I have learnt a great deal from Dr. Bruce Perry about trauma and the healing of trauma over the past years. I have posted a number of articles about Bruce’s work on my Healing blog on The Carrolup Story website that I run with John Stanton. I thought it was time that I linked to these articles on this website due to the impact of childhood trauma and neglect on the development of addiction.
Three Things to Know About Mental Health and Trauma
February 9, 2023
I just love this film clip from the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health that involves Dr. Bruce Perry talking about mental health and trauma. Here are the three major things that Bruce points out:
- Trauma sharing is a way for storytellers, not experts, to lead the conversation. Storytellers change the narrative.
- Sharing about trauma seems trendy, but it speaks to a deeper truth.
- Those with a platform should use it.
‘Human beings are human beings. We don’t change our minds because a bunch of scientists publish a set of recommendations and issue them. Honestly, this is no offence to the Heart Foundation or any other Foundation but you’ve all been publishing white papers about topics for years. Those don’t change public opinion. What changes people are the storytellers in our society.
Oprah Winfrey & Dr. Bruce Perry in Conversation | SXSW EDU 2021
February 2, 2023
Oprah Winfrey and leading child psychiatrist and neuroscientist Bruce Perry, MD, PhD explore the impact of childhood trauma on who we become, the decisions we make, and how healing must start with one question ‘what happened to you?’ in anticipation of a new co-authored book of the same name. Winfrey and Dr. Perry focus on understanding how shifting the approach to trauma and allowing understanding of the past allows for an opening of the door to resilience and healing in a proven, powerful way.
Six Core Strengths for Healthy Child Development: An Overview
February 2, 2023
This brief overview provides an introduction to the Six Core Strengths program developed by Dr. Bruce Perry and The ChildTrauma Academy. The ChildTrauma Academy Channel. [4’31”]
The Repair of Early Trauma: A Bottom Up Approach
February 2, 2023
Told to us through the voices of children, this unique animation teaches us that by putting together the seven-piece jigsaw puzzle of ‘Developmental Trauma’, we can understand how a child’s adverse childhood experiences have shaped their emotional world and outward behaviour. Once we understand this, we can then work with a child to help them with their developmental trauma using an innovative therapeutic approach called the ‘Neuro-Sequential Model of Therapeutics’. This model recovers and repairs each part of a child’s brain in a specific, phased and effective order. Beacon House. 8 October 2017. [11’16”]
Relationships, Connection and Healing from Trauma: Bruce Perry & Maia Szalavitz
December 25, 2022
For anyone interested in the healing of childhood trauma, I strongly recommend you read, The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And other Stories From a Child Psychiatrists Notebook by Bruce Perry and Maia Szalavitz. Here is a description of the book from the back cover:
‘What happens when a child is traumatized? How does terror affect a child’s mind—and how can that mind recover? Child psychiatrist Bruce Perry has treated children faced with unimaginable horror: genocide survivors, witnesses to their own parents’ murders, children raised in closets and cages, the Branch Davidian children, and victims of family violence.
In The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, he tells their stories of trauma and transformation. Dr. Perry clearly explains what happens to the brain when children are exposed to extreme stress. He reveals his innovative methods for helping ease their pain, allowing them to become healthy adults. This deeply informed and moving book dramatically demonstrates that only when we understand the science of the mind can we hope to heal the spirit of even the most wounded child.’
100 Blog Posts and an Upcoming Break
July 13, 2021
Yes, this is my 100th blog post since I restarted blogging again on Recovery Stories on the 8th of March 2021. I’ve also added various other forms of content on other parts of the website, and released my eBook Our Recovery Stories: Journeys from Drug and Alcohol Addiction on the 9th of April.
As some of you know, I first launched Recovery Stories in May 2013, with the aim of helping individuals and families recover from addiction and mental health problems. A core element of the website was a series of 14 Recovery Stories (one is in two parts) ‘told’ by people who had been affected by a serious substance use problem, either directly or indirectly.
‘What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing’
May 7, 2021
Recently, I read one of the best books I have read relevant to my work. The book, What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing, is written by Bruce D. Perry M.D., Ph.D. and Oprah Winfrey. The book is essential reading for anyone interested in trauma and the healing of trauma. Many people who become addicted to drugs have experienced childhood trauma.
The book was informative, inspirational and deeply-moving. Bruce has put together so well what he has learnt throughout his career (including a great deal from the young people he has worked alongside), and has described his theories of how we function as human beings, and how trauma can have such a devastating impact on us. He describes the many ways we can facilitate the healing of trauma. The use of storytelling—Bruce’s clinical experiences and Oprah’s personal experiences—is very powerful.
Relationships, Connection and Healing from Trauma
March 24, 2015
I’m reading an excellent book at the moment, which I can strongly recommend to you. If you’re working in the trauma field, then The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And other Stories From a Child Psychiatrists Notebook by Bruce Perry and Maia Szalavitz is an essential read.
The book really gives you a feel for how our understanding of childhood trauma and its healing has moved along over the years. Bruce Perry is a real leader in this field and I feel blessed to have learnt of both Bruce’s and Bessel van der Kolk’s work in the past year. Thank you Judy and Carlie Atkinson.
Here’s a little section from the book:
‘Trauma and our responses to it cannot be understood outside the context of human relationships… The most traumatic aspects of all disasters involve the shattering of human connections. And this is especially true for children…’
‘Because humans are inescapably social beings, the worst catastrophes that can befall us inevitably involve relational loss.
‘Without a life story, a child is adrift, disconnected and vulnerable’ – Dr Bruce Perry on the value and power of the Life Story approach
February 11, 2015
Here is a powerful piece of writing by Dr Bruce Perry, which is adapted from the Foreword to the new book, Life Story Therapy with Traumatized Children, by Richard Rose. It is fundamental to what I am doing with our new initiative Sharing Culture, which is focused on helping Indigenous people heal from intergenerational trauma and its consequences.
‘A fundamental and permeating strength of humankind is the capacity to form and maintain relationships – the capacity to belong. It is in the context of our clan, community and culture that we are born and raised.
The brain-mediated set of complex capacities that allow one human to connect to another form the very basis for survival and has led to the ‘success’ of our species on this planet. Without others or without belonging, no individual could survive or thrive.
