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| Categories | Community & Culture |
| Author | Stephanie Foo |
| Publisher | Ballantine Books (February 22, 2022) |
| Language | English |
| Paperback | 331 pages |
| Item Weight | 15.8 ounces |
| Dimensions |
8.54 x 1.18 x 5.35 inches |
I. Book introduction
A searing memoir of reckoning and healing by acclaimed journalist Stephanie Foo, investigating the little-understood science behind complex PTSD and how it has shaped her life
“Achingly exquisite . . . providing real hope for those who long to heal.”—Lori Gottlieb, New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone
ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2022—She Reads
By age thirty, Stephanie Foo was successful on paper: She had her dream job as an award-winning radio producer at This American Life and a loving boyfriend. But behind her office door, she was having panic attacks and sobbing at her desk every morning. After years of questioning what was wrong with herself, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD—a condition that occurs when trauma happens continuously, over the course of years.
Both of Foo’s parents abandoned her when she was a teenager, after years of physical and verbal abuse and neglect. She thought she’d moved on, but her new diagnosis illuminated the way her past continued to threaten her health, relationships, and career. She found limited resources to help her, so Foo set out to heal herself, and to map her experiences onto the scarce literature about C-PTSD.
In this deeply personal and thoroughly researched account, Foo interviews scientists and psychologists and tries a variety of innovative therapies. She returns to her hometown of San Jose, California, to investigate the effects of immigrant trauma on the community, and she uncovers family secrets in the country of her birth, Malaysia, to learn how trauma can be inherited through generations. Ultimately, she discovers that you don’t move on from trauma—but you can learn to move with it.
Powerful, enlightening, and hopeful, What My Bones Know is a brave narrative that reckons with the hold of the past over the present, the mind over the body—and examines one woman’s ability to reclaim agency from her trauma.
Editorial Reviews
“Many trauma survivors struggle to describe the seemingly indescribable sense of carrying something intangibly sharp—something there but not there—inside. But in What My Bones Know, Stephanie Foo details that and more. Her achingly exquisite memoir takes us on a journey through complex trauma, illuminating her path of self-discovery and providing real hope for those who long to heal.”—Lori Gottlieb, New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone
“At turns funny and devastating, terrifying and transcendent, Foo’s quest for understanding should be relevant not just to someone with C-PTSD but to anyone seeking to grow and be present in this one life.”—Jenny Odell, New York Times bestselling author of How to Do Nothing
“Funny and tragic, unflinchingly honest and relentlessly hopeful, What My Bones Know is a marvel of a book.”—Ed Yong, New York Times bestselling author of I Contain Multitudes
“Foo’s journalistic eye serves her generously through a hard-won examination of trauma and its aftermath. I cried while turning the pages; I knew that I was witnessing an astonishing literary endeavor. For others who live with C-PTSD, this is a crucial, life-changing book.”—Esmé Weijun Wang, New York Times bestselling author of The Collected Schizophrenias
“What My Bones Know is an absolute triumph. Foo’s beautifully written memoir is a balm and a light for anyone afraid that their early traumas have permanently stunted their capacity for connection, love, and purpose. This book is a must-read for anyone hungry for hope.”—Christie Tate, New York Times bestselling author of Group: How One Therapist and a Circle of Strangers Saved My Life
“A testament to Foo’s determination, What My Bones Know is an act of reclamation—and a bold, defiant proclamation: ‘I am here.’”—Kat Chow, author of Seeing Ghosts
“This book is a major step forward in the study of trauma. It’s also a huge artistic genre-busting achievement. Stephanie Foo’s brilliant storytelling and strong, funny, relatable voice makes complex PTSD enjoyable to read about.”—Kathleen Hanna, singer for Bikini Kill, Le Tigre, and The Julie Ruin
“This is a work of immense beauty.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Foo’s writing is shrewdly insightful. In telling her story so compellingly, she joins authors such as Anna Qu and Ly Tran in adding nuance to the ‘model minority’ myth, if not actively subverting it. . . . Highly recommended.”—Library Journal (starred review)
“As Foo sheds necessary light on the little-discussed topic of C-PTSD, she holds out the hope that while ‘healing is never final . . . along with the losses are the triumphs’ that can positively transform a traumatized life. . . . A sharp, insightful, and stirring memoir.”—Kirkus Reviews
About Stephanie Foo
– Stephanie Foo (born 1987) is a Malaysia-born American radio journalist, producer and author. She has worked for Snap Judgment and This American Life.
