Tagged With "Sexual & Gender Minority Persons"
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1000 TELLINGS!
I just had to cradle a bundle of books when my publisher showed me the first 1000 copies that arrived from the printer. A thousand copies! At this very moment the most important thing is they exist. Not if or when they’ll be purchased. Not who will get a copy or what they’ll think of it as they read it. What’s happening is I am telling. A thousand times over, I am telling. A lot of people already know that after every rape my father said, “You tell anyone and I’ll kill you.” And I’ve worked...
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A New Word to Help Children and Adults with High ACEs: Lasticity
We can talk about grit, resilience and mindsets all we want. These approaches, while useful in a limited way, operate off a deficit model. There is something wrong in individuals that needs to be fixed -- repaired. And, there is a built in assumption that those who have high ACEs can return to the status quo ante -- they can bounce back. But, these are flawed arguments and here's why. Those with high ACEs are forever changed; they cannot bounce back. (There are neurological reasons among...
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A Survivor on Speaking Out Against Shame, Silence, and Sexual Assault (yesmagazine.org)
If you’re a survivor yourself and reading this, you know that when I write “I had finished being shocked and upset long ago,” I don’t mean it’s done and dusted and put away and now I’m finished with the rape. I remember a male friend to whom I talked less than a year after it happened. “Do you think I’m thinking about it for too long?” I wanted to know. “I still feel scared and upset; do you think I’m making too big a deal out of it?” “Yes,” he said, “you are. You should be over it by now.”...
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Adversity Needn’t Thwart or Define You. Here’s How to Cope. [nytimes.com]
The author had a chipped tooth. It ruined her looks, she thought. She had to interview someone for her book, and she really wanted to cancel. The interview subject was Mariatu Kamara, the young woman from Sierra Leone who wrote “The Bite of the Mango,” a memoir about surviving a civil war, rape, losing the baby that resulted from the rape, having her hands chopped off, making it to safety and finally leaving everyone she knew to seek refuge in Canada. The author thought about this, about why...
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[Announcement] 3 Part-Series on ACEs from "Terrible, Thanks for Asking" (Podcast) [ttfa.org]
Hosted By Nora McInerny, Terrible, Thanks for Asking, October 28 2019 'Terrible, Thanks for Asking' the award winning podcast hosted by Nora McInerny and produced by American Public Media (AMP), challenges real people to candidly discuss their feelings. Beginning November 5, 2019 'Terrible, Thanks for Asking' will be asking guests to share the experiences and challenges they encountered while growing up with ACEs. With the knowledge that adversity and trauma has harmful implications later in...
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Awakening Compassion at Work (dailygood.org)
Jane Dutton's research focuses on how organizational conditions strengthen capabilities of individuals and firms. She is a co-founder of the Center for Positive Organizations . Monica Worline's research is dedicated to the mission of enlivening work and workplaces is a founding member of CompassionLab, and a collaborating scientist at the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University. JD: Some managers in some organizations don't see compassion as part of...
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Bearing Witness to the Wounds of Internment (lionsroar.com)
In American Sutra, Williams, a professor of religion and East Asian languages and cultures at the University of Southern California, offers an account that is remarkable on several fronts. First, it is rich in ethnographic and historiographic detail. And although based primarily on historical records—including publications, official documents, correspondence, and journal entries—many of the cited sources provide first-person accounts, lending an approachable, human tone to the work. Much of...
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Behind Bars, Mentally Ill Inmates Are Often Punished For Their Symptoms (npr.org)
By some accounts, nearly half of America's incarcerated population is mentally ill — and journalist Alisa Roth argues that most aren't getting the treatment they need. Roth has visited jails in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Atlanta and a rural women's prison in Oklahoma to assess the condition of mentally ill prisoners. She says correctional officers are on the "front lines" of mental health treatment — despite the fact that they lack clinical training. "Most of [the correctional...
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Beyond the Crack Generation, Author K-Rahn Vallatine
Beyond The Crack Generation takes readers on an autobiographical journey to explain how dysfunctional, counterproductive behavior became a cultural norm in the quest for prosperity and survival among youth. Addressing the pervasive and lingering impact that the crack cocaine epidemic had on mainstream Hip Hop culture and Urban America as a whole, it answers the echoing question: How did our young people lose their way? It offers a glimpse in the psychology of a young man in search of...
