Tagged With "substance use"
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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 Documentary About Breaking the Cycle of Trauma is Launching This Fall!
We are thrilled to announce the premiere of Wrestling Ghosts , a documentary about breaking the cycle of trauma, at the LA Film festival on Sept. 27th. “Incredible. Haunting and strange and beautiful and incredibly moving.” -Dan Cogan, Founder Impact Partners Wrestling Ghosts follows the epic inner journey of Kim, a young mother who, over two heartbreaking and inspiring years, battles the traumas from her past in order to create a new present and future for her and her family. In this...
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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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ACEs Validated My Teaching Experience
When I first heard about the CDC-Kaiser Permanente ACE Study , it felt like a light bulb had actually gone on. Finally, FINALLY, someone was validating what I saw every single day teaching in East Oakland. For eight years, I taught at an elementary school in the most violent part of Oakland , the part that the police called the “Killing Zone.” The kids in my class had seen friends, neighbors, and family members shot or stabbed, and routinely hid in bathrooms and closets when gang fights...
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Anna, Age Eight: The data-driven prevention of childhood trauma and maltreatment
ENDING AN EPIDEMIC OF CHILDHOOD TRAUMA REQUIRES COURAGE, COMPASSION AND A PLAN. ANNA, AGE EIGHT PROVIDES THE SOLUTION. NEW BOOK ANNA AGE EIGHT: THE DATA-DRIVEN PREVENTION OF CHILDHOOD TRAUMA AND MALTREATMENT By Katherine Ortega Courtney, PhD and Dominic Cappello If one in eight children suffered from an unknown but debilitating virus, outrage would boil, editorials would harangue public officials, and agencies would mobilize to counter the threat. The CDC would scramble resources to develop...
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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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Books by Category
The following books have been recommended by ACEs Connection members. Categories (see below) Brain and Neurology Child Abuse Child and Human Development Children’s Books Depression Domestic Violence Foster Care Grief Law Enforcement and...
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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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Books Inspiring Us: Being the Change [yesmagazine.org]
It can be hard to find hope in climate change mitigation. But that’s exactly what NASA climate scientist Peter Kalmus does in Being the Change. While he’s not your typical government scientist—he commutes by bicycle, meditates, grows and exchanges food—he does approach his life and global warming with the solution-driven focus of one. To Kalmus, individual actions matter: His family cut their climate impact to one-tenth the national average. He finds hope in the data—cutting out some things,...
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"Breaking the Silence" Warriors of HOPE Series Concludes This Sunday with a 2-Hour LIVE Worldwide Webcast Event!
The “Breaking the Silence with Dr. Gregory Williams” radio program will be featuring a SPECIAL LIVE 2-HOUR WORLDWIDE WEBCAST this Sunday evening, May 10 th from 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM Central Time. This event will be a special conclusion to their WARRIORS OF HOPE series featuring all the guest from the entire series together for one life-changing webcast. The guests are some of the most sought after authors, experts and speakers on the various topics of trauma, abuse, and resilience in the...
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Broken Places after Screening Summary & Resources
Almost 2,500 ACEs Connection members signed up to watch the Broken Places documentary online on March 21st, which was made available for Vimeo streaming all day. We are grateful to KPJR Films for sharing this documentary and helping make this event happen (special thanks for the hard work of @lynn waymer, Keely Badger, @Gail Kennedy, and @Carey Sipp. Following the event, we had a one hour chat with featured guests and many of you have asked...
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Building a Collection of Books for Children, Teens and Adults
The Drug Endangered Children’s Initiative is grateful to our community partners who shared their favorite book titles with us, especially Joanne Peterson from Learn to Cope and Gina Williams from East Bridgewater Public Schools for these suggestions. We look forward to discovering and sharing more resources in the new year, please comment with your favorites.
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Can Upstream Prevention Make the US Safe from Violent Crime?
