It's Not Your Fault: How Healing Relationships Change Your Brain and Can Help You Overcome a Painful Past

Finally, a book that challenges conventional "wisdom" about healing from emotionally destructive traumas and abuse. Simply put, you can't think your way to happiness if you've suffered injuries as a child or youth. Yet every day, millions of adult Americans who suffer from emotionally devastating mistreatment at the hands of family members, friends, acquaintances, or strangers receive this dangerous message from a multi-billion dollar self-help industry. As a result, millions try to put advice about "healing yourself" into practice. Yet millions of sincere, intelligent, and highly motivated people who have followed all the popular pathways for self-healing still feel depressed, anxious, unloved, and unlovable. This engaging and highly readable book, based in the author's professional experience in treating those who suffer from the devastating effects of emotional trauma, offers hope for those who suffer and those who care about them. Dr. McGraw describes how trauma affects the brain and, therefore, one's ability to carry out 'good advice'; explains the subtle and hidden process of attunement and attachment that take place between parents and children, examining their impact on all future relationships; tells what is needed for healing to occur; discusses the profound health benefits of spirituality and a relationship with God in assisting and accelerating the healing process; and suggests how members of the helping professions can begin to tap the deepest, most authentic parts of themselves to touch the hearts of those they seek to help.