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Book Review: Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools [JJIE.org]
“Though media and advocacy efforts have largely focused on the extreme and intolerable abuse cases involving Black boys,” begins Monique W. Morris in the introduction to her recently published book, “a growing number of cases involving Black girls have surfaced to reveal what many of us have known for centuries: Black girls are also directly impacted by criminalizing policies and practices that render them vulnerable to abuse, exploitation, dehumanization, and, under the worst circumstances,...
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Daily Meditations for Calming Your Angry Mind [PsychCentral.com]
This is, put simply, one of the best books on mindfulness that I have read. In Daily Meditations for Calming Your Angry Mind: Mindfulness Practices to Free Yourself from Anger, Jeffrey Brantley and Wendy Millstine provide about forty mindfulness exercises to help people focus on their special need or challenge regarding anger. They help us use various meditations to move past anger and instead respond to things that upset us with calm and kindness. Brantley and...
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Dorothy and Steven Halley will this week's Special Guests on "Breaking the Silence" Radio Show
This Sunday evening's "Breaking the Silence with Dr. Gregory Williams" special guests will be Dorothy and Steven Halley from 8:00 to 9:00 PM CST. Their over 25 years of professional life together will be discussed including the River of Cruelty model explaining how cruelty is passed from person to person and generation to generation. This model helps expand the Adverse Childhood Experiences conversation. Many other topics including their work with domestic violence and helping bring...
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Dr. Claudia Gold: Empathy & Listening as ACE-Informed Practice
"You are absolutely not doomed from having ACEs."
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Dr. Dan Siegel: What Hearing “Yes” Does to Your Child’s Brain (mindful.org)
Yes is more than a word. It’s a state of being, of relating, and a gateway to curiosity, growth, and resilience, according to internationally recognized educator, neuropsychiatrist, and bestselling author Dr. Dan Siegel. He and co-author Tina Payne Bryson have written a new book that offers parents everywhere a roadmap for developing and growing their child’s inner spark and internal compass to guide them throughout their lives. It’s called, “ YES Brain: How to Cultivate Courage, Curiosity,...
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Dr. Gabor Mate speaking at ACEs to Assets in Scotland June 11, 2019 (https://www.youtube.com)
The latest gift from @ACEAwareNation #ACEsToAssets conference. @DrGaborMate talking about self-regulation, self-acceptance, self-healing, forgiveness, my favourite #AliceMiller, and good ways to intervene for child welfare. Gems of wisdom. So thankful for the access generously provided for those of us unable to attend in person.
My biggest take aways: encouragement to "Keep doing what you're doing..." and validation that historical "evil is an emanation of the traumatized human unconscious."
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Educational Trauma: Examples From Testing to the School-to-Prison Pipeline (Dr. Lee-Anne Gray)
Educational Trauma is the inadvertent and unintentional perpetration and perpetuation of harm in schools. The use of standards and the normal distribution or the bell curve to rank students and identify those at risk of developing problems later is born in the same theories and practices as eugenics. Eugenics practices thrive in schools and feed the school-to-prison pipeline, which is the most extreme example of Educational Trauma. This book ambitiously aims to open a feld of inquiry into...
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Emotional Agility as a Tool to Help Teens Manage Their Feelings (ww2.kqed.org)
“Emotions are absolutely fundamental to our long-term success – our grit, our ability to self-regulate, to negotiate conflict and to solve problems. They influence our relationships and our ability to be effective in our jobs,” said David, author of the book “ Emotional Agility ” and an instructor at Harvard Medical School. “Children who grow up into adults who are not able to navigate emotions effectively will be at a major disadvantage. ” Research out of Stanford University found that...
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Emotional Sobriety: From Relationship Trauma to Resilience and Balance, by Tian Dayton, Ph.D.
I was checking out some new reading material on Amazon when I stumbled on a book review of Emotional Sobriety , in which the reviewer included author Tian Dayton's definition of codependency: "Codependency, I feel, is fear-based and is a predictable set of qualities and behaviors that grow out of feeling anxious and therefore hypervigilant in our intimate relationships. It is also reflective of an incomplete process of individuation....Though codependency seems to be about caretaking or...