New book on Science and Secrets of Ending Violent crime uses the best evidence available to conclude that the US has the knowledge to dramatically reduce violent crime. It shows to how to persuade the public and politicians to make a major shift from mass incarceration to smart investments in proven ¨upstream¨ solutions before crime happens. Action would save thousands of lives, avoid unnecessary trauma and protect women and children.
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Children, Race, and Power: The Book That Continues to Read
I recently read Markowitz and Rosner’s Children, Race, and Power . This book is a recount of Dr.’s Kenneth and Mamie Clark Northside Center in Harlem in the late 1940’s. Their journey while valiant was met with much heartbreak. Fast forward 70 years and it doesn’t appear that much has changed. Dollars continue to be wasted, and the contentment with the status quo and lack of outcomes seems a close resemblance to today. We can say we have the best intentions and well-meaning hearts, but...
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Crime and Punishment in America, by Elliott Currie
This book--a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize--is for readers interested in the criminal justice system and how poverty, abuse, and neglect early in life shape our future citizens and can predict, in part, whether or not they will become the perpetrators of violent crime. According to author Elliott Currie, to prevent violent crime and create a more peaceful society, the first priority is to address the roots of violence and invest resources in the prevention of child abuse and neglect. He...
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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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Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead (brainpickings.org)
Researcher and thought leader Dr. Brené Brown offers a powerful new vision that encourages us to dare greatly: to embrace vulnerability and imperfection, to live wholeheartedly, and to courageously engage in our lives. In Daring Greatly , Dr. Brown challenges everything we think we know about vulnerability. Based on twelve years of research, she argues that vulnerability is not weakness, but rather our clearest path to courage, engagement, and meaningful connection. The book that Dr. Brown’s...
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"Don't Try This Alone" on Amazon
Don't Try This Alone: The Silent Epidemic of Attachment Disorder" on Amazon 2-28-18; Kindle out soon... http://www.amazon.com/dp/1976120128 Thank you to my ACEsConnection community for all your support for the last five years during the daunting experience of documenting this story... Kathy was an overachiever—an economist, technical writer, and classical singer married 27 years to her college sweetheart. It looked like Kathy was fine. But deep within her hid a pain from infancy so severe...
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Dr. Anthony Biglan- The Nurture Effect and recent post
Hi there everyone- please check out Dr. Biglan's book The Nurture Effect: How the Science of Human Behavior Can Improve Our Lives and Our World. Very practical! As well Dr. Biglan offered the following blog post recently that regardless of your political orientation I hope that you will be able to find value in the core message. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/an-evidence-based-strategy-for-bringing-everyone-together_us_587bad19e4b03e071c14fdf7 Additionally if you haven't had the...
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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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Dr. Robert Lustig on ‘The Hacking of the American Mind’ [kqed.org]
Our addiction to smartphones and social media is largely driven by corporate profit. That’s according to Dr. Robert Lustig, who says modern technology is designed to trigger the same reactions as a drug. While we might feel pleasure when we open our phones or eat sugary snacks, Lustig argues, we aren’t experiencing true happiness. The UCSF researcher joins us in-studio to talk about his latest book, “The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies...
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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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Empathy, Stress, Neural Science – the Movie! (socialjusticesolutions.org)
Here is the short, half day course on Empathy, Stress (Reduction) and Neural Science delivered at the Joe Palombo Center for Neuroscience at the Institute for Clinical Social Work on December 03, 2016. The session engages each of the following modules in the discussion segment, including suggested readings. Except for the first two topics, we can take them in any order and the participants will get to select: This is your mind on neuroscience – mirror neurons: do they exist, and if not, so...
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Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (evictedbook.com)
From Harvard sociologist and MacArthur "Genius" Matthew Desmond, a landmark work of scholarship and reportage that will forever change the way we look at poverty in America . In this brilliant, heartbreaking book, Matthew Desmond takes us into the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee to tell the story of eight families on the edge. Even in the most desolate areas of American cities, evictions used to be rare. But today, most poor renting families are spending more than half of their income on...
