Trauma & Dissociation discussion

What trauma/dissociation books have you read in 2024?
Take some latitude with what fits in this topic.
Broaden our horizons.
What is the story in a nutshell?
Did you you like it?

Mmm... given that I've been researching for my book the past couple years, I've read a BUNCH. You could actually see the bibliography for the book on its website, truecampbell.com. But recently I finished Karen Armstrong's The Spiral Staircase, and she is clearly a trauma survivor. Toward the end of her second memoir, she writes about how she gradually realized how critical compassion is in understanding ourselves and others. That insight dovetailed with what trauma expert Peter A. Levine explores in somatic healing, and what Dr. Bessell van der Kolk, Gabor Mate, Dr. Bruce Perry emphasize. In addiction/alcoholism/codependent treatment, compassion for ourselves and others is also key to recovery. I just finished Peter A. Levine's new book, a memoir about his journey healing from the trauma of rape and other traumatic incidents. He writes with raw honesty and vulnerability. We don't have nearly as many memoirs by men about abuse and trauma as women, and I valued his perspective. Trauma response in many ways is universal to the human condition.

Interesting, Catherine. It does strike me, now that you mention it, that compassion is a harder ingredient to find than it should be. First, someone has to be willing to talk about their trauma. Sometimes that takes a while. Then someone has to be willing to listen. Judith Herman Trauma & Recovery notes how people are so wont to turn away from trauma. And then, they have to be willing to not just endure a story, but actually respond to it. It seems trivial to simply hear a trauma story, as opposed to being the starring role, but it’s plainly evidently that’s really hard for people who haven’t faced adversity. Even therapists fail to respond … to say anything at all most of the time, except perhaps robotically saying, mmhmm, … and how does that make you feel? I could buy a little voice-activated duck to say that if that’s all it took. I should patent that.
Anyway … yes, in hindsight, compassion does seem some sort of exceedingly rare “indulgence” that makes a difference. Thanks for that.

LOL! Yes, you should patent that. I have Herman's book too, and your insight is spot on. In my own recovery, cultivating compassion for myself came many years in, and remains a bit of challenge today.

Other members of this group? Please weigh in on our June read or this post. :)

Currently reading What is the What?

The book is written by Dave Eggers, but it is the memoir of Achak Deng, one of the “lost boys” of Sudan. Militia forces massacred villages and larger towns across Sudan, and the lost boys/girls are those who successfully ran for their lives, ultimately to neighboring countries.

I sought this book out because I sat next to a guy on a plane out of Omaha many years ago, and he told me his story. I’m sure he doesn’t tell everyone. I asked the right question in the right way, and it happened. It is probably rare for me to have more than a few words with someone sitting next to me, but I have gotten the primary trauma story out of a couple people I’ve sat next to, including this guy. Can you imagine that? It amazes me how the traumatized can find each other, … and that such discussions can possibly happen on a plane, or wherever we discover each other. He was a lost boy of Sudan. His story was unbelievable.

Wow. You were honored. I have said in the past to people who have shared their trauma with me, that it's like we recognized each other, like we grew up in the same family with different last names. The book sounds fascinating and heartbreaking.

Recent article in the New York Times about trauma researcher/author Judith Herman: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/24/he...

NYT is behind a paywall. Allegedly, I can gift a limited number of free articles. If needed, try this link:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/24/he...

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini


It seems to revolve around traumatic event, where the author is basically so ashamed of what he did or didn’t do that he alienates his best friend … his virtual brother… and drives him out of his life.

The Women by Kristin Hannah (2024)


This fiction revolves around a young woman who joins the military as a nurse to serve in Vietnam. I really liked The Nightingale by this author, … but not The Four Winds which devolved to an utter hell slog. Ultimately, I didn’t like this one. There were two issues I had.

My primary issue was about the portrayal of PTSD. I’m not sure what mass market books purport to portray PTSD. Maybe there are many but I can’t think of one. There are a number that deal with traumatic experiences, but not usually PTSD. Perhaps the first Rambo movie tried to, but I can’t think of a best-seller book. But, if one tries, I feel strong that they should get it right. Perhaps half the book was about PTSD of the nurse character. As written, it rubbed me all wrong. Perhaps nurses did suffer horrible PTSD. I am not in any way discounting that reality. But in this book, it seemed a random mashup fiction by someone who has no understanding whatsoever of trauma. The character just randomly gets mad and acts out adversely. Trying not to spoil with specifics. I felt there was a total divorce between cause and effect. I think tangible acting out on trauma is the tip of the iceberg, following the buildup of the undersea majority of the iceberg—a tremendous unseen volume of intrusive memories and/or perhaps being triggered by specific things that takes them back to life threatening experiences. Or if not the threat of death, then the threat of a substantial and enduring quality of life change, like losing a leg, or a parent … things that have had a major role in your life, … not accidently dropping the ice cream cone you bought 3 minutes ago, or the injury of another person you just met. This revisited experience is actual experience … not a random nightmare of something that never happened. It is generally not just an experience where death was a nonzero probability, like … driving down the street every day, but a probable death experience where you think the chance is over 50% that you will die. You don’t just worry that you might possibly die, but you expect the most likely outcome is to die. That’s how I think of it. In this book, the author whips out an exhaustive laundry list of bad behaviors like a PTSD bad behavior parade, … but these behaviors aren’t credibly provoked by a whole iceberg under the surface dealing with intrusive thoughts of actual experiences. The story has acting out behavior just occurring at random. That’s not at all how I understand it to work. It has no tidal wave of intrusive thoughts that prompts any and all means of escape. No connecting of any dots. It's just Chapter X: Today she woke up and decided to ___. It felt like a misleading portrayal as if PTSD is due to a screw that has just been knocked loose by the war, and these maladaptive behaviors just … happen … like an engine randomly misfiring. I … hated it based on this misportrayal of trauma. Is this what people think? I, for one, thought it was utterly asinine. People writing reviews are like, wow, this was “deep” and I’ve never read about trauma like that. Now they all have the loose screw, broken brain, random misbehavior model. Thanks for this soon to be widespread total misunderstanding Kristin Hannah.

Just one person’s opinion. Most people seem to rate it very highly.

As always, thanks Steve. I won't bother reading this one.

The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman (1991)


Read in April 2024, this graphic novel (comic book) has the author interviewing his Jewish father about his real life experience of the holocaust in WWII. The were swept up into a ghetto, sent by train to prison camps, and people died--the whole awful nine yards. The motif of Jews as mice and Germans as cats and "lower volume" narrative maybe makes tough material more accessible to the younger or more sensitive. Some of the content parallels Elie Wiesel's Night, but it is tamer, and from an adult perspective. Still upsetting. The honest portrayal of his father's dysfunctional post-traumatic behavior is ... constructive, ... good motivation to seek therapy. It was actually a really good book overall.

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson (2014)


This is easily the best of 60+ books I’ve read so far in 2024. It is a non-fiction story dealing with racial injustice in Alabama, and is a sobering reality check to the idyllic notion of Atticus Finch defending an innocent black man in To Kill a Mockingbird. Racial trauma. Yes.

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes (1966)


This fictional narrative shows how people are mistreated when their intelligence is either well below normal or way above normal. Read this when young. Helped me quite a bit. The novella version is probably better of the two. Longer doesn’t really help.

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption
by Laura Hillenbrand (2010)

A biography of a WWII B-24 bombardier who went down in the Pacific and survived many days lost at sea only to be taken prisoner, and subjected to mistreatment.