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Eyes Are Never Quiet
From our recent book: Eyes are Never Discipline is not something we do to children. It is something we help them to build from within. Far too often school district discipline policies and procedures equate discipline with forms of punishment. For many schools, the code of conduct is made of long lists of possible behavioral infractions and the associated consequences (i.e., punishments). To properly engage with this debate, an overview of terminology is needed. “Discipline,” on the one...
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Her life changed when she focused on self-care. Now she's helping others do the same. (upworthy.com)
In 1996, Tomasa Macapinlac was in her early 30s, very successful, and working for one of the tech world's biggest companies. She was also extremely exhausted. No doubt, many Americans have felt these same burnout feelings, which can have real impacts on physical health. In fact, stressful jobs are a known cause of high blood pressure . Of course, everyone is different and self-care is going to vary from person to person. For some, it's about following a thorough daily routine. For others,...
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Improve Birth and Perinatal Outcomes with a Trauma Sensitive Approach
The Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health is excited to bring together 10 talented practitioners to explore the Trauma Informed Practices that help improve birth outcomes and support human development right from the very start. The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (1998) launched the importance of trauma and trauma informed care in our health and educational systems. We suddenly had a measure of how early experiences in childhood could correlate with adult disease.
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Interview with Hilary Jacobs Hendel
I first came across Hilary Jacobs Hendel’s work when I read a New York Times article in which Hendel, a practicing psychotherapist and writer, described the “Change Triangle,” an upside down triangle that explains how emotions work. The Change Triangle is also a roadmap that teaches us how we can use emotions as guides to both heal trauma and attain a more vital and calm state of being. As a follower of Hendel’s blog—and an avid user of the Change Triangle to understand my own inner...
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It Didn't Start With You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle [WAMC.org]
In It Didn't Start With You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle , Mark Wolynn, director of the Family Constellation Institute and creator of the Core Language Approach, shows how the traumas of our parents, grandparents, and great grandparents can live in our anxious words, fears, behaviors and unexplained physical symptoms—what scientists are now calling inherited family trauma, or “secondary PTSD.” Even if the person who suffered the original trauma has...
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LGBTQ + Youth - a book reviewed in Journal of GLBT Family Studies
LGBTQ youth are most vulnerable to the school to prison pipeline, which is a very severe ACE (Snapp et al, 2015.) To combat this problem, I wrote a clinical manual for educators and mental health clinicians. The book addresses the need for sensitive engagement with, and advocacy of, LGBTQ+ youth. LGBTQ+ Youth: A Guided Workbook to Support Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity was released in June 2018, endorsed by Jenny Finney Boylan, and #1 NEW RELEASE on Amazon in Teen and Young Adult...
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LOOK FOR ME Video Now on YouTube
Video of the first-ever performances of LOOK FOR ME, the musical about healing from trauma, is now available on YouTube. Look For Me was created to challenge one of the most pervasive myths about trauma and PTSD: that the damage done by traumatic experiences is a life sentence. The video now available is from performances of a 25-minute excerpt of the show presented at the New York New Works Theatre Festival in September, 2018. The excerpt captures the full storyline of the main character,...
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Meet the ‘Monsters:’ Documentary Looks at California Juvenile Debate [JJIE.org]
One’s kicking himself over an unrequited lifelong crush. One dreams of being a Navy SEAL. Another leads you on a mocking tour of his new home. They’d seem like typical teenage boys — if they weren’t awaiting trial for violent crimes. Juan Gamez, Antonio Hernandez and Jarad Nava are the youthful offenders at the heart of “ They Call Us Monsters ,” a new documentary that follows their lives in a Los Angeles juvenile detention center. They’re held in a special wing of the lockup reserved for...
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Michigan Trauma Informed Education
We are working with PESI, a leader in professional development, to offer a full day training in trauma informed education. This content follows the content of our book on Supporting and Educating Traumatized Students. We will be in Michigan April 19, (Sterling Heights) 20, (LIvonia) and 21 (Ann Arbor) See the attached brochure If this goes well they will continue to offer this next year. Hope to see you there
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"Is That Me Yelling?" A new book for parents and professionals
I am happy to announce that my book, "Is That Me Yelling? is out in bookstores and online. It's been a labor of love to write about ways parents can become more familiar with themselves as they attempt to respond, rather than over-react, to their...
