Product Description

If you or someone you love has suffered a traumatic event, you know the devastating impact it can have on your life and your spirit. Life-threatening accidents, illnesses, assaults, abusive relationships—or a tragedy like 9/11—all can leave deep emotional wounds that persist long after physical scars have healed. Survivors become “invisible heroes,” courageously struggling to lead normal lives in spite of symptoms so baffling and disturbing that they sometimes doubt their own sanity.

Now there is new hope for the millions affected by posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Drawing on more than thirty years’ experience as a therapist and on the most recent cutting-edge research, Belleruth Naparstek presents a clinically proven program for recovery using the potent tool of guided imagery. She reveals how guided imagery goes straight to the right side of the brain, where it impacts the nonverbal wiring of the nervous system itself, the key to alleviating suffering.

Filled with the voices of real trauma survivors and therapists whose lives and work have been changed by this approach, Invisible Heroes offers:

• New understanding of the physical, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral effects of PTSD, who is most susceptible, and why symptoms can get worse rather than better with time

• Important insights into how the brain and body respond to trauma, why conventional talk therapy can actually impede recovery, and why the nonverbal, image-based right brain is crucial to healing

• A step-by-step program with more than twenty scripts for guided-imagery exercises tailored to the three stages of recovery, from immediate relief of anxiety attacks, flashbacks, nightmares, and insomnia, to freedom from depression and isolation, to renewed engagement with life

• A helpful guide to the best of the new imagery-based therapies, and how to incorporate them into an overall recovery plan

Belleruth Naparstek concludes with the inspiring words of survivors who have found their way back to peace, purpose, and
a deep joy in living. Her compassionate, groundbreaking book can lead you and
those in your care to the same renewal and healing.


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #35333 in Books
• Published on: 2005-12-27
• Released on: 2005-12-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In the wake of 9/11, there was much media coverage of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD—the long-term stress response whose symptoms include chronic pain, nightmares and panic attacks—and how to treat it. Naparstek, a therapist for more than 30 years, is an advocate of guided imagery, as opposed to talk therapy, and in this book she uses case histories to illustrate how it works; she also looks at recent research on the brain that shows why this method is effective and offers step-by-step instructions on using guided imagery, which she defines as "deliberate, directed daydreaming," for healing trauma. According to Naparstek, trauma damages the left brain, which is language oriented, and talking about the trauma can actually worsen symptoms. Imagery, on the other hand affects the right brain, the seat of the emotions. Guided imagery is "fast, powerful, costs little or nothing," says the author; it can be done alone or in groups, with the help of tapes that walk the stress victim through the process of finding images that help heal the trauma. Clinicians will find the entire book useful; people seeking help may not need explanations of the biochemical processes underlying PTSD, but will respond to Napartek's passionate advocacy of a simple, gentle healing method.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
"The bad news is that stress-related disorders are epidemic in our society.  The good news is the new array of therapies that are truly effective in healing them.   INVISIBLE HEROES is a package of hope for anyone whose life is compromised by the insidious effects of emotional trauma.  This is one of those blessed books that deserves to be called life-changing."--Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Healing Beyond the Body, Reinventing Medicine and Healing Words

"Belleruth Naparstek is both a compassionate therapist and authority on the role of imagery in health. Her new book on PTSD ingeniously combines her therapeutic work with the latest brain research on how to heal from trauma. The end result is a book full of wisdom, compassion, and practical solutions that can help anyone access their inner ability to heal even from worst case scenarios. The world certainly needs this information now more than ever."--Christiane Northrup, M.D., author of The