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for those living or working with the impact of trauma

Book of the Month February 2022 - My Intense Emotions Handbook

7/2/2022

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My Intense Emotions Handbook: Manage Your Emotions and Connect Better with Others
by Sue Knowles, Bridie Gallagher and Hannah Bromley. 
Illustrated by Emmeline Pidgen


This is a great book. The authors condense huge amounts of beneficial information into just over 200 easy-to-read pages.

​From the outset, the tone is set for what the reader can expect; wonderful concepts introduced and revisited from chapter to chapter to build on what went before or stand alone. Concepts such as emotions are not good or bad, they just are, the importance of feeling OK in our own bodies and why emotions are vital and helpful.
Notice the why here? This book not only delivers on understanding intense emotions and learning how to manage them but why the authors make their many suggestions. In the process, I think this empowers the reader.
 
Strategies on managing emotions and relationships are abundant. Lots of practical tips for people who wish to ‘do’ something, like practicing mentalizing by watching a foreign language movie clip to see if I can work out what a character is intending, thinking and feeling, with the idea of staying curious rather than making assumptions. There is also information and explanations on letting feelings just ‘be’ and I particularly loved the chapter about riding your emotions. The authors interweave humour and often use personal examples to emphasise a point. This works, as it shows them not in the sole role of educator but as humans experiencing intense emotions too.
 
Aimed at young people aged 14+, I personally think anyone who wants to understand the role of trauma, their relationships, attachment and how their own past influences their emotions and responses to them, will find something helpful in this book.
 
Review by Jane Burton
Counsellor. Trainer.

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Book of the Month October 2021 - The Nervous Knight

3/10/2021

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The Nervous Knight: A Story About Overcoming Worries and Anxiety by Anthony Lloyd Jones

This book is about a knight who is rarely seen without their shiny armour. A protection from anything bad that might happen: a fall, being taken away by a dragon, spilled ice cream (sound familiar?).




​It is a story of building friendships and overcoming anxieties through connecting with others. It is also a story which has inclusivity at its heart. The knight’s pronoun is ‘they’, and a whole spectrum of human beings is included in the book.  

This is a book that will allow parents, carers and trusted adults and their little ones to relate to the knight in their struggle to deal with anxiety, and how it can manifest in various physical ways.

The knight, alongside their knight friends, navigates through not being able to control ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING and that not knowing what’s going to happen next does not mean the worst thing will indeed happen.

It’s a story of friendship where the knight learns to trust others, and the book gives the reader strategies and ideas they can take forward in real life.
​
A brilliant book, with plenty of opportunities to lead discussions and questions for your own little ones and with resources at the end of the book to support further learning and reflection. 

The Devil You know: Stories of Human Cruelty and Compassion by Dr Gwen Adshead and Eileen Horne 

I have a passionate aversion to violence and cruelty.  Before holding Adshead’s book in my hand I would look away, change the channel, on anything related to cruelty – be it news, educational or (so called) entertainment.

So, it more than raised eyebrows at home that I was embarking on this book.  But why?
I had come to know of Gwen Adshead’s through her passion for attachment and her belief that ‘no psychiatrist should be without a working knowledge of attachment theory’*.  I instinctively felt curious.  But the word ‘compassion’ in the title was the deal breaker – a sense I could be safe to explore what I fear.

Gwen Adshead is a Forensic Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist.  The book is built on the case studies of 11 of her patients from across Broadmoor, the prison system, and the community.  In it Adshead is as much someone who walks alongside her patients as they tell and make sense of their story, as she is their therapist.  It is readable – in a language sense, with the input of co-author Eileen Horne.

For Adshead, the study of attachments in relationships has been a major influence on her thinking about human behaviour, and in this book the thread of childhood attachments in relationships and their association with later violence weaves through some of the cases.

The book seeks that we open a window on compassion and close the one on condemnation.  Adshead is very conscious not to fall foul of being accused of being soft on perpetrators.  To think so is to miss the point.  She advocates that as a society we can and should learn from their stories, to promote measures that encourage pro-social attitudes and reduce childhood adversity and making a powerful case for mental health services well before the point of crisis. 

The book was worth the emotional investment. Not one to be galloped through but contemplated with compassion, on how such behaviours make us feel about the perpetrators, and what it is for us all to be human.

Maggie McManus
Development Manager, Scottish Attachment in Action

(All views my own)

*https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-of-psychiatry/article/security-of-mind-20-years-of-attachment-theory-and-its-relevance-to-psychiatry/F730F989CACEF1AB43581D309616547A
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Book of the Month August 2020 - The Scared Gang are Asked to Tell

3/8/2020

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​The Scared Gang Are Asked To Tell - How to Enable Narrative Expression and Affect Regulation by Éadaoin Bhreathnach and illustrated by Sighle Bhreathnach-Cashell.

Éadaoin Bhreathnach, consultant occupational therapist, attachment counsellor and creator
of Sensory Attachment Intervention (SAI) has produced this pack as the latest in her series
about ‘The Scared Gang’. It comprises five A4 booklets which are easy to read and
illustrated with the familiar series characters.

The first booklet is written for professionals to introduce the pack and is entitled ‘How to
Enable Narrative Expression and Affect Regulation’. It sets the context for the pack’s
creation for children who are being asked to talk about difficult things, arising from Éadaoin
being asked to run training for the NSPCC Young Witness Service in Northern Ireland.

It goes on to identify the symptoms traumatised children who are being asked to talk about
their traumatic experiences may show, including impulsivity, increased activity levels,
aggression, dissociation and loss in muscle tone. It is highlighted how important it is that
the adults around the children are monitoring these symptoms and behaviours and learning
ways to help neurobiologically regulate them.

