The Little Book of Trauma Healing

It was very good to read this book.
It was very hard to read this book.
It was reassuring to read this book.
I don't want to ever talk about this book.
All I want is to talk about this book.

"When Violence strikes and community security is threatened"
Oh god..only the title...oh man..

I think that for this post I will concentrate on the parts that were reassuring:
One thing that was reassuring was the way the author described the process of healing through emotional discharge. Her descriptions were very much in lined with co counseling theory about healing. I was surprised to hear her perspective because I feel that many times in psychology this process is not explained in such a straight forward manner. How she talked about the importance of discharge and how many times this process is interrupted/stopped because people get scared to 'lose it' (or that somebody else is losing it) made allot of sense to me. I was also interesting to hear how science explains this process in the brain.
Also the author expressed doubt about the usefulness of labeling people with PTSD. I was glad to hear that this discussion is taking place in the psychology world because my family and I were harmed from the way the mental health system labels people who seems to be having 'too many feelings'. I really think that many times it doesn't help to label people with mental illnesses. I know that at least for me, and other people I know, it affected me in away that for most of my life it made feel like there was something inherently wrong with  brain.
Another part that was interesting for me was the idea of the chosen trauma. Yoder writes: " Without an experience of justice, deliberate acts of harm often become 'choosen traumas', a shared traumatic event that is chosen to be kept alive through the generations and becomes an integral part of a group's identity. Chosen traumas are characterized by an obsessive sense of being wronged by the "other" and by a sense of entitlement" (p. 29)
This passage made me think about the Jewish people relationship with the holocaust. My first reaction while I was reading was thinking that this idea could easily be understood like there was something wrong with remembering and having many feelings about what happened. I wanted to defend myself and my people right away.
My next thought was about all the memorial day services that I have participated in since I was little and how the way they were conducted kind of traumatized me. The ceremonies keep the trauma alive and pass it to the young people. It is very confusing because it makes sense to learn about our history but there is defiantly a way in which we do it in Israel that is so intense and painful. Or is it the reality that is painful?

Can't think more about this book
Every page makes me gag
Hope to cry and laugh about it more with you holding my hand