Foo was born in Malaysia and moved to the United States with her family when she was two years old. She was abandoned by her parents in her teens.
She attended the University of California, Santa Cruz, graduating from Stevenson College in 2008.
– Her work has aired on Snap Judgment, Reply All, 99% Invisible, and Radiolab. A noted speaker and instructor, she has taught at Columbia University and has spoken at venues from Sundance Film Festival to the Missouri Department of Mental Health. She lives in New York City.
– Radio
Stephanie Foo taught high school journalism after college, and began listening to This American Life and Radiolab. She eventually decided to try her hand at it, hitchhiking to a pornography convention in search of a story and ultimately starting a podcast called Get Me On This American Life. Another early audio project was a music podcast called Stagedive, where Foo succeeded in reaching a young demographic.
Foo was an intern then a producer at Glynn Washington’s Snap Judgment, based in Oakland, then moved to This American Life.
In addition to producer roles at Snap Judgment and This American Life, Foo has also contributed to Reply All and 99% Invisible. She’s drawn notice for work on topics ranging from Japanese reality television (a piece Flavorwire named to its list of the 20 best episodes in This American Life’s 20-year history)[10] to race and online dating; The New York Observer praised the latter piece as one of Reply All’s “most provocative episodes.”
In 2015, Foo launched her own podcast called Pilot, with each installment to serve as a pilot episode for a different genre of podcast. CBC’s Lindsay Michael named Pilot to a 2016 list of five best recent podcasts, saying Foo has “created her own playground…A place where she can try things out and see how they go.”
Foo served as the project lead on the development of an app from This American Life, launched in October 2016, called Shortcut. Produced in collaboration with developers Courtney Stanton and Darius Kazemi of Feel Train, Shortcut aims to allow listeners to share audio across social media sites as easily as they can share video clips via gifs. In the app, listeners can select an audio clip of up to 30 seconds and then post it directly to social media, where the audio plays alongside a transcription of the clip. At launch, the app operated on This American Life’s archives, but the project was later released as open-source code, available for other audio projects to adopt. Writing at The New York Observer, Brady Dale called Foo’s project “the number one innovation in podcasting” in 2016, saying, “If anything can ever make audio go viral, it’s a solution like this.”
In 2022, Foo appeared on Storybound (podcast) reading from her new book, “What My Bones Know”.
– Writing
Foo has also been noted for her commentary on diversity in media, especially for her 2015 essay, “What To Do If Your Workplace Is Too White.” Introducing the piece at Transom, Jay Allison said it “should be required reading for everyone involved in building our workforce or programming.” At Current, Adam Ragusea praised it as “frank and funny” and Neiman Lab’s Nicholas Quah called the piece “fantastic” and Foo “a force of nature.”
In February 2022, Foo released the book, What My Bones Know (2022; Ballantine Books) about healing from complex PTSD.
– Awards
Foo produced This American Life’s 2015 video project, “Videos 4 U: I Love You,” which garnered three Daytime Emmy nominations: Best Special Class, Short Format Daytime Program; Best Writing Special Class; and Best Directing Special Class, with the project’s director Bianca Giaever winning the latter category. The project also won the 2015 Webby Award for Online Film & Video in the Drama: Individual Short or Episode category.
In 2016, Foo won a Knight Foundation grant from the Knight Prototype Fund to work on the This American Life project for sharing audio clips that became the Shortcut app. Foo was also a 2016 fellow at Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism to work on the same project.
