Rick Scarpello reviews Deal With It, a trauma book that stores pain in the body like Bessel van der Kolk describes. He says hearing others voice similar pain reduces isolation and validates anger. The book offers a methodology for self-healing and post-traumatic growth, shifting survivors from surviving to thriving.
Deal with it. A book that I am about thirty pages into. I'm definitely taking this at a snail's pace. Why, you might ask? Because I need to. Because my clients need me to. Because it's really a book that has to be. It's going to churn up a lot of emotion, a lot of feelings, and you really have to feel it in your bones, in your veins, in every part of your being. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk. Wrote a book called The Body Keeps Score, and I think Deal With It helps you put words to that score, to that feeling, to what the body's trying to say. I pay special attention to my body when I'm reading this book in particular because I find it speaks to me in ways that has never happened before, or that I just flat out haven't remembered. I was particularly taken with the time With the bit about the documentary. And John's sitting there and going, what the fuck have I done? That's a pretty ballsy move to put that all out there. But that speaks to me. It speaks to a lot of my trauma clients. You know, having the courage to go forth, hell or high water, and let people know what you've gone through and break through that stigma and that feeling of separation that we often Often experience some, and then the anger, and not your own anger, which you know may well come up when you're stirring up a hornet's nest of old memories and old feelings. You're bound to have expression. Your body's going to want to say something about it. But I think other people's feelings, their anger, just being able to hear somebody say, "You know what? Wow, that's really fucked up." That can be calming because now you don't feel alone. That's the other really great thing about this book is I'm seeing people create videos and have conversation. It's really getting the word out there. And that this experience, you know, it can be life-altering, but it also can bring— create post-traumatic growth. There's post-traumatic stress and then there's post-traumatic growth, and that growth is what we really need to start seeing happening, you know, particularly for, you know, those in need, in real dire need. When you hear somebody say, that makes me angry too, those words, a peace can come over you because now we're not alone, and somehow in some way there are people who can understand and empathize. With the experiences that so many people go through, have gone through, and will continue to go through. You know, physician heal thyself. I'm very much a Rogerian in that way. I believe strongly in our ability to self-heal, and this book is definitely a methodology to make that happen. So it's a pretty damn good start. Let's see what happens next.
