Nurturing Resilience

In my pastoral training I was not taught to consider the physiological. Over the last couple of years I have been studying this, and I am glad I have! There are measurable physiological responses that go along with life after trauma. To help someone with trauma using only spiritual concepts without helping them handle what is going on physiologically can be counterproductive.

Kain and Terrell give a practical and accessible approach stepping clinicians though how to recognize somatic considerations and then how to deal with them. I do not consider myself a clinician, but I do consider myself someone who helps people deal with trauma.

I found this book fairly concise without a lot of overlap. There is some, but it wasn't bothersome to me. There was a lot of overlap from other books I have read. Thus, someone who has done a lot of reading on this topic already will experience a lot of reinforcement. The authors' effort to make this an integrative approach necessitates this.

There were two important concepts in this book that were especially helpful to me. First, it was here that I read my first substantive definition and explanation of what safety is. Perhaps it was in other books I have read, but it stood out for me in this book.

Second, this book describes what they call a "Window of Tolerance" and then a "Faux Window of Tolerance" along with "defense accommodations." People who have gone through trauma experience the brokenness of not being able to process reality or to process what is going on inside of them (somaticaly or psychologically). The concept of a window of tolerance is great matrix that equips clinicians, mentors, and friends to understand what is going on in the person they are trying to help.