Mind-Body Workbook for PTSD: A 10-Week Program for Healing After Trauma [Paperback]

As both a therapist and past trauma recover, I have over the years explored various methods to help my clients regain wellness and I have tested these tools and techniques on myself. Some methods work with various degree of success, for a while, yet my experience is that they are not holistic. What I find different with MBB and the 10 week program of Mind-Body Workbook for PTSD, is that it is simple, progressive, easily applied and followed. Day after day, for 10 weeks, it guides the reader through a set of simple mindfulness exercises, describes in practical terms the functioning of our minds with regard to trauma and how we can grasp our thoughts and feeling about (our) PTSD. As the techniques are assimilated, they remain within one's fabric and can be used anytime, anywhere. What I love most, is that it does not require to recall memories and feelings, nor talk about them, nor dwell on the past, but it offers instead a path to live life in the now, from a grounded perspective. I find that I can now apply the techniques in any situation I would find stressful or unpleasant, and the peace of mind that results is priceless. I highly recommend this book for self help or for use with clients and groups for several situations of trauma, including, but not restricted to, PTSD.

I used this workbook at Recovery Bridge, an addiction recovery program. The results were immediate and dramatic. It is simple and easy to follow and understand, walking you step by step through a full recovery. It has help me with my PTSD, severe anxiety, depression, and substance abuse issues. I would recommend this workbook for anyone who wants to quickly and easily transform their life by following simple steps and exercises. It works by using day-by-day simple exercises that will transform your live. A must have for anyone.

I haven't finished the book yet, but for those who've been asking vis use with hysteric borderlines, here are some preliminary thoughts:

It appears that the Blocks are firmly grounded in Albert Ellis's rational emotive behavioral therapy and Miller & Rollnick's motivational enhancement therapy. Thus far, this looks like a nice marriage of the two, and because it's REBT-, rather than CBT-, ACT- or DBT-based, noticeably different from McKay et al's, Marra's, Hayes & Smith's, Van Dijk's, Follette & Pistorello's, Forsyth & Eifert's, and Orsillo's similar "three-legged stool," MBCT-girded approaches to anxiety, depression, mania and PTSD.

The Blocks use the term "requirement" in place of Ellis's "must," then devise a system of CBT-style consciousness raisers to move the patient up the ladder from largely unconscious (or "mindless") "chess piece" past "chess player" on toward "detached, observing passerby." Knowing what they're dealing with, it seems to me, they move very slowly compared to the other New Harbinger authors. Given the possibilities for triggering in some of the other workbooks that might blow the borderline out before the "miracle occurs," this looks like solid, clinical-experience-based policy.

What puts me off at the moment are

1) the authors' use of yet another rubric of potentially confusing, "OEM" terminology like "I-Systems" (although they do include a glossary at the end),

2) feeling labeling (I'm still with Steve Hayes, Jiddu Krishnamurti and S. N. Goenka on getting past =words= because of their potential for mis-representation of actual experience when =direct=, word-less experience of emotions is really the path to digestion or processing thereof, though I do see utility in labeling if the patient does not =identify= him- or herself with those labels), and

3) lack of use of Linehan's and Brack's concept of "radical acceptance," which has come to be one of the most powerful de-shaming tools I have yet discovered.

That said, =M-BW4PTSD= looks like it's a safe and sane way to move towards building the three legs of the therapeutic stool for those with borderline-organized manifestations of complex PTSD. Follette & Pistorello's =finding life beyond trauma= workbook is also very good.

RG, Psy.D.