The Modern Trauma Toolkit

Book excerpt: Embrace your innate power and find growth from trauma with this essential guide filled with groundbreaking solutions and strategies for your healing journey. Amid collective trauma, it helps to know that our bodies are built to respond to stress and what we might do to shift those reflexes. Having studied brain-based and body-based approaches to wellbeing, Dr. Christy Gibson teaches readers how to embrace their innate power and catalyze community wisdom. Drawing on her work with people suffering from stress and societal challenges, Dr. Gibson shares practical and effective mental health advice you can personalize. In clear and accessible language, The Modern Trauma Toolkit describes new theories in brain biology, such as the polyvagal theory and epigenetics, and explains how you can remodel your brain to achieve post-traumatic growth. While noting how particular communities face inequitable stressors, she empowers readers to identify and harness their unique and cultural strengths. Dr. Gibson shares over forty activities that can be self-taught and practiced so you can begin your healing journey today, including: Iffirmations: Reimagine affirmations to plant seeds of possibility The Container: Create your box of shame and leave it behind Havening: Discover the body's three areas that are best suited to self-soothing Solutions Studio: Catalyze change at the systems level using design thinking