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Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief (David Kessler)
In this groundbreaking new work, David Kessler—an expert on grief and the coauthor with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross of the iconic On Grief and Grieving —journeys beyond the classic five stages to discover a sixth stage: meaning. In 1969, Elisabeth Kübler Ross first identified the stages of dying in her transformative book On Death and Dying. Decades later, she and David Kessler wrote the classic On Grief and Grieving , introducing the stages of grief with the same transformative pragmatism and...
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Healing ACE's
Healing Childhood Trauma I’d like to thank each member of ACE’s Connection for all your work helping and supporting children through various activities and organizations. You are clearly a collection of people who care about the children of the world. It is in recognition of these efforts that I ask you to consider two books on healing childhood trauma. They represent a life-time partnership dedicated to raising and educating healthy children. Secondly, I’d like to ask you for a word of...
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Healing Developmental Trauma
Last week I posted an article about the Harvard study on happiness, which found that strong social connections are the primary driver of happiness. No surprise there. What struck me, however, is how these findings relate to ACEs. I had just finished reading Healing Developmental Trauma: How Early Trauma Affects Self-Regulation, Self-Image, and the Capacity for Relationship , which addresses this very issue. From the back cover: “Although it may seem that people suffer from an endless number...
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Healing Justice: Holistic Self-Care for Change Makers
Announcing the publication of a new book, Healing Justice: Holistic Self-Care for Change Makers , published this month by Oxford University Press. Here's a brief description: "In the context of global oppression, intergenerational trauma, burnout, and public services retrenchment, this book offers a framework, critical inquiries, case studies, and practices for social workers, counselors, activists, and other helping professionals. Drawing from the East-West modalities of mindfulness and...
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Healing Our Divided Society: 50 years after Kerner, racial and ethnic discrimination still holds children back (childtrends.org)
Fifty years after the release of the Kerner Commission’s report , Child Trends’ President Carol Emig reflects on how much has changed and how much remains to be done to realize the Commission’s call for “common opportunity for all.” Emig notes that while the lives of many children today are better than the lives of children 50 years ago, serious racial and ethnic inequities persist and work remains to address discrimination that often has deep and overlooked historical roots. Such work will...
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Healing the Heart of Democracy: Parker Palmer on Holding the Tension of Our Differences in a Creative Way (brainpickings.org)
“Full engagement in the movement called democracy requires no less of us than full engagement in the living of our own lives.” In a sentiment that calls to mind Leonard Cohen’s wonderful insistence that “a revelation in the heart” is the only force that moves minds toward mutual understanding, Palmer considers the deeper rationale for his title: “Heart” comes from the Latin cor and points not merely to our emotions but to the core of the self, that center place where all of our ways of...
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Helping Children To Thrive Despite Early Struggles [AnnDouglas.net]
“The beauty of being human is that we constantly evolve and change. We have experiences every day that can alter the course of our lives to help us rebuild what was broken and rediscover what was lost. We, as humans, are never irreparably broken because our brains and bodies are built to change and adapt. And young children are often able to change more easily than the rest of us, when makes the earliest years of life the most full of hope. The key to that hope is in relationships.” - Sara...
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Helping Kids Find the Wisdom in Overwhelm
In an unprecedented global shutdown, many of us, especially without the noise and distraction of everyday life, are facing intensified, often destabilizing feelings. And that includes kids—whether they’re able to say so or not.
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A conversation with Dr. Jess P. Shatkin, author of "Born to Be Wild: Why Teens Take Risks, and How We Can Help Keep Them Safe" [greatergood.berkeley.edu]
Teenagers. We’ve all been one at one time or another, and we probably remember how fraught those years were. Growing up is risky, there’s no way around it. But why did we, as teens, get pulled toward taking dangerous chances in the first place? And, now that we’ve grown up, how can we help the next generation of teens develop good judgment, especially when whatever we say seems to fall on deaf ears? These questions are at the heart of Dr. Jess P. Shatkin’s new book, Born to Be Wild .