II. [Reviews] What My Bones Know
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1. THOMAS Review What My Bones Know
Okay I loved this memoir “What My Bones Know”! It has the same therapy appeal of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone though with more attention paid to how culture and race affect mental health. In What My Bones Know, accomplished journalist Stephanie Foo writes about receiving a diagnosis of complex posttraumatic stress disorder and the steps she took to heal herself. One of the elements of this book I enjoyed right from the start includes how Foo writes about her trauma with such realness and vulnerability. The physical and emotional abuse her parents put her through felt painful to read though also cathartic as a fellow survivor of child abuse. In addition to destigmatizing child abuse and PTSD, Foo shed lights on her estrangement from her father that occurred later in her life. I imagine this book will feel comforting for folks who have also experienced difficult family dynamics, as Foo does not hold back about her pain even as she persists in her path forward to healing.
I also appreciated the nuance in which Foo wrote about Asian American mental health and intergenerational trauma. She avoids a simplistic and flattening explanation of “tiger parents” and opts to explore the impacts of intergenerational trauma instead. I found it both compassionate and assertive of her to recognize the immense struggles her parents and ancestors faced while at the same time recognizing the not-okayness of how her parents treated her.
What I felt most moved by in this memoir: Foo’s determination to heal. As someone who’s greatly benefited from years of receiving therapy myself and who works as a mental health clinician, I always admire when people are committed to addressing their issues even when it feels painful as heck. In addition to writing about the rewarding parts of help-seeking, Foo also shares the many ugly parts, like the difficulty of finding a therapist who actually felt helpful, the costs associated with therapy and how therapists are often underpaid, and her doubts about herself as someone capable of living a healthy and relationally-satisfying life. Despite these adversities, she somehow kept going, kept trying new and incrementally-helpful approaches like EMDR and gratitude journaling. When she writes about finding the therapist – Dr. Jacob Ham – who really helped her with her complex PTSD toward the end of the book and what her work with him consisted of, I found myself getting teary-eyed because it reminded me of my first long-term therapist who helped me heal from my own PTSD, as well as my own work as a clinician. Without a doubt one of the most genuine and most skillful portrayals of therapy I’ve seen across all forms of media.
Overall I would recommend this book to anyone interested in mental health, race and/or Asian American identity, and well-written stories imbued with self-awareness. Big kudos to Stephanie Foo for writing this book, an amazing accomplishment.
2. ELYSE WALTERS Review What My Bones Know
Audiobook…. Read by the author, Stephanie Foo
…..10 hours and 2 minutes
This is a very powerful [masterful in fact]….
‘memoir/educational’ book
about mental illness. – connected with physical illnesses —a wide range of behaviors— long-term brain alteration from abuse in early childhood — and other emotional struggles.
With such a general statement, I understand I’ve not offered up anything particularly enticing to encourage others to read this.
“I know, I know, we’ve read these books before”.
They’ve been around for decades.
So, what’s different about this book?
Well….am I the only person to have just learned about
*COMPLEX* PTSD?
The fastest way I can describe the difference between PTSD and complex PTSD is think of Covid versus long Covid.
Stephanie Foo goes into great detail about ‘complex’ PTSD….the kind of information I believe could be very helpful for many people. Whether a victim or antagonist.
Even if you’re squeaky clean— *Super Duper* happy barely even know what the word depression means—-(man, I love you and want to be you),
anyone who knows anybody who has suffered with any form of mental illness, PTSD, abuse, estrangement, and other forms of trauma—-this is still an amazing worthy book to read.
Listening to the audiobook?: definitely two thumbs up. 👍🏻👍🏻
Stephanie Foo did a phenomenal job sharing her personal life experience with childhood depression, on-going long term depression, abandonment, childhood abuse, and the repercussions of trauma.
The spoiler — that’s not a spoiler — because Stephanie told us the spoiler herself at the beginning, is:
“It has a happy ending”.
I highly recommend this book unless you are one of those people who is completely against any self help, type of book, and/or a memoir.
Otherwise it’s a phenomenal highly engaging (no drifter bore here), enlightening read!
Stephanie Foo kept removing blinders.
