Waking the Tiger : Healing Trauma : The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences |...

Waking the Tiger : Healing Trauma : The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences | Peter Levine, Ann Frederick | Fresh insights

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Waking the Tiger :...

	Waking the Tiger : Healing Trauma : The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences Peter Levine, Ann Frederick North Atlantic Books, 1997 - 250 pages average customer review:based on 51 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Outstanding, may seem fuzzy, don't let that fool you

This book will seem somewhat vague at first, but it will sink in better if you re-read it several times, especially the later sections. Levine and Frederick capture the essence of post-traumatic stress; your whole body is perpetually reliving the traumatic experiences and triggering distorted thinking, feeling, and behavior that otherwise make no sense. Levine's hook is to compare human trauma reactions to animal reactions. This gives him a model to break down the blocked cycle of somatic and mental reactions into pieces: hyperarousal, constricted consciousness - sometimes wrongly called "repression" - dissociation, and helplessness in and/or avoidance of triggering situations. Like all good psychology books, it also makes useful analogies and comparisons so that non-sufferers can get a glimpse of what it's like.

I recommend this book together with Babette Rothschild's The Body Remembers. That book is aimed at a medical/clinical audience, not at patients, but it carries the same message in a different way: the frozen, endlessly repeated body reactions are the lever to freeing the patient. It's like an alarm that was never shut off. The feelings, thoughts, and memories will follow. This approach entirely circumvents the sterile "false memory" controversy and quasi-Freudian approaches that use catharsis and abreaction - these methods make the PTSD reactions worse, while distorting the patient's memories and feelings further.

The key is to DE-sensitize the patient, not to recycle the original trauma. Desensitization not only defuses the trauma, it allows the patient to remember the events more accurately. If the trauma is not defused, the patient cannot remember properly. Accurately remembering is a byproduct of successful treatment, NOT the starting point.

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Fresh insights

This is a well written book that provides a different perspective on how to work with traumatic experiences. As one who has always "lived in my head" to get through not only the trauma is it occurred, but also as I work through the aftermath, this book provided good insight into WHY I needed to include a physical aspect to my healing.

Excellent Book

This is a very good, excellent resource for those wanting to make the step forward on the healing path. It certainly covers a broud range of lessons. Ranks right up there with books such as NIGHTMARES ECHO and LOST BOY. Teaches the victim how to become a survivor. Excellent Excellent Book I would recommend for everyone to read.

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Interesting, but just okay

Waking the Tiger certainly does give its reader some interesting ideas about trauma. But for me, it all seemed alittle to scientific and clinical. This is not a "feel good" self-help book. It approaches trauma from an entirely different perspective.
I found the book interesting, but maybe it just wasn't what I expected. There is alot of deep ideas here, but I don't think the book is that inspirational.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, page 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

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