"It's Not About Food, Drugs, or Alcohol: It's About Healing Complex PTSD", a new book by PACEs Connection member Mary Giuiliani, launches next week. For a preview of what the longtime student of ACEs science, now PACEs science, shares in her revealing “teaching memoir”, tune into our ‘History. Culture. Trauma.’ podcast for a lively conversation between Giuilani and hosts Ingrid Cockhren and Mathew Portell this Thursday at 1 p.m. PT.

In the book—chock-full of quotes from top experts on the science of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), complex post traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD), and healing from codependency, addiction, and abuse—Giuliani describes her journey as she applies the learnings to her own life.

”Even though I was in long-term recovery with food, severe obesity, drugs, and alcohol, and had what most people would consider a successful life,” says Giuliani, “behind closed doors, I still struggled and wondered why I had so few close friends, such difficulty finding a fulfilling romantic relationship, struggled so with food, sleep and caffeine, failed to find the flow and passion in my career, and felt the need to hide my struggles with weight and substances.”

Finally, in mid-life, Giuliani says she discovered the root cause driving her past struggles.

“It wasn’t the food, the alcohol or the drugs,” she writes. “I finally realized it was complex PTSD (C-PTSD), a more severe form of PTSD that developed from being raised in a chaotic alcoholic home, among other challenges.” Giuliani cites challenges including finding comfort, as a child, by sneaking into the kitchen in the middle of the night to cook, eat, and clean up pancakes; being bullied at school; and coming to terms with her lesbianism while attending Catholic high school in the homophobic culture of the 1970s.

Join Giuliani, Cockhren, and Portell this Thursday as they discuss Giuliani’s five-year journey studying the research from leading experts in the fields of C-PTSD, neuroscience, developmental psychology, adverse childhood experiences, and addiction medicine, and how she synthesizes her experience and the experts’ information to  find “the most effective treatments for optimal healing.”

Resources: marygiuliani.net

Listen here Thursday, February 23, at 1 p.m. PT.