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How to Succeed in College and Life [GreaterGood.Berkeley.edu]
You should get some exercise, eat healthy, and sleep enough. You should be supportive of your friends. You should do what you’re passionate about. We’ve all gotten such well-meaning advice, and it’s good advice. But there’s one problem: People rarely tell us how to achieve these worthy goals. Luckily, there is a new book that gives you the “how,” and will help you not just survive, but thrive. U Thrive: How to Succeed in College (and Life) by Daniel Lerner and Alan Schlechter—two New York...
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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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Internal Family Systems Therapy (The Guilford Family Therapy Series) by Richard C. Schwartz
Although not the first to propose that we all have an interior assembly of sub personalities, or "parts," which make up an internal family system (IFS), Richard Schwartz presents the IFS model in an extremely accessible way. He describes how, when the self is threatened by trauma, overwhelm, fright, and so on, these "parts" focus on protecting us from harm. I read this book last year; I found Schwartz's discussion of how we can cultivate compassion for our own seemingly negative traits--say,...
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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's Not Always Depression was the Winner of the 2018 Best Book Award in the Mental Health/Psychology Category
To prevent and treat trauma, we all benefit from receiving a basic education in how emotions work in the mind and body. Sadly, we don't get this education in our formal schooling. So we must take it upon ourselves to learn.
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'Just Show Up': Sheryl Sandberg On How To Help Someone Who's Grieving (npr.org)
Two years ago, life was good for Sheryl Sandberg. The Facebook senior executive and mother of two had a best-selling book ( Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead ) and she and her husband, Dave Goldberg, decided to take a vacation. But on that vacation, Goldberg collapsed at the gym from heart failure and died. He was 47 years old. Sandberg went through a period of darkness after her husband's death. She turned to professionals and friends for help getting through it, and now she's...
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KPJR FILMS Presents June's Book Club Selection & Author Tweet Up!
The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook - What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Love, and Healing By Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D. What happens when a young brain is traumatized? How does terror, abuse, or disaster affect a child's mind -- and how can that mind recover? Child psychiatrist Dr. Bruce D. Perry has helped children faced with unimaginable horror: genocide survivors, murder witnesses, kidnapped teenagers, and victims of...
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Latest ACEs science research from PubMed, February 12, 2019
Hair cortisol in the perinatal period mediates associations between maternal adversity and disrupted maternal interaction in early infancy. Nyström-Hansen M, Andersen MS, Khoury JE, Davidsen K, Gumley A, Lyons-Ruth K, MacBeth A, Harder S. Dev Psychobiol . 2019 Feb 12. doi: 10.1002/dev.21833. [Epub ahead of print] PMID: 30747450 elect item 3074 Child maltreatment is mediating long-term consequences of household dysfunction in a population representative sample. Clemens V, Berthold O, Witt A,...
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Listening to Killers: Bringing Developmental Psychology into the Courtroom in Murder Cases
Only 1/1000 have an ACE score of 9 or 10. In his new book, James Garbarino, shows us how we as society create killers through overwhelming ACEs . He is empathetic and paints a portrait of the reality most killers are...
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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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Mindfulness at Work: How to Avoid Stress, Achieve More, and Enjoy Life! [By Stephen McKenzie]
From the book's page on Amazon: Mindfulness isn't anything that we think; it's what we don't think. Mindfulness isn't something that other people do; it's something that we all do. Mindfulness is an ancient, life-enhancing, healing technique...
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Neurofeedback in the Treatment of Developmental Trauma: Calming the Fear-Driven Brain Hardcover – April 21, 2014
Review “This is a truly groundbreaking book. Sebern Fisher combines a mastery of neurofeedback with a real knack for applying neuroscience to do nothing less than lay the groundwork for a new, powerful, mind-brain approach to the most...