Like for some people who get cataract surgery, all of a sudden their vision is clear— the same theory can be applied to this book.
TERRIFIC CONTRIBUTION… not preachy!!!!
PERSONAL- EDUCATIONAL- POWERFUL!!!
3. S0ULSLIKEWHEELS Review What My Bones Know
Amazing summary of CPTSD, healing from CPTSD, and research!
Stephanie does a fantastic job of sharing her own journey, sharing her symptoms, telling about her trauma, explaining the complexity of healing, and sharing research about CPTSD. The book is so well written and engages the reader. I also listened to the audio book which she reads, and it’s a great reading of the book. The audio book version also has clips from her therapy sessions which is interesting to listen to.
This book is a must read for anyone working in the mental health field, anyone who has experienced childhood trauma, and anyone who loves someone with complex trauma!
I appreciate her critique of the mental health symptom and struggles to obtain effective treatment. She seems to downplay the skillset of Clinical Mental Health Counselors and Clinical Social Workers at the masters level – I hope this doesn’t deter others from seeking care from those individuals as many masters level clinicians are amazing and effective. Many treatments that didn’t work for her do work for other people, so it’s important not to discount those options for treatment as well.
4. SOPHIA Review What My Bones Know
Best Turning-Lemons-Into-Lemonade Story Ever!
What My Bones Know is one of the finest examples of self-actualization I have ever read! You don’t have to be diagnosed with C-PTSD or know anyone who has been to be transformed by it. But if you have been or know someone who has, it is a must-read. Powerfully written with iron courage, Stephanie Foo doesn’t hold anything back, from describing her raw abusive childhood, her emotional wounds that keep reopening, and her determination to win the battle (love and happiness do win in the end). How can someone who has suffered like this be so damn funny? I made myself get over any tinges of guilt at having had loving parents and a magical childhood. I found myself rooting for her throughout the book, and I kept getting rewarded. Stephanie’s aha moments are sage life-advice for all of us, if we want to grow and strengthen our resilience. I am truly grateful to her.
5. SUE Review What My Bones Know
In this often searing, sad and powerful memoir, Stephanie Foo has given us a portrait of her childhood and the trauma that resulted in her being diagnosed with Complex PTSD when she was in her mid 20s. Along with the trauma and her struggles, Foo presents her path seeking help through medical, psychiatric and alternative therapies. As she is a journalist, and has been for years, documenting this journey is natural for her. She writes of her harrowing childhood as a Malayasian immigrant of Chinese descent, living in San Jose with parents who she can’t please or understand. The details of the abuse and neglect are graphic.
Somehow Stephanie moves on to a “next” phase, finishing school after a fashion, finding work, developing skills as a journalist/editor in radio. But all the while she is aware that she is functioning on the edge. Her relationships, of all types, are fraught with doubt about herself and others. That leads to the major shift in her life – when she learns of her diagnosis of C-PTSD and its significance and difficulties. She takes her reportorial skills and seeks answers. The path is neither linear nor easy, but she does find a path. And there is so much valuable information in this book. I believe Foo has done a service to others in outlining something that is so personal but also, undoubtedly has so many victims.
Highly recommended but with the caveat that it is at times a difficult book to read.
A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.
6. LUPITA READS Review What My Bones Know
Truly cannot stop thinking about how fundamentally life-changing it is. Truly one of my favorite books of the year & idc that we are only 3 months into the new year. What Foo delivers in this book as an Asian immigrant woman navigating mental illness but most importantly the reality of what mental care takes is something the world needs. I only hope that writing it has tremendously helped her on her life journey because what she’s given to the world in this book is irreplaceable. If you’ve ever read THE BODY KEEPS A SCORE & wondered what the many mentioned treatments look like in practice & navigating them as a non-white person – I’d urge you to go pick this one up ASAP.
