E-grāmata: Making Meaning of Difficult Experiences: A Self-Guided Program

"Making Meaning of Difficult Experiences is a self-help tool for all of us to help deal with the difficulties that are part of the human experience. Difficult experiences and trauma have always been a part of life. Most people will experience at least one if not multiple traumatic events in their lives. This self-guided program provides a map to help you move through difficult and potentially traumatic experiences for people who wish to work through them independently (outside of a formal therapeutic setting) and emerge on the other side. Difficult experiences may have resulted from the COVID pandemic, sexual or physical assault, loss of a job, life threatening illness, divorce, motor vehicle crash, loss of a loved one, combat, and any other event that sticks in your brain and prevents you from moving on. Drs. Rauch and Rothbaum have been working with people suffering with difficult experiences for a combined over 50 years and created this book to move the most effective tools they use with patients out of the mental health office and into the world. The program includes exercises to help you work through difficult memories and also provides specific positive coping tools that you can try on to see what positive coping strategies work best for you and fit your life. As the post pandemic world emerges and we prepare for getting back out and into our lives again Making Meaning has resources for all of us"--

Feel it, stay with it, share it, and let it go. Take your life back from stress and trauma using self-help versions of proven treatments.

Up to 90% of adults in the US will experience one or more traumatic events in their lifetimes, including interpersonal violence, traffic collisions, and sexual assault. Traumatic events and other difficult experiences (such as miscarriage, job loss, and divorce) can have a long-lasting impact on mental health and well-being. While most who suffer a trauma naturally recover over time, for others difficulties continue, and may lead to full-blown depression, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), substance use, anxiety disorders, and other problems that interfere with healthy daily functioning.

Making Meaning of Difficult Experiences is a self-guided mental health resource for people who have had potentially traumatic experiences and who wish to work through them independently, outside of a formal therapeutic setting. Based on psychological treatments with strong scientific support, this book introduces readers to several useful tools that will help them to emotionally process difficult experiences, with the goal of moving on from the event and building future resilience. Many years of research (much of which has been conducted by the authors of this volume) have shown that people who try to avoid memories and reminders of difficult experiences are more likely to develop PTSD, depression, and other problems. Conversely, those who work to process the memory gradually regain a general sense of wellbeing, experiencing fewer mental health issues over time. This program is unique in that it is intended to be wholly self-directed. Readers can learn about and then immediately
practice the strategies described, moving through and then past difficult experiences--whether they happened last week or years ago. The program takes the reader step-by-step through four skill sets to facilitate emotional processing of difficult experiences: Memory Exposure and Processing, Behavioral Activation, Social Connection, and Self-Care. Each set begins with a short description, followed by a self-assessment. Readers use this self-evaluation to determine what is working or not working for them, enabling them to focus more on certain skills, or to complete the full program based on their needs.