What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing is a conversation between Oprah Winfrey and Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D. This book explores the impact of trauma on individuals’ lives and the potential for healing and resilience, and it delves into the understanding that our experiences, particularly early in life, shape our brains, behaviors, and perceptions. This blog shares our team’s book review of What Happened To You?.
About The Book
Perry and Winfrey combine their expertise and personal experiences in a conversation exploring how past traumas, especially childhood experiences, can influence the way individuals navigate the world. They emphasize the significance of asking “What happened to you?” instead of “What’s wrong with you?” as a way to understand and address trauma without stigma or judgment.
Our Review of What Happened To You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing
Life can be chaotic. There are ever-increasing standards and higher demands at every phase of life. Trying to remain healthy amidst the chaos of life can be a challenge. Our mental and physical health can take a backseat to homework, household responsibilities, work quotas, and the like. Unfortunately, our productivity is impacted when we let our physical and mental health slip — when we lose our balance. A balanced life is one where we are capable of relieving our distress, our body systems are regulated, we are thriving within our communities, and we just feel mentally and physically good. Because it has become so normal to be off-balanced, many must consciously decide to find it again. When we make that decision to find balance, to achieve that emotional and physical wellness, where do we begin? According to Dr. Bruce Perry, to find your balance, you must first find your rhythm.
What comes to mind when you hear the word “rhythm”? Music, percussion, and other repetitive sounds are usually the most common examples given. However, rhythm shows up in nearly every area of our lives. It is woven into some of our very first experiences. One of the first things babies experience in the womb is being surrounded by the heartbeat of their mother. The rhythm of the heartbeat serves to soothe the baby and adds to the warmth and safety felt in the womb. Once a baby has been born, this rhythm continues as parents rock their babies to soothe them or put them to sleep. Such rhythm is vital to human development and developing a secure attachment between parent and child, and it is necessary in helping us learn how to find balance.
When a baby cries, that baby is letting us know that something is wrong. The attentive parent will go to the baby when it cries. They will pick up the baby, rock with them back and forth, perhaps they will speak in hushed tones or even hum a tune to help soothe the baby. The significance of these moments cannot be overstated. When a parent is attentive to their child, they are aiding in the development of the child’s ability to soothe themselves as they age. The baby learns that their world is safe and stable. Alternatively, the child who is left to cry in their crib is not given those same building blocks. Over time, these experiences create a patterned response to stress. For the child with attentive caregivers, they grow up in an environment that is predictable, moderate, and controllable which leads to the development of resilience to stress. For the child with inattentive or inconsistent caregiving, they grow up in an environment where stress is unpredictable, extreme, and prolonged which leads to the development of vulnerability and risks to one’s emotional, social, mental, and physical health.
Perhaps you know some people who had inattentive, inconsistent nurturing in those first few months of life, and you see how the world seems to hit them harder than others. Perhaps you are that child whose parents did not provide that warmth, safety, and stability, so every distress weighs on you until you resort to unhealthy means to feel better. While the brain is most malleable in the first few years of life, our brains never stop creating neurons that make it possible for us to learn new things and develop new connections. Balance, resilient stress response, and wellness can be learned. You need only to start with rhythm. Go on a walk, pick up knitting, learn to dance, play an instrument, and start the process of building, or improving, those neural networks that lead to resilience and balance.
We also found the discussion of trauma and how impactful trauma can be for an individual to be very interesting. Dr. Perry mentions trauma as being a bad event or experience that one never forgets. When we take a look at one’s “bad event” – it is subjective. We as humans have different opinions on what we view as a “bad event”. However, when we are experiencing a “bad event”, what is important is whether or not our stress response system is activated for a prolonged period of time. In Chapter 4, Dr. Perry created a scenario of a school fire and focused on three different points of views. The first point of view was the firefighter, who is skilled and trained to put out fires. Second, is a 1st grader directly affected due to the fire being in his classroom. Lastly, the 5th grader who is in the building but is not directly affected by the fire. All three experienced the fire at the school, but because they experienced the fire in three different ways they each had different stress responses. For the firefighter, Dr. Perry stated that there was a moderate activation of her stress response systems, due to her experience of putting out fires in the past. However, the 5th grader who indirectly experienced the fire, had an acute activation of his stress response, meaning that his stress response system was activated, however, he was able to be back at baseline within a few weeks. Dr. Perry states that if an individual is able to return to baseline after a “bad event”, then the individual is not traumatized. On the other hand, the first grader who experienced the fire in his classroom experienced fear and distress, which means the first grader’s stress response system was highly activated. Furthermore, since the 1st grader experienced distress and fear, he is not able to return to baseline. In this case, the 1st grader experienced a traumatic event.
About Trauma Counseling
Have you or someone you love experienced a traumatic event? Are you looking for a counselor to support you? At Garrett Counseling, our team is trauma informed. We continually consider how adverse childhood experiences impact functioning into adulthood. Learn more about working with us by calling (256) 239-5662.