7. LORI WILLIAMS Review What My Bones Know
Stephanie’s story is one of hope and understanding. I love how she shares her experiences and knowledge of CPTSD and many of the different treatment modalities. As someone who has worked in the mental health for over 20 years and who lives with a diagnosis of CPTSD, her book hits home with me. The way she processes her trauma so honestly, especially in her conversations with Dr. Ham, gave me tremendous insight into my own story and inspired me to continue my own healing work. I highly recommend this book to anyone living with CPTSD. Thank you, Stephanie for your tremendous courage!
8. GEOFF O Review What My Bones Know
I bought this book as someone who grew up with a parent who had C-PTSD and as someone who recently was diagnosed with PTSD herself. It was admittedly hard for me to read the first part of this book (As Foo compassionately divulges to her readers.) I took a break for a bit and came back to it just the other day and could not put it down. Not only is this a story of a person who does not give up on her self, but it has so many interesting and helpful facts, many of which helped me realize how some of my behaviors have been learned and also inherited. If you can give yourself enough space to digest this book at your own pace, I believe it is a must read for anyone who has been diagnosed with C-PTSD, PTSD or has someone close to them who has. Foo is a phenomenal writer and is great at her research as well.
9. MEGAN Review What My Bones Know
Reading What My Bones Know as a therapist whose main specialties are developmental trauma and attachment was difficult and infuriating at times. I often take for granted how much easier it is to access mental health care in my state versus others across the country. Attunement is the most essential element in the client-therapist relationship to foster healing, so I get really upset when therapists forget this! Stephanie Foo is so vulnerable, insightful, and authentic in this beautiful, beautiful memoir!
Just a small clarification from the text – psychologists do not necessarily have more training than LCSWs and LPCCs. Psychologists have more training in psychological testing to determine diagnoses, but not in providing actual therapy.
10. CANDACE Review What My Bones Know
Good things-
- Foo does an excellent job of describing how she felt and the things she went through after her diagnosis of complex ptsd. For example, she does not trust people and assumes people mean the worst. She explains how hard it was for her to find a therapist that fit her needs and her pocketbook. There is a lot more of this that is good. There ARE a lot of issues that result from complex ptsd and Foo describes them well.
Problematic for me-
- When Foo describes the events that led up to her diagnosis, I do not feel any of the feelings she later describes that she felt. Maybe she detaches herself for health reasons, but I don’t think this memoir is the appropriate time for that. Maybe it’s just me that feels a disconnect?
- Instead of a memoir, it is half memoir and half journalism series. Foo goes into detail about her search for what is known about complex ptsd; she includes what she learns and the sources in her book. She does the same with treatments available and various statistics. This combination would have worked well if it had been more memoir and less various textbooks.
- Foo takes a trip back to her old community to see if she was the only one abused. I got a little confused in this section. She talks about the effects of tiger moms, but also describes what her ancestors from Malaysia suffered through (along with other traumas) and somehow tied this into an intergenerational trauma discussion. This was not tied together well at all. This was my least favorite part of the book, even though I am very interested in intergenerational trauma.
I do appreciate her bringing more attention to complex ptsd —complex ptsd is Ptsd in people that have suffered ongoing trauma ( not one instance of trauma, but rather over years ). It is not recognized in the DSM-IV as a separate disease than ptsd, yet when trying to get help one immediately comes up against problems in recognized treatments.
I think Foo’s writing style did not suit me, though this subject matter was enough to keep me interested.
III. [Quote] What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
![[Review - Quotes] What My Bones Know, A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma by Stephanie Foo](https://bookquote.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Review-Quotes-What-My-Bones-Know-A-Memoir-of-Healing-from-Complex-Trauma-by-Stephanie-Foo.jpg)
The best book quotes from What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo
“But unfortunately, I do not have one foundational trauma. I have thousands. So my anxious freak-outs are not, as the books say, “temporal.” They don’t only occur when I see an angry face or someone pulls a driver out of their golf bag. My freak-outs are more or less constant, a fixed state of being. That infinite plethora of triggers makes complex PTSD more difficult to heal from than traditional PTSD. And the way the books seem to think about it, our fixed state of being also makes us more problematic.”
