If you or someone you love has suffered a traumatic event, you know the devastating impact it can have on your life and your spirit. Life-threatening accidents, illnesses, assaults, abusive relationships—or a tragedy like 9/11—all can leave deep emotional wounds that persist long after physical scars have healed. Survivors become “invisible heroes,” courageously struggling to lead normal lives in spite of symptoms so baffling and disturbing that they sometimes doubt their own sanity. Now there is new hope for the millions affected by posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Drawing on more than thirty years’ experience as a therapist and on the most recent cutting-edge research, Belleruth Naparstek presents a clinically proven program for recovery using the potent tool of guided imagery. She reveals how guided imagery goes straight to the right side of the brain, where it impacts the nonverbal wiring of the nervous system itself, the key to alleviating suffering.

Filled with the voices of real trauma survivors and therapists whose lives and work have been changed by this approach, Invisible Heroes offers:

• New understanding of the physical, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral effects of PTSD, who is most susceptible, and why symptoms can get worse rather than better with time
• Important insights into how the brain and body respond to trauma, why conventional talk therapy can actually impede recovery, and why the nonverbal, image-based right brain is crucial to healing
• A step-by-step program with more than twenty scripts for guided-imagery exercises tailored to the three stages of recovery, from immediate relief of anxiety attacks, flashbacks, nightmares, and insomnia, to freedom from depression and isolation, to renewed engagement with life
• A helpful guide to the best of the new imagery-based therapies, and how to incorporate them into an overall recovery plan

Belleruth Naparstek concludes with the inspiring words of survivors.

Written and narrated by Belleruth Naparstek, this is the complete, uncondensed reading of Invisible Heroes: Survivors of Trauma and How They Heal, with a foreword by neurologist Robert Scaer.

Track Names/Numbers:

1. Foreword

2. Introduction

3. The Many Faces of Trauma

4. A Life Threatening Illness

5. A Survivor of Rape

6. A Chronicler of Horror

7. Frannies Undoing

8. Worsening Symptoms

9. Stone Metaphor

10. Fierce Undoing Symptoms

11. Acute Stress Reactions

12. Symptoms Resurfacing

13. The Retreat of Fairness

14. Shattered Identity

15. Who Suffers New Research

16. Perpetrating Violence

17. Survivor Traits

18. Children

19. Reactions Around Trauma

20. Drinking and Intoxication

21. Physical Effects - Chain of Events

22. Blasted By Biochemicals

23. The Freeze Response

24. A Vicious Cycle of Kindling

25. Cognitive Effects of Trauma

26. Time Distortion

27. Dissociation

28. Psychic Opening and Precognition

29. Emotional Effects: The Toll

30. Terror Anxiety and Panic

31. Rage

32. Shame and Humiliation

33. Despair

34. Heart Ripped Open

35. Behavioral Effects - Client Linda

36. Avoidance and Isolation

37. Disrupted Relationships

38. Reenactments and Flirting

39. Substance Abuse

40. Impaired Volition

41. How and Why Imagery Heals Gentle but Powerful

42. Mom Blankies...

43. The Right Brain Connection

44. Fighting Trance with Trance

45. Sidestepping Word Traps

46. Serotonin

47. Spiritual Connection

48. Spontaneous Imagery

49. Scripted Imagery Vs Self

50. Scripted Imagery Vs Basics

51. Pointers for the Listener

52. Guided Imagery: Where to Start

53. Guided Imagery - Stage One

54. Guided Imagery - Stage Two

55. Guided Imagery - Stage Three

56. Other Imagery Therapies Alphabet Therapies

57. TFT

58. WHEE

59. TIR

60. VKD

61. TPR

62. Ten Ingredients for Healing - Ten Pronged Approach

63. Healing the Wounds of War

64. An Anchor Therapist

65. Self Soothing Practice

66. Surprise Blessing Gifts in the Rubble - Generosity

67. Conclusion