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Our Encounters with Suicide (July 2013)
Our Encounters with Suicide, edited by Alec Grant, Judith Haire, Fran Biley and Brendan Stone. From the book web site : The collection brings together a range of voices on the theme of suicide — those who have been suicidal, alongside the...
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Saving Normal: An Insider's Revolt Against Out-of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life by Dr. Allen Frances (2013)
"From "the most powerful psychiatrist in America" (New York Times) and "the man who wrote the book on mental illness" (Wired), a deeply fascinating and urgently important critique of the widespread medicalization of normality. Anyone living a full,...
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The Development of the Person: The Minnesota Study of Risk and Adaptation from Birth to Adulthood
The definitive work on a groundbreaking study, this essential volume provides a coherent picture of the complexity of development from birth to adulthood. Explicated are both the methodology of the Minnesota study and its far-reaching contributions to...
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"Unfinished Conversation: Healing From Suicide and Loss"
Robert E. Lesoine's best friend Larry took his life by suicide on October 15, 2005. Although Lesoine knew Larry was struggling with feelings of disappointment, dejection, and loss, along with the return of debilitating pain associated with a past...
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The King of Average is a Children's Fantasy Adventure to Find a Way out of Childhood Neglect
“This delightful, pun-filled allegory tells the story of a neglected boy who is convinced that he has no worth. ...the book is fast-moving and funny, with a touch of sadness. It will appeal to adults as much as YA readers, reminding all that average is not easy since everyone is special in his or her own way.” —BookLife Prize for Fiction
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The New Science of Empathy and Empath (soundstrue.com)
Empathy doesn't make you a sentimental softy without discernment. It allows you to keep your heart open to foster tolerance and understanding. In my new book The Empath's Survival Guide , I discuss the following intriguing scientific explanations of empathy and empaths. These will help us more deeply understand the power of empathy so we can utilize and honor it in our lives. The Mirror Neuron System Researchers have discovered a specialized group of brain cells that are responsible for...
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The Relentless School Nurse: The Angel and the Assassin by Donna Jackson Nakazawa
Author, journalist, researcher, science detective are just a few of the descriptors I can use to depict Donna Jackson Nakazawa. You may recognize her name from prior books, notably, Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology And How You Can Heal . Donna is a gifted science storyteller. She translates complex biological processes seamlessly and describes them in relatable terms that are memorable. The Angel and the Assassin is the story of how neuroscience has been turned on...
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Trauma-informed Healthcare Approaches: A Guide for Primary Care
Our recently published book, Trauma-informed Healthcare Approaches was written to share basic principles of trauma-informed care and ACEs science with general medical practitioners and administrators. As the recent #METOO movement has demonstrated, interpersonal trauma is widespread. A growing literature has demonstrated the impact of traumatic experiences on mental, physical health and wellbeing. Trauma survivors commonly access healthcare but their histories and needs are commonly...
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UPDATED Information Regarding Broken Places, Cracked Up, Paper Tigers & Resilience: Hosting a Film Screening to Start or Grow an ACEs Initiative: How-to Guide
Movie screenings of documentaries, such as Paper Tigers or Resilience are popular ways to introduce communities to ACEs science. Cissy White provides details about how to put on a screening event.
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Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do (Issues of Our Time) [by Claude M Steele]
From the book's page on Amazon : The acclaimed social psychologist offers an insider’s look at his research and groundbreaking findings on stereotypes and identity. Claude M. Steele, who has been called “one of the few great social...
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Why I believe Gregory Williams, and his book, Shattered By The Darkness, will help save lives and revolutionize healthcare.
When you first hear about it, it sounds unlikely, fact that something that happened to someone in utero, at the age of two months, or four years, or any time in childhood, is what is killing them as an adult, or making them want to die, or making them want to hurt themselves or others. Yet the connection between childhood trauma and adult disease, mental illness, addiction, suicide, violence – most all of society’s ills – is as irrefutable as the myriad truths revealed about it in the...
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Why Intentionally Building Empathy Is More Important Now Than Ever (kqed.org)
Those in helping professions like teaching, social work, or medicine can buffer themselves from burnout and “compassion fatigue” with self-care strategies, including meditation and social support . A study of nurses in acute mental health settings found staff support groups helped buffer the nurses, but only if they were structured to minimize negative communication and focused on talking about challenges in constructive ways. English Professor Cris Beam also studies empathy and wrote a book...