“The essence of what trauma does to a person is it makes them feel like they don’t deserve love,” the voice in my headphones said. I was on the train, on my way to yet another doctor’s appointment, but this statement rang so true that I dug furiously through my bag and pulled out a notebook to write it down. I was about to put away my pen when I heard another especially good line, so I kept it out, writing furiously on my lap. My friend Jen, who often sends me little poems and links throughout the day, sent me this podcast—Road to Resilience,”
“Being healed isn’t about feeling nothing. Being healed is about feeling the appropriate emotions at the appropriate times and still being able to come back to yourself. That’s just life.”
“The literature says this is normal for traumatized people. Experts say it’s all part of the three P’s: We think our sadness is personal, pervasive, and permanent. Personal, in that we have caused all the problems we face. Pervasive, in that our entire life is defined by our failings. And permanent, in that the sadness will last forever.”
“Trauma isn’t just the sadness that comes from being beaten, or neglected, or insulted. That’s just one layer of it. Trauma also is mourning the childhood you could have had. The childhood other kids around you had. The fact that you could have had a mom who hugged and kissed you when you skinned your knee. Or a dad who stayed and brought you a bouquet of flowers at your graduation. Trauma is mourning the fact that, as an adult, you have to parent yourself. You have to stand in your kitchen, starving, near tears, next to a burnt chicken, and you can’t call your mom to tell her about it, to listen to her tell you that it’s okay, to ask if you can come over for some of her cooking. Instead, you have to pull up your bootstraps and solve the painful puzzle of your life by yourself. What other choice do you have? Nobody else is going to solve it for you.”
“The difference between regular PTSD and complex PTSD is that traditional PTSD is often associated with a moment of trauma. Sufferers of complex PTSD have undergone continual abuse—trauma that has occurred over a long period of time, over the course of years. Child abuse is a common cause of complex PTSD.”
“because of its repetitive nature, complex trauma is fundamentally relational trauma. In other words, this is trauma caused by bad relationships with other people—people who were supposed to be caring and trustworthy and instead were hurtful. That meant future relationships with anybody would be harder for people with complex trauma because they were wired to believe that other people could not be trusted. The only way you could heal from relational trauma, he figured, was through practicing that relational dance with other people. Not just reading self-help books or meditating alone. We had to go out and practice maintaining relationships in order to reinforce our shattered belief that the world could be a safe place. “Relationships”
“Here’s a theory: Maybe I had not really been broken this whole time.”
“I go from Wikipedia to a government page about C-PTSD as it relates to veterans. I read the list of symptoms. It is very long. And it is not so much a medical document as it is a biography of my life: The difficulty regulating my emotions. The tendency to overshare and trust the wrong people. The dismal self-loathing. The trouble I have maintaining relationships. The unhealthy relationship with my abuser. The tendency to be aggressive but unable to tolerate aggression from others.”
“Dissociation exists for a reason. For millennia, our brains and bodies have removed us from our pain so we can keep moving forward. A tiger just ate your wife? Bummer, but breaking down or freezing up is not an option. You better go out hunting today or your kids will starve. Your house was just destroyed in an air raid? Okay, but you have to pack up what’s left and find new shelter, now. Feelings are a privilege.”
“Forgiveness is this act of love where you say to someone, ‘You’re an imperfect being and I still love you.’ You want to have this energy of ‘We’re not giving up on each other; we’re in this for the long haul. You hurt me. And, yes, I hurt you. And I’m sorry, but you’re still mine.’ ”
“The PTSD had always told me I am alone. That I am unlovable. That I am toxic. But now, it is clear to me: That was a lie. My PTSD clouded my vision of what was actually happening.”
“No matter what I do, no matter where I try to find joy, I instead find my trauma. And it whispers to me: “You will always be this way. It’s never going to change. I will follow you. I will make you miserable forever. And then I will kill you.”
“Again, women who experienced childhood trauma are 80 percent more likely to experience painful endometriosis. They’re much more likely to develop premenstrual dysphoric disorder. More likely to develop fibroids. It may affect fertility. They’re at greater risk for postpartum depression and depression in menopause.”
