Inevitably, one individual's trauma will affect the lives of their close relations. Severe traumatization affects one's capacity to feel warm, compassionate feelings, often impinging on intimate relationships or requiring family members to make complementary changes in their own lives as they try to shelter the traumatized member. Living with many of the symptoms of a trauma survivor, particularly the hyper-arousal and avoidance symptoms, places a considerable strain on loved ones who become vulnerable to developing secondary traumatization. Continue reading...
The Handbook of Stress, Trauma and the Family is broken down into three sections, compiling research, theory and practice. The first section focuses on how traumatic stress affects intimate others, what familial characteristics affect individual susceptibility to trauma, as well as evaluation of the effectiveness of various interventions. The section on theory explores concepts of stress and intrapsychic processes underlying the intergenerational transmission of trauma, addressesing how families can buffer or enhance anxiety. The final section, entitled practice, covers assessment (presenting both the Circumplex Model and Bowenian family theory models), treatment models and treatment formats for specific populations. The major family treatment models applicable to stress and trauma are discussed, including contextual, object relations, emotionally focused and critical interaction therapy.
The Handbook is the first text to comprehensively address stress and trauma within the family and is geared towards the professional reader as well as graduate students studying trauma.
