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Heal the part of trauma you can still reach
What trauma does to the brain, the body and the life around it, and the steps this book puts in front of you.
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01 What counts
What makes an event traumatic is your response, not its size
Gianna Powel takes her definition from the American Psychological Association: trauma is an emotional response to a terrible situation. That puts the definition on your side of the event, which is why the same incident can leave one person shaken for an afternoon and another changed for years.
She splits the causes in two. Big T trauma is the kind that would mark almost anyone, and its common feature is that you had little or no control over what happened. Little t trauma is smaller and not life threatening: a divorce, a loss of money, the strain of organising something large. Little t is easier to live with, with one catch. When several arrive close together over a short period they build up, and the book says the effect on a person can be quite profound.
So the useful question is not whether what happened to you was bad enough to count. It is whether you are still carrying a response to it. Powel is direct on this point: the feelings and situations people are experiencing are all real and valid.
Moving ahead and running away from trauma are not the same thing.Gianna Powel, Introduction
02 The body
Trauma leaves the alarm switched on and the thinking switched down
Two parts of the brain do most of the work here. The amygdala spots hazards, starts the fight or flight response and stores threat related memories. The prefrontal cortex handles focus and attention, your decisions about how to respond, and the meaning you attach to what happens.
When the alarm keeps firing, the adrenal glands keep releasing cortisol. Powel describes the result as being pushed out of your natural balance and into survival mode as a permanent setting: harder to manage anger and anxiety, more reactive and impulsive, sleep disrupted, less positivity. Because this is a nervous system state, she notes it shows up in the body too, in forms such as chronic pain and chronic inflammation.
The book also names five automatic responses rather than the usual two: freeze, fawn, fight, flight and flop. Knowing which one you go to is worth something, because a reflex you can name is a reflex you can question.
Next time the alarm fires, name the response before you act on it: freeze, fawn, fight, flight or flop. Powel's argument throughout is that a pattern you can spot is a pattern you can work on.
03 The shapes
Four faces of trauma, and each one asks for a different answer
Powel asks you to put a face to what you are carrying, on the reasoning that you cannot start correcting something you have not named. Emotional trauma comes in four shapes, and they differ on two things: how many events there were, and whether they happened to you.
Acute trauma follows a single stressful incident, and the book calls it the easiest to identify. Chronic trauma comes from repeated, sustained exposure to the same painful situation, running for months or years. Complex trauma is exposure to several traumatic experiences over a long period, usually but not always connected to each other. Vicarious trauma is not your own: it is the effect on you of what someone else went through, and Powel notes it is most common among people whose work is helping others through theirs, such as social workers and therapists.
The distinction changes what you do next. A single incident can be worked through as an incident. Repeated or layered exposure needs the pattern addressed as well as the events.
Write one line: how many events, over what stretch of time, and whether they happened to you or to someone close to you. That line is the shape of what you are working on.
04 The route
The five stages are a route, and doubling back is part of it
Powel sets out five stages: denial, anger, negotiation, depression and acceptance. Working out which one you are in tells you what you are feeling and, more usefully, what to do about it.
Denial is a defence, and the book makes a precise point about it: you are not ignoring the event, you are dismissing the feelings it caused. Her counter is to make awareness a daily habit. Anger she treats as normal, part of the fight or flight response, with practical answers: enough sleep, deep breathing, and trying a different perspective. Negotiation is the bargaining you do with yourself, where she warns against overthinking and says time is on your side. Depression she places fourth, which she reads as a sign you are nearing the end of the route rather than the start of it. Acceptance is not agreeing that what happened was acceptable; it is stopping the fight with it.
The book is honest about the shape of the journey. Healing, it says, asks you to take two steps back in order to go ahead, rather than moving forward steadily. Returning to an earlier stage is not the process failing. It is the process.
You no longer avoid a problem when you can accept it.Gianna Powel, Chapter 2
05 The spread
You cannot reach the event, so reach the first domino
Powel describes unaddressed trauma as a domino effect: one unit falls and the rest follow. Her point about which domino matters is the most practical sentence in the book.
We cannot change what happened, we cannot change the past, but we can change how we think about it and deal with it.Gianna Powel, Chapter 1
Chapter three walks the chain. Self-discipline goes first, as concentration slips and tasks get put off. Self-esteem follows, with negative self-talk and comparison. Then the body, then mental health, then the emotions, then relationships, then money, then your sense of meaning. Powel gives a short-term and a long-term version of each, and says the long-term ones tend to be more severe, which is her argument for dealing with it early.