“Dr. Ham admitted he’d approached the story about my aunt with “asshole energy” and had perhaps been overly critical too quickly. But, he said, “In my mind, the most helpful thing for you is to be reconnected with another person. Self-regulation is a very insular thing. That’s just survival. Like, ‘I’m not going to actually learn how to be connected to you, but at least I’m going to be able to regulate how upset I get from you.’ And I don’t want you to just be self-regulating in a corner by yourself. Shame makes you want to hide and tuck away. But what if instead you were in this state where you could ask, ‘Who are you? What do you need from me right now? And what do I need from you?’ ” What would I have said to my aunt if I hadn’t been triggered? If I’d had the time and mental ability to ask all of those questions? Maybe I would have said something like: “I understand that having difficult in-laws was part of your experience, and for that I’m sorry. But I love my in-laws, and in America, they are my only family. So you saying they aren’t my real family—it’s hurtful.”
“In Gretchen Schmelzer’s excellent, gentle book, Journey Through Trauma, she insists on the fifth page: “Some of you may choose a therapist: a psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker, counselor, or member of the clergy. Some of you may choose some form of group therapy. But I am telling you up front, at the beginning: in order to heal, you will need to get help. I know you will try to look for the loophole in this argument—try to find a way that you can do this on your own—but you need to trust me on this. If there were a way to do it on your own I would have found it. No one looked harder for that loophole than I did.”
“And scientists have found that some people who suffer from depression, anxiety, or C-PTSD have overactive DMNs. Which makes sense. The DMN is the seat of responsibility and insecurity. It can be a punishing force when it over-ruminates and gets caught in a toxic loop of obsession and self-doubt. The DMN can be silenced significantly by antidepressants or hallucinogenic substances. But the most efficient cure for an overactive DMN is mindfulness.”
“At the same time, in my readings, I discovered some evidence that traditional talk therapy might not actually be particularly effective for C-PTSD. In The Body Keeps the Score, van der Kolk writes about how talk therapy can be useless for those whom “traumatic events are almost impossible to put into words.” Some people are too dissociated and distanced from these traumatic experiences for talk therapy to work well. They might not be able to access their feelings, let alone convey them. For others, they’re in such an activated state that they have a hard time reaching into difficult memories, and the very act of recalling them could be retraumatizing. One study showed that about 10 percent of people might experience worsening symptoms after being forced to talk about their trauma.”
“people with C-PTSD can often assume problems are about them—not out of selfishness or narcissism but because they want to have enough control to be able to solve the problem.”
“It isn’t just racism. Being part of an oppressed minority group—being queer or disabled, for example—can cause C-PTSD if you are made to feel unsafe because of your identity. Poverty can be a contributing factor to C-PTSD. These factors traumatize people and cause brain changes that push them toward anxiety and self-loathing. Because of those changes, victims internalize the blame for their failures. They tell themselves they are awkward, lazy, antisocial, or stupid, when what’s really happening is that they live in a discriminatory society where their success is limited by white supremacy and class stratification. The system itself becomes the abuser. When my boss said I was “different,” I thought it meant broken. Now I think it meant something else.”
“But grounding and gratitude were palliative care versus curative care. I was still treating the symptoms without treating the source, and I would never truly be healed unless I confronted it.”
“I learned two critical things that day. First: Just because the wound doesn’t hurt doesn’t mean it’s healed. If it looks good and it feels good, it should be all good, right? But over the years I’d smoothed perfect white layers of spackle over gaping structural holes. And the second thing I learned was: My parents didn’t love me.”
“I read later that breathing exercises can actually be more triggering in certain populations. Sounds about right.”
“But how was I to begin letting it go when anger was the force that gave me momentum? My anger was my power. It was what protected me. Without it, wouldn’t I be sad and naked?”
