Unbroken: The Trauma Response Is Never Wrong: And Other Things You Need to Know to Take Back Your Life

(Paperback)

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While trauma awareness has grown exponentially in recent years, we still tend to treat our response to trauma as a disorder or sign of malfunction. With Unbroken, Dr. MaryCatherine McDonald offers an empowering alternative: What if instead of seeing traumatic experience as that which breaks our spirit, we see it as that which proves our spirit cannot be broken Here, McDonald offers a radical reframing of how we understand trauma-and a profound new approach for healing. According to McDonald, trauma occurs whenever we experience something that shatters our structures of belief about the world and our place within it. When trauma occurs, our miraculous biological systems adapt to help us survive-and sometimes this creates a constellation of mysterious symptoms that persist long after the event. If we can see these initial adaptations as natural strength responses, we come away with a new path to healing. We must tend to our neurobiological systems while we grieve our shattered beliefs and find new meaning, peeling away layers of shame as we go. Through an engaging combination of personal experience, client stories, and practical neuroscience, McDonald helps us better understand how trauma functions in body and spirit, guiding us from coping to growth. At the heart of the book lies a message of hope: trauma is unavoidable-but we are built to handle it.

Reviews

"Equal parts memoir, client stories, and neuroscience, Unbroken: The Trauma Response Is Never Wrong will radically reframe everything you've ever thought about trauma and how to heal from it. No more feelings of shame. Just newfound empowerment." --Mark Epstein, MD, author of Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart and The Zen of Therapy

"We all experience trauma. And it leaves scars for most of us. We can learn to better handle it using Dr. MaryCatherine McDonald's fresh, positive, and scientifically rigorous approach. Her toolbox full of practical, down-to-earth advice and methods enables us to lift the burdens of shame, guilt, and fear that we all shoulder when we suffer from trauma. Unbroken is essential to showing us how we can become empowered, moving beyond the trauma in our past." --Allan Hamilton, MD, author of The Scalpel and the Soul and the forthcoming Cerebral Entanglements

"I call MaryCatherine the Bren Brown of trauma. She normalizes trauma and helps us get rid of shame so that we can accept our stories fully and embrace our humanness--something that we need now in the world more than ever." --John Kim, aka The Angry Therapist

"Unbroken is a fascinating new book from an emerging philosophical talent." --Simon Critchley, former New York Times editor of The Stone column

Author Bio

MaryCatherine McDonald, PhD, is a research professor and life coach who specializes in the psychology and philosophy of trauma. She has been researching, lecturing, and publishing on the neuroscience, psychology, and lived experience of trauma since completing her PhD in 2016. She's published two academic books and many research papers, and is the creator of a trauma-based curriculum that serves previously incarcerated folks and veterans. She lives in Los Angeles. For more, alchemycoaching.life.