How We Grow Through What We Go Through: Self-Compassion Practices for Post-Traumatic Growth

Clinical psychologist Willard (The In-Between Book) lays out strategies for recovering after trauma in this compassionate manual. “We can allow traumas to push us toward more sickness, sadness, fear, and division—or we can use them to water the seeds of our growth and development,” he contends. He notes that the memory of trauma can prime the body to respond to threats in four ways—fight, flee, freeze, or give up—and suggests that readers calm their nervous system by adopting the mindfulness pose of sitting upright and holding their hands over their heart. Explaining how to develop healthy habits, he extols the benefits of taking walks on regulating emotion and recommends refraining from multitasking when eating to foster a more deliberate relationship with food. Trauma survivors’ inner critics tend to be their worst enemies, the author posits, and he urges readers to exercise self-compassion by setting boundaries in difficult relationships, cultivating resilient friendships, and acknowledging how hard it was to live through trauma. Willard has a knack for describing psychological jargon in lay terms, and the uncomplicated guidance is easy to implement (one mindfulness exercise calls for listening to one’s breaths as if they were ocean waves). This approachable manual has some insightful tips. (Nov.)