“Can I ask how it impacts your relationships in a toxic way?” “I’m just noticing things. All the time. Bad behaviors. Like, I tend to categorize people as ‘safe’ or ‘unsafe.’ And when I don’t like somebody, I see them as unsafe and I can’t deal with them. And then whenever anybody’s upset, I’m not good with sitting with their discomfort. I’m always trying to help and fix. And some people have told me I have a tendency to make things about myself. And I’m negative and I’m always complaining about my life. And I always feel like I’m having a crisis because I’m still not good enough at self-soothing.”
“Grounding 101 tips: Open your eyes. Put your feet solidly on the floor. Look at your hands and feet. Recognize they are adult hands and feet. Name five things you can see and hear and smell.”
“Brain scans prove that patients who’ve sustained significant childhood trauma have brains that look different from people who haven’t. Traumatized brains tend to have an enlarged amygdala—a part of the brain that is generally associated with producing feelings of fear. Which makes sense. But it goes further than that: For survivors of emotional abuse, the part of their brain that is associated with self-awareness and self-evaluation is shrunken and thin.
Women who’ve suffered childhood sexual abuse have smaller somatosensory cortices—the part of the brain that registers sensation in our bodies. Victims who were screamed at might have an altered response to sound. Traumatized brains can result in reductions in the parts of the brain that process semantics, emotion and memory retrieval, perceiving emotions in others, and attention and speech. Not getting enough sleep at night potentially affects developing brains’ plasticity and attention and increases the risk of emotional problems later in life. And the scariest factoid, for me anyway: Child abuse is often associated with reduced thickness in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain associated with moderation, decision-making, complex thought, and logical reasoning.
Brains do have workarounds. There are people without amygdalae who don’t feel fear. There are people who have reduced prefrontal cortices who are very logical. And other parts of the brain can compensate, make up the lost parts in other ways. But overall, when I looked at the breadth of evidence, the results felt crushing.
The fact that the brain’s cortical thickness is directly related to IQ was particularly threatening to me. Even if I wasn’t cool, or kind, or personable, I enjoyed the narrative that I was at least effective. Intelligent. What these papers seemed to tell me is that however smart I am, I’m not as smart as I could have been had this not happened to me. The questions arose again: Is this why my pitches didn’t go through? Is this why my boss never respected me? Is this why I was pushed to do grunt work in the back room?”“There is overwhelming evidence that meditation can increase focus and decrease anxiety, depression, and cortisol flooding. There is evidence that it decreases activation in the amygdala, one epicenter of fear in the brain, and increases activity in the prefrontal cortex. People who meditate are able to unstick themselves from cyclical, dangerous thinking and see things from a calmer, more positive perspective. The sympathetic nervous system, or the fight or flight system, is activated by stress. This is the system that gets us ready to run. The counter to this is the parasympathetic nervous system, the resting and digesting system. It lowers heart rate and blood pressure, slows breathing, and directly counters the stress response. Meditation activates the parasympathetic nervous system. It’s literally the antidote to stress. Plus, it’s what all the evolved, cool girls who look good without makeup are doing, according to social media.”
“There is a ton of literature now—including TED Talks and Michael Pollan’s book How to Change Your Mind—about psilocybin and MDMA being highly effective medications for PTSD. Anecdotal stories abound of suffering veterans emerging from one meaningful trip completely cured, with a new vigor for life. Shrooms in particular have proved to be a great salve for people with terminal illnesses. The oncoming specter of death can be terrifying, but after these suffering patients emerge from their hallucinogenic experiences, many are at peace with their lives and deaths, content to be absorbed back into the fabric of the universe. Shrooms have also been shown to suppress your DMN and dissolve your ego, allowing you to look at your life with a childlike, brand-new perspective. They can draw connections between disparate parts of the brain, building creative solutions to our life’s struggles and strengthening areas we don’t use frequently enough.”
“Over and over, the answer is the same, isn’t it? Love, love, love. The salve and the cure. In order to become a better person, I had to do something utterly unintuitive. I had to reject the idea that punishing myself would solve the problem. I had to find the love.”
Book excerpts: Chapter 1 What My Bones Know, A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
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