The event itself is behind you and fixed. The first domino, the one you can put a hand on, is how you read and handle what you feel about it.
Write down what you feel about the event in your own words, without arguing with it. The book treats your own reading of the event as the first domino, and that is the one within reach.
06 The help
Support is a step in the method, not a sign you failed at it
Powel puts seeking guidance and assistance inside the healing sequence rather than after it. Her reasoning is plain: living with the aftermath of trauma is an emotional rollercoaster, there will be days you feel in control and days you do not, and a solid support system is what carries you across the second kind.
She names the range: a friend, a family member, a counsellor, or anyone with expertise in post-trauma recovery, depending on the degree of help you need. She also suggests support groups, on the grounds that the more you talk about what you are going through, the less intimidating it becomes. The book is equally direct about its own limits. Its disclaimer states that it is not intended to replace expert psychological, legal, financial or other guidance, and that if you require counselling you should get in touch with a qualified professional.
The mechanism she describes is specific. Trauma pushes you towards self-isolation. Isolation leaves you with only your own view of things. Your own view is the one the trauma has been editing. Another person interrupts that, offers a second reading, and holds you to the reflection you said you would do.
Seeking and accepting help in any form is not a sign of weakness but rather of bravery and strength.Gianna Powel, Chapter 4
Name one person you can tell, and one thing you will tell them. If the honest answer is that nobody on your list is equipped for it, the book's instruction is to find someone who is: a counsellor, or a support group of people who went through something similar.
07 The pull forward
A goal gives your attention somewhere to be other than the past
Powel's case for goal setting is about where your attention sits. Trauma keeps pulling the mind back to the event. A goal is something in front of you that needs attention now, so working on one moves you into the present as a side effect.
She cites the Grief Healing Center for the claim that people who set objectives during recovery show improved concentration and higher levels of contentment, and research by Rose and Smith that collaboration has strong benefits for people recovering from trauma. On both counts her advice is the same: set the goal with a counsellor or a confidant rather than alone, so there is someone there when you waver.
The model she uses is GROW. Goal: one specific objective at a time, broken small enough that finishing it is likely. Reality: where you actually stand in relation to it right now. Options: what else you could do, and what you have learned so far. Way forward: what you will do with the result, and what comes after it.
Take one goal through the four questions the book asks of it: why this one, is it doable and realistic, what will it change in your life, and will you commit to finishing it. Keep it small, because finishing is the part that supplies the motivation for the next one.
08 The switch
Reframing puts a gap between what happens and what you do
Reframing, which Powel also calls reappraisal, is deliberately changing how you read a situation so it carries less weight. She calls it a superpower, and the mechanism behind it is simple: refuse to react straight away, ask a few questions, then choose the response.
Her example is deliberately ordinary. You failed an exam, and the automatic reading is that you are a failure and the situation is hopeless. The alternatives she offers are not cheerful denial. These are not good marks, but at least I can see where I can improve. I am not pleased with the result, but taking this on again interests me. Same result, different reading, different next move.
Four questions do the work: what will this situation produce, good or bad; what in it can you be grateful for; what about it will leave you better than before; and what did you learn, or still need to learn. Practise it, she says, and it becomes second nature, which moves you from reacting to responding.
The brain begins remodeling the neural networks when a person starts changing their perspectives.Megan Ross, quoted in the book
Take one thing that reliably sets you off and write down the automatic reading of it. Then write two other readings that are equally true. You do not have to believe them yet. The instruction is only to notice that they exist.
09 The whole book
Understand it, work it, then transform through it
The book runs three moves in that order, and it is strict about the order. You cannot heal what you have not named, and you cannot transform what you have not worked on. Powel's name for the far end of it is post-traumatic growth.
Understand
What trauma is, the four shapes it takes, and the five stages you move through. Naming it is the first act of healing, and the book will not let you skip it.
Work it
Trace where it spread: discipline, self-worth, body, mind, emotions, relationships, money, meaning. Then reach the one domino you can move, which is how you read what happened.
Transform
Realization, release, rebound, reinvent, resurrection, responsiveness. Powel's distinction: change swaps one rock for another, transformation polishes the same rock into a diamond.
Powel's own summary is the line worth keeping: you are a victim of circumstance, not of life. The event is fixed. What it goes on to do is not.
The book says plainly that it is not a replacement for expert guidance. If you need counselling, its instruction is to contact a qualified professional.
Adapted from From Surviving to Thriving: How Healing Your Trauma Can Transform Your Life
Gianna Powel · © 2023 DVFZ Training Consultancy Services · 50 cited sources in the source edition