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Your Survival Instinct Is Killing You: Retrain Your Brain to Conquer Fear and Build Resilience by Mark Schoen
[Editor's note: This book was published in 2013, but I just heard about it. I've only scanned it, but it looks pretty interesting.] This is the review on Amazon.com: Thanks to technology, we live in a world that’s much more comfortable than ever before. But here’s the paradox: our tolerance for discomfort is at an all-time low. And as we wrestle with a sinking “discomfort threshold,” we increasingly find ourselves at the mercy of our primitive instincts and reactions that can perpetuate...
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Coming of Age on Zoloft: How Antidepressants Cheered Us Up, Let Us Down, and Changed Who We Are by Sharpe (2012)
"A compelling and troubling exploration of a generation raised on antidepressants, and a book that combines expansive interviews with substantive research-based reporting, Coming of Age on Zoloft is a vitally important and immediately engrossing study...
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Mistreated: Why we think we're getting good health care and why we usually are wrong. The connection to Adverse Childhood Events
Mistreated: Why we think we are getting good health care and why we usually are wrong and the connection to Adverse Childhood Events Over the past two years, I have written a column for Forbes. On several occasions, I have highlighted the medical consequences of Adverse Childhood Events (ACE's) and Intimate Partner Violence (IPV). The data is clear. Both if not recognized and treated produce negative health care outcomes. Both are very prevalent and asking about each should be standard for...
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Movie Review: "My Life as a Zucchini"
An animated short film released in 2016 that is 68 minutes in length and deals with childhood trauma. The main character, Icare (French for Icarus), who is nicknamed Zucchini by his single, alcoholic, abusive mother, accidentally causes her death and becomes an orphan who is sent to live in a foster home with other troubled children. The movie allows these children to express their feelings of pure loss and trauma, their loneliness and isolation from their families, and their attempts to...
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My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard
I’ve just finished reading the third volume of My Struggle, by Karl Ove Knausgaard, a Norwegian whose six-volume memoir recounts in minute detail his traumatic experiences as a child and later as a husband and father of four. The fourth volume...
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Native children will be seen in ‘Fry Bread’ (Indian Country Today)
‘Fry Bread’ is the top-seller on Amazon’s children's Native American Books list When Kevin Maillard, Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, became a parent, he looked around the children’s book landscape and noticed there were very few written about Native people today. In fact, he said when he first started thinking about writing a children’s book in 2012, only six out of 3,600 were by or written about Native people. So he decided to write a children’s book of his own and “Fry Bread: A Native...
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New Book: Crazy Was All I Ever Knew By Alice M. Kenny (pseudonym)
To this day, I still think of my childhood home as "the crazy house." Like me, millions of adult Americans are living with the effects of the precarious childhoods they experienced as offspring of mentally ill parents. If you are one of them, you can no doubt relate to my book. As a child, you most likely lived in a crazy house of your own. As an adult, you’ve probably retained and may even relive memories of your tumultuous upbringing. Crazy Was All I Ever Knew combines memoir with...
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New book release “The Trauma Banquet”: The truth about how to overcome adversity
I am a Professor of Clinical Psychology at The University of Queensland, Australia. I recently released my memoir “The Trauma Banquet”. In this book I share about my ACEs and how I learnt to be resilient in the context of their enduring pervasive echoes. I have been practicing psychology for almost 40 years and I have engaged thousands of clients in psychotherapy. As a full professor I have also been teaching psychology and conducting research, which has focused on building resilience in the...
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NEW MEMOIR BY A PSYCHOLOGIST WHO IS A SEXUAL ABUSE SURVIVOR
Hello Friends, My name is Carolee Tran and I'm a psychologist who is a survivor of sexual abuse. I teach at UC Davis and also have a private practice in mid-town Sacramento. I specialize in the treatment of trauma. I am writing to announce the publication of my book “The Gifts of Adversity: Reflections of a Psychologist, Refugee, and Survivor of Sexual Abuse. ” I felt compelled to write this book to help others- refugees, sexual abuse, and trauma survivors. I also felt a deep sense of...