The books are intended to be a resource for professionals to read with children to help
them understand how stress might make them behave as well as to help professionals learn
how to create a safe regulating space for them. This section then breaks down how to read
the four other books – The Waiting Room, The Playroom, The Last Visit and Little Tools to
Stay Calm – clarifying that they do not need to be read in any particular order and
suggesting ways to build a regulating “tool kit” and encouraging each child to join the
professional in this process.

Éadaoin recommends a pathway of meeting the child first and building a rapport before
introducing the books, using snacks and regulating tools in the sessions and pausing to make relevant links for the child between what might be going on for them and for the Scared Gang characters.

The final section breaks down what each book does and how the therapist might support
the child in each area – the waiting room, play room and last visit - being “an enabler” who
helps them follow their inner drive for regulation. It is made clear the therapist only
intervenes “when she anticipates the activity may activate anxious behaviour” and would
then steer the child towards regulating activities.

Finally, creating a ‘Regulating Tool Book’ for each child is discussed and Éadaoin strongly
states the importance of adults helping the child find their own subjective narrative as is the
process in Éadaoin’s ‘Just Right State Programme for Children’. She warns of the dangers of
adults passing on their bias and influencing the child’s subjective experience. This is a tricky
area as we make sense of our experiences within secure attachment relationships of which
traumatised children have rarely experienced in their early lives, if ever. I wonder if a
traumatised child may struggle to find the words or even images to construct a narrative on
their own and whether it might have been helpful here to be clearer about the role of the 
adult, highlighting the value of “borrowing an adult brain” in order to co-create meaning
with the child around their sensory experiences, alongside highlighting, as this guide does,
the importance of allowing the child’s story to come through.

The booklets are written in a young child-friendly way (I would say approximately 4 – 10
years as a rough guide which clearly relates less chronologically with traumatised children)
and each cover a topic: ‘Little Tools to Help Stay Calm’ gives some sensory suggestions for
kids with different needs such as chewy jewellery for dissociative Frozen Florence, a stretchy
band around Run- Away Ronnie’s legs and for Fired-up Freda I particularly liked the idea of a
spiky mat to dig her fingers into instead of digging them into herself.

‘The Waiting Room’ booklet describes the likely behaviours traumatised children might
display when in an anxious place. The dissociative types like Day-Dreamy Derek and Sleepy
Sue zoning out or even dropping off to sleep and the more physically activated children like
Run-away Ronnie zooming around the room. I felt this booklet is likely to be most useful to
the adults accompanying the children so that they might recognise the behaviours and help
the children make sense of the feelings driving them and know how to help them with
those.

‘The Playroom’ booklet helps children understand what might happen when they have a
sensory therapy session. I enjoyed the description of the regulating capacity of different
foods and how each child tends to show what their body needs – Fired-Freda likes to hang
and stomp on an air cushion, Day-Dreamy Derek likes the tent and rocking horse, Frozen
Florence likes to draw on a blackboard and use a sit-in cone called a ‘rock-a-round’. I could
see how this section would help children to understand themselves and also again suspect
that the adults might benefit most from these descriptions, particularly adults who work
with groups of children in schools, health, care and therapeutic settings.

‘The Last Visit’ describes the SAI therapist telling each child their sensory story which she
has observed from their behaviours and encouraging them to make their own book of
sensory needs, highlighting that adults do not always understand what is going on for
traumatised children and what they might need. It ends with the words “They all sat down
quietly and concentrated on writing their own book” which, if it reflects some of the
feedback Éadaoin has received following wider use of this approach, I was very impressed
by!

Whilst this pack is not created to be an in-depth guide to sensory work with traumatised
children, I would recommend it for those seeking some simple, child-friendly, how-to ideas
on supporting with the sensory needs of traumatised children in potentially stressful
settings.

Sez Morse MA UKCP
Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist
DDP Practitioner, Consultant & Trainer
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Book of the Month June 2018 - My Anxiety Handbook

1/6/2018

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My Anxiety Handbook: Getting Back on Track

S Knowles, B Gallagher and P McEwen (2018)
Published by Jessica Kingsley
 
This supportive book is an encouraging, accessible manual to share with a teenager (12-18 yr old) who is struggling with anxiety. It is however, in my opinion, written back to front.


​
​With a literate, engaged and motivated young person I would start at Chapter 12 and meet the key people who have had personal experience of anxiety and contributed to the book.

It is then helpful to consider good sleep hygiene (chapter 8) and develop some mindfulness (chapter 6) and other regulatory activities into your routine so that your stress response system is in a good a place as possible to access the core part of this book – the Cognitive Behaviour Therapy approach to managing, challenging and adapting unhelpful thought processes.
 
Written personally with ‘we’ and ‘you’ the book engages the reader and normalises anxiety as a regular part of our emotional repertoire. It looks at catching and evaluating thoughts, looking at common thinking errors and has some useful strategies to support their approach including protected worry time and creating a self-soothe box.

A teenager would need a coach or mentor to help write their ‘survival plan’ (chapter 13) and share this handbook with. It would be a useful addition to a family looking to support a teenager where anxiety is the main barrier to their development.
 
With anxiety more prevalent in our young people, this book offers reassurance, support and practical strategies to manage and master anxiety provoking life events.
 
(If your child is 8-12 years old then ‘What to Do When You Worry Too Much: A Kid's Guide to Overcoming Anxiety’ by D Huebner is a book combining narrative and CBT approaches to support anxiety).

Intensive Therapeutic Service Team
Clackmannanshire Educational Psychology Service

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