When writing a book about trauma, one is highly aware of standing on the shoulders of giants, and this is uppermost in my mind because I have the privilege of interviewing many of the pioneers of trauma research for the annual Trauma Super Conference.
My conversations with such experts as Dr. Peter Levine (Somatic Experiencing®), Professor Stephen Porges (Polyvagal Theory), Dr. Gabor Maté (Compassionate Inquiry®), Thomas Hübl (Collective Trauma), and Dr. Arielle Schwartz (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, or EMDR, and Therapeutic Yoga), to name just a few, have impacted me significantly.
While planning the content of this book, I had to make some sensitive choices. It was tempting to produce a ‘greatest hits’ of the extraordinary body of work in this field, but I chose not to for several reasons. Firstly, there are some excellent books and blogs that already do this job well; and secondly, I wanted to create a practical and effective roadmap for change informed by my own personal experience and 20 years in clinical practice.
Given that my psychology-based online RESET Program® is 30 hours in duration, and that my team and I have recorded more than 250 hours of interviews for our Trauma Super Conference series, my challenge in writing this book was to prevent it from becoming overly complex or pulling in too many directions at once. Therefore, may I ask you to assume that the omission of others’ ideas and theories is made in full awareness of and respect for their work. And in the spirit of delivering a guide with tools that you can use today to create change in your life and reset the impacts of your trauma.