Approximately 8% of the American population (that’s over 26 million Americans) will experience Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder at some point in their lives, many undiagnosed. The author takes shares her rocky journey through PTSD as well as the tools she used to battle it along the way. This raw, unfiltered experience plunges into the darkness and surfaces somewhere much more hopeful. Years of trauma led her to a tangible way out of the suffering that she openly shares with the reader.
This memoir describes the author's discovery of Post -Traumatic Stress disorder after a 120mph accident that caused him to become suicidal. He describes the experience and compares how he has experienced life before and how trauma altered his perceptions and reactions of family and community around him. In his 'flooding moments' by the side of the road, he sees his life stream before his inner eye, only this time the events are tainted by a filter that causes him to feel the pain and forget the way he was coping with life before the accident. He meets a trauma counsellor who takes him step by step into healing by building new coping skills, using Emotional Freedom Technique as one of several ways to rebuild his life from the brink of suicide. Writing this memoir is part of the healing process. He now wants to share his experience of reinventing life. With all who have suffered trauma .
This is a frank, compassionate book written to those who contemplate suicide as a way out of their situations. The author issues an invitation to life, helping people accept the imperfections of their lives, and opening eyes to the possibilities of love.
NOW WITH A NEW CHAPTER AND AN UPDATED RESOURCES SECTION Suicide has touched the lives of nearly half of all Americans, yet it is rarely talked about openly. In her highly acclaimed book, Susan Blauner—a survivor of multiple suicide attempts—offers guidance and hope for those contemplating ending their lives and for their loved ones. “Each word written with thoughtful intent; each story told with the deepest of honesty and humility, and in doing so Blauner puts forward a life-saving book."—Daniel J. Reidenberg, PsyD, Executive Director, Suicide Awareness Voices of Education (www.save.org) “I continued to romanticize my death by suicide: who would find me; what I’d look like. I spent hundreds of hours planning my funeral, imagining the remorse of my family and friends. I wrote good-bye letters, composed wills, and disrupted the lives of everyone close to me. Then reality hit.”—Susan Rose Blauner The statistics on suicide are staggering. The World Health Organization estimates that nearly 800,000 people die by suicide every year, which is one person every 40 seconds, and for each completed suicide there may be twenty or more attempts. In How I Stayed Alive When My Brain Was Trying to Kill Me, Susan Blauner is the perfect emissary for a message of hope and a program of action for these millions of people. A survivor of multiple suicide attempts, she explains the complex feelings and fantasies that surround suicidal thoughts. In a direct, nonjudgmental, and loving voice, she offers affirmations and suggestions for those experiencing life-ending thoughts, and for their friends and family. With an introduction by Bernie Siegel, M.D., this important, timely book has now been updated with a revised resources section, and a new chapter on the author’s experiences since the book’s initial publication.
This book is my personal story of being raped, dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and my journey in healing. It includes my personal journal through the years and how I have been recovering. I wrote this book because I wanted to tell my story and to help others to now that he or she is not alone. "Well written! Powerful!! "This problem has finally hit the headlines. It is brave women like Honey Badger who help us understand the lifetime of pain that is left when these crimes are committed. We need to hear these hard stories. The conversation must continue. From sex abuse in the churches, to the college campus, to the military sexual abuse and rape must be understood. Not just from a legal angle but what happens to these women and men who work a lifetime to learn to love themselves again, to trust again, to stand in the light and feel no shame." "No words can express or give proper condolences of a failed system. Six times...I look at you as a strong woman and survivor. God bless and keep the faith. "
Argues that a range of behaviors such as murder-suicide, terrorism, and mass shootings are better understood as motivated by suicidal impulses than by homicidal ones Mass shooters often display behaviors that strongly mirror the warning signs for suicide: lives led in isolation, intense personal suffering, disaffection, and struggle. Letters detailing why they did what they did paint pictures of intense misery and loneliness. As this book makes clear, private despair sometimes leads to social violence. In this groundbreaking work, Thomas Joiner offers a unified theory of suicide, making the case that many acts that appear homicidal are best understood primarily as suicidal. We must recognize that there are several forms of suicidal violence, some of which masquerade as other types of acts, including terrorism and murder. These include suicide-by-cop, suicide terrorism, murder-suicide, and running amok. Though there are obvious differences among these acts, Joiner argues that framing them as stemming from a common ideology of suicide is a crucial step in preventing these atrocities. By recognizing the desire to die—not to kill—as being at the heart of many of the acts of those who choose to kill their partner, shoot up their school, or terrorize their community, we can offer more effective measures of intervention. At a time when our nation is scrambling for solutions in the fight to end gun violence, this book presents a crucial component in the detection and treatment of unwell individuals.
Patrick Thibeault has served in the US Army in various capacities since the 1990s, originally training as an Airborne soldier before specialising as a combat medic. My Journey as a Combat Medic covers his original training and deployment before providing a look at the roles he's since played in the US Army's forces, including his recent deployment to Afghanistan. It is a no-holds bar look at the modern medic in the US Army, allowing us a glimpse at the training as a soldier and as a specialist, as well as deployment and front line duties and the impact of service on civilian life, including an honest look at PTSD, from the author's own personal experience. Rather than a technical manual, My Journey as a Combat Medic is a detailed first hand account, concluding with a letter to new medics, providing a career's worth of advice and knowledge as they begin their journeys.
