H****
This is the BEST PTSD book I have come across! My therapist found it to also be the best she had seen, and bought enough for clients to use.
C****
As a therapist I would say this is the first book you should get if you feel you may suffer from C-PTSD. I have recommended it to several clients, and will continue to do so.
V****
This book is amazing. I loved my psych 101 class for these reasons. This book covers everything I’ve felt and experienced also helps you come up with a mindful plan to overcome these obstacles. HERE AND NOW
B***
I like that you can pick and choose what to work on. it is a very helpful book, but not to be used alone in your healing journey. It is more of a complementary book to help you sort out your thoughts and understanding as you keep learning about cptsd and your healing.
Z***
When childhood trauma was consistently part of your life, it's easy to brush it off a normal or try to forget it. This book and others like it helped me recognize that there are ways of uncovering emotions and dealing with them, without fear. It's not easy putting in the work to free yourself from the negative opinions of others, but it erased years of damage for me. Great read, and amazingly healing. Highly recommend!
D*****
It doesn't matter if you have been diagnosed with COMPLEX PTSD or not, you should read this book. It is eye opening and thought provoking. If you have it, the book could help. If you don't have it, the book can help you understand and recognize someone that does and give you a few ideas what you can do to help that person feel accepted by you.
V****
If you're fully committed, ready for healing and have the proper support system in place this work book will help you acquire more tools to help you grow through your trauma. It helped refresh the tools I had and equipped me with more all the while giving me more insight on how to approach any areas of my life I may be feeling 'stuck' in. Daily practice with the tools that are learned are key to continually growth. What might work today could be found in the work book to help you tomorrow. It did for me. Best wishes to everyone doing the work to heal from their past.
G****
This book offers so much insight and help. I never knew such a thing of Complex PTSD existed until my therapist suggested I get it. It explains so many things about myself that I couldn't understand. There are exercises within the book that help identify and deal with the many aspects of trauma. I love it so much that I started an online group and am working through the book with 5 other women. Really a great book for those struggling with any type of mental health issue.
L****
For anyone who has been raised in an abusive, hostile, neglected household or by a mentally ill parent. I highly recommend this workbook and possibly in conjunction with your own therapist.
J*****
This book is an excellent resource for those who have experienced childhood trauma as well as for those who work with them. While designed to help support the therapeutic process, this book is also extremely helpful for those who want to better understand C-PTSD, find clarity about which therapeutic approaches are available and might be a best fit, and learn new ways to resource their healing journey and process through parts of their past. Dr. Schwartz draws from the best ideas and interventions from a variety of therapeutic approaches, resulting in a workbook that I highly recommend to anyone who is on the path to healing from C-PTSD or to anyone who is supporting someone else on this path.
R*****
This is an excellent book for working through C-PTSD, its symptoms and underlying causes. The written exercises based on the text are graduated to move the reader from specific awareness of what is troubling to options for resolution and freedom. The fog of uncertainty lifts. The exercises are well worth completing. They cannot be done without some painful returns and reactivations of past experience, so it is important to allow oneself time for the insights and sensations that arise to settle into body and mind. It may be necessary to pace oneself by taking breaks at the end of sections.
The book is very useful preparation for work with a psychologist. It is very important to have a professional on hand as part of the process. Working alone through the text is more likely to overwhelm the reader with reactivated trauma. The text describes various psychological approaches to trauma, and this helps when seeking professional assistance.
Like another reviewer, I found the cover to be agreeably tactile - peaceful even. This was a bonus when dealing with difficult material. The general tone of the book is reassuring and life-affirming. Conscientious application of the text can only result in healthy outcomes for the reader.
S***
I'm only 68 pages in, out of 165 (not counting glossary/appendix/references), and I really like this workbook. The author explains things in a very straight-forward, easy to understand manner. It's helpful that I have a degree in psychology and am working on a masters in counseling, however the subject of Complex Trauma is not taught in my program. As a survivor of narcissistic abuse, I found that the experience stirred up a lot of childhood stuff, and I saw parallels between the relationship with my ex, and the relationship I had with my mother. It was at that point, that I realized I would need additional help to resolve these issues. I read a lot of narcissistic abuse survivor books but they didn't delve into the underlying causes like this one does. Also, I didn't realize that a lot of the symptoms of C-PTSD are similar to those of BPD, which I was diagnosed with 20+ years ago. After reading this book, I started to wonder if maybe I was misdiagnosed and have lived with this label my entire life, one that my psych professors and therapist have always questioned. The activities in the workbook are helpful without being challenging, if you are someone who it fairly self-aware. There is even s section on breathwork, meditation, and mindfulness, for those who perhaps are unfamiliar with those practices. I have found it useful to just explore a couple pages at a time, and sit with each activity for a few days, rather than rush through it. This is a book I will recommend to future clients.
J*****
very good workbook. read just little chunks if you're gonna get triggered. but it's written in a way that's not very triggering yet covers many aspects of C-PTSD in an easy to read way. The exercises are very powerful and healing, and there's a wide variety of them, so you integrate into your life the ones that help you the most. it's a wonderful book written by an authentic professional.
H****
Great for practice and theory
G****
I have suffered from this awful condition for most of my life, and I firmly believe that I had been misdiagnosed bipolar by ignorant Doctors and wrongly treated with various chemicals.
This excellent book has helped me a great deal to come to terms with my traumas, and I have been taught numerous beneficial tips from it.
I thoroughly recommend that you purchase this book if you or a loved one are cursed by this crippling and life-ruining ailment.
L****
I am a psychologist in private practice and I found this book to be one of the best written and most helpful books for complex PTSD I have come across. I encourage my clients to get the book and we work through it together. Thank you so much for writing such a comprehensive and well-thought out book.