akvolcano's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative reflective sad tense fast-paced

4.75

Loved reading this book! Trauma is always spoken in the context of war veterans, but the intricacies are never fully connected. This book well develops the connection. It actually goes further by not separating citizen trauma from war trauma, but speaks of them on the same level. When I began this reading I was skeptical if there would be any new concepts or material. I am happy to say that there was in fact exploration in areas that have not been fed into mainstream media! As a survivor myself, I enjoy that throughout the book there is consistently stories of people being shared. I would like to read a book like this one that takes its central concepts and goes a bit further. Overall, excellent well researched and articulated book!

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jussery's review against another edition

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challenging informative medium-paced

4.0

This book was really useful to me in how it summarized a lot of research findings in an interesting and succinct way (not to say this book wasn't long, it definitely was). Halfway into this book I found out that the author is not really a great guy, which definetely soured anything I read from his perspective. I found some of his descriptions of women kinda gross. I thought he went too far describing some patient's trauma. This book has so many triggers and I read it as someone without PTSD (I have a depersonalization disorder though, and was hoping to uncover more about that through this book) - so a big warning to anyone considering reading it! Overall though, I still gave this book 4 stars just because I think it really captured a lot of research studies on trauma in a digestible way (could do without the authors excessive descriptions though). And it really helped me contextualize some of my symptoms and how they are biologically based, which helped me put less blame on myself for them.

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schopflin's review against another edition

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slow-paced

4.0

This is highly readable despite the complexity of some of the concepts. I have no background in neuroscience but I was able to follow these parts and understand them. From another aspect, this book is potentially life-changing. I wouldn't say my experiences were traumatic on the scale of the patients described here, but I recognised so many of the physical responses to stressful situations. Not least, the pure lack of safety I feel in relation to others. This isn't an easy read, but we'll worth it. 

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annerbtw's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful informative reflective sad slow-paced

3.75

 3.78/5 ⭐️ - because I want to be difficult with my rating.

I liked it, I found it insightful, but I think I went in with the wrong expectations. I assumed that by the end of the book, you'd have resources that could be "easily" applied to your own mental health journey. Kolk definitely teaches you about them, but they're not easily applied to anything specific you might have going on. It's a very educational read... but don't read it side-by-side with A Little Life, my GOD... do not.

Also, (sorry for long review, anyone reading) there are some negative reviews about Kolk sympathizing with horrible people - I don't necessarily think that's true. The same way that people find documentaries about serial killers interesting, I think the same applies here. I would never excuse the actions some mentally disturbed people do at the beginning of this book, but I think it's important for us to find the source (if there is one), and figure out how to keep it from happening again. There can be a lot of fascination in this topic because of just how complex humans are, how complex the brain is.... that's what the whole book is about. 

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nonbinarian_librarian's review against another edition

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challenging informative reflective medium-paced

3.5


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yaelm's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative reflective sad tense

3.0

מבינה מה הכותב אומר ובסה״כ מדובר בספר עשיר במידע וקולח, אבל השפה בה הוא משתמש מאוד בעייתית (אנשים נורמליים לעומת אנשים עם פוסט טראומה, למשל) ולפעמים כואבת.

יש לו גם כל מיני הבחנות מכאיבות מאוד לגבי הורות עם פוסט טראומה. אני לא הורה בעצמי אבל זה כאב לי בכל הגוף. היו עוד כל מיני כאלו לאורך הספר.

מעבר לזה, מבוסס (בחלקו) על מדע שכבר אינו עדכני ולדעתי גם בתקופת הכתיבה של הספר לא היה מדויק (הצד הימני של המוח הוא היצירתי והשמאלי הוא השכלתני וכו׳).

מלאאא בטריגרים כמובן, כל דבר שיכול לגרום לפוסט טראומה. כמה מהמקרים שהוא מציג כטראומטיים מאוד מקוממים (אדם שביצע פשעים נוראיים כלפי נשים וילדים וחזר מהמלחמה עם טראומה, למשל. אין לי ספק שהוא באמת חזר בטראומה, אבל זה עבר בלי ביקורת בכלל. ברור לי שכפסיכיאטר התפקיד שלו הוא לא להפעיל שיפוט מוסרי, ועדיין אפשר היה לכתוב איזו מילה וחצי כמו שהוא עשה במקרים אחרים ופחות שחורים מוסרית)

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monstrouscosmos's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad slow-paced

1.0

I used to always recommend this book to people, but I'm at a point where I think it's an avoid. it's meant as a professional resource, and while as a non-professional I think there's something to be gained by learning about these topics: there are less triggering, less retraumatizing, and more empowering options out there. 

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s_lorenz's review against another edition

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hopeful informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

5.0


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averagereadin's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative inspiring slow-paced

3.25


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bookfriend8's review against another edition

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emotional informative reflective slow-paced

4.75

Really appreciate this book. I was worried about it being too medical and difficult to understand, but the author provides thorough and accessible explanations on what happens to the human body and mind after trauma, and also offers his opinion on how conditions such as (C)PTSD can effectively be cured. He supports his scientific descriptions with personal and patient anecdotes, and although these were often very graphic and distressing (trigger warning for everything), it helped to balance out the scientific information and to see how they manifest in real life. Understanding how distressing experiences can literally change a person forever really explains the origins of people’s behaviours and patterns. Overall, would give it 5/5, but some chapters were also long-winded and repetitive, and there was plenty of US-defaultism.
It was deeply enlightening for me to read this book and I’m glad I decided to pick it up. 

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