- Paperback: 242 pages
- Publisher: BPS Books (28 April 2010)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1926645197
- ISBN-13: 978-1926645193
- Product Dimensions: 14 x 21.6 x 1.3 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 262,190 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Confessions of a Trauma Therapist
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Product Description
Product Description
“Trauma therapist Mary K. Armstrong embarks on an illuminating journey into her own secret past and emerges with a renewed sense of personal authenticity and joy in helping others.”
—SYLVIA FRASER, author of My Father’s House: A Memoir of Incest and Healing
“A brilliant, heartbreaking, and inspiring account of a child's tragedy and a woman's persistent growth toward light, knowledge, truth, and strength. Never has the human spirit shone through more passionately.”
—JUDY STEED, author of Our Little Secret: Child Sexual Abuse
To her surprise, dismay, and eventually relief, Mary Armstrong, a therapist with over thirty years of experience helping people heal from childhood trauma, uncovered her own history of child sexual abuse at the hands of her grandfather and father. As she tells her harrowing but heroic tale, she casts light as never before on the issue of repressed memories and the invisible wounds left by childhood trauma.
MARY K. ARMSTRONG is one of Canada's most accomplished trauma therapists. She earned her Master of Social Work degree from the School of Social Work, University of Toronto, and has trained extensively in the techniques of Focusing and EMDR. Mary lives in Toronto.
—SYLVIA FRASER, author of My Father’s House: A Memoir of Incest and Healing
“A brilliant, heartbreaking, and inspiring account of a child's tragedy and a woman's persistent growth toward light, knowledge, truth, and strength. Never has the human spirit shone through more passionately.”
—JUDY STEED, author of Our Little Secret: Child Sexual Abuse
To her surprise, dismay, and eventually relief, Mary Armstrong, a therapist with over thirty years of experience helping people heal from childhood trauma, uncovered her own history of child sexual abuse at the hands of her grandfather and father. As she tells her harrowing but heroic tale, she casts light as never before on the issue of repressed memories and the invisible wounds left by childhood trauma.
MARY K. ARMSTRONG is one of Canada's most accomplished trauma therapists. She earned her Master of Social Work degree from the School of Social Work, University of Toronto, and has trained extensively in the techniques of Focusing and EMDR. Mary lives in Toronto.
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2 reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
An Inside View of Child Sexual Abuse
7 July 2010
Format:Paperback
Mary Armstrong gives readers a tour of the experience of childhood sexual abuse. Based on her own recovered memories, the book clearly shows what goes on in the minds of an abused child during and after the experience. Therapists, victims and other readers will gain new insight to the mental and emotional devastation caused by intimate betrayal. Ms. Armstrong - who is a prominent mental health professional specializing in the field of dissociation and childhood sexual abuse - did not have access to her own memories until years after she became a therapist. She was shocked and horrified to discover that she was just like her patients - a person with a buried past. As memories began to flood into her awareness in middle age, Mary suffered the disorientation, confusion and self-doubt that is so characteristic of the initial phases of recovery. Eventually, however, everything began to make sense to her: her anxiety, her relationship issues, her somatic experiences. As she began to own her own history, she became whole for the first time. Mary details the process of recovery, offering a guide to professionals, sufferers and their families that is informative, reassuring and hopeful. Every reader will gain a new understanding and compassion that can help our society face and heal the plague of childhood abuse.
Sarah Chana Radcliffe, Author of "Raise Your Kids without Raising Your Voice"
Sarah Chana Radcliffe, Author of "Raise Your Kids without Raising Your Voice"
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
A Doubly Insightful Memoir
13 Oct 2011
Format:Paperback
This is a terrific, insightful memoir. Let's begin with the title, a sly slice of irony. Why is the therapist confessing, when it is usually the client who confesses and reveals? Why, because she herself, the brave Mary Armstrong, is both the therapist/confessor and the client/revealer.
As Armstrong details in this book, her life unfolded through school, marriage, and an intense yoga training, so that she came to be a therapist. When she found the body-centered form that drew her most, the practice known as Focusing, when her life seemed stable, that's when the memories and flashbacks came. She was in her forties. She was as ready, perhaps, as a person can be. Even so, she doubted herself. Could she throw her concepts of her loving, eccentric family - her caring grandfather and interesting father - out the window? As a survivor who had to do the same dance of refashioning my entire view of my family, I empathize.
Armstrong indeed had the courage to not only face these violent invasive memories, but to document her struggle in her journals, which she excerpts to show us how it felt. The book begins relatively slowly, telling us in advance that the memories will come, but building up the picture, step by step, of a life that unfolds with reflection and depth. Then when the memories come, the pace quickens and it all becomes very vivid.
The double view of surviving abuse--the perspectives of therapist and of client/survivor--reminds me of a studio with mirrors, where we may witness the dance of discovery from two angles at once.
Armstrong's life-story is a testimony to human strength and resilience. It's an inspiring read as we see her vulnerability but we also know she's a prominent therapist who has helped many others in her lifetime. I recommend this book highly.
~~ Jane Rowan, author of The River of Forgetting: A Memoir of Healing from Sexual Abuse
As Armstrong details in this book, her life unfolded through school, marriage, and an intense yoga training, so that she came to be a therapist. When she found the body-centered form that drew her most, the practice known as Focusing, when her life seemed stable, that's when the memories and flashbacks came. She was in her forties. She was as ready, perhaps, as a person can be. Even so, she doubted herself. Could she throw her concepts of her loving, eccentric family - her caring grandfather and interesting father - out the window? As a survivor who had to do the same dance of refashioning my entire view of my family, I empathize.
Armstrong indeed had the courage to not only face these violent invasive memories, but to document her struggle in her journals, which she excerpts to show us how it felt. The book begins relatively slowly, telling us in advance that the memories will come, but building up the picture, step by step, of a life that unfolds with reflection and depth. Then when the memories come, the pace quickens and it all becomes very vivid.
The double view of surviving abuse--the perspectives of therapist and of client/survivor--reminds me of a studio with mirrors, where we may witness the dance of discovery from two angles at once.
Armstrong's life-story is a testimony to human strength and resilience. It's an inspiring read as we see her vulnerability but we also know she's a prominent therapist who has helped many others in her lifetime. I recommend this book highly.
~~ Jane Rowan, author of The River of Forgetting: A Memoir of Healing from Sexual Abuse
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