(25)
Background to the model	46	(2)
Safety: Breaking free	48	(5)
The role of leaders	52	(1)
Acknowledgment: Mourning, grieving our own story, and naming fears	53	(4)
Recognizing that ``the other'' has a story	55	(2)
Reconnection: Recognizing interdependence, taking risks	57	(13)
Choosing the path to forgiving	61	(2)
Seeking justice	63	(5)
Possibility of reconciliation	68	(2)
What If? 9-11 and Breaking the Cycles	70	(3)
How Then Shall We Live?	73	(6)
Recognize ourselves as leaders	73	(1)
Challenge our own faith communities to live up to the highest ideals	74	(1)
Prevent trauma by learning to wage peace	74	(2)
Work at both the personal and the communal/structural levels	76	(1)
Be informed	76	(1)
Remember that we are not alone	77	(2)
Appendix: Key Elements in Breaking the Cycle	79	(2)
Endnotes	81	(8)
Selected Readings	89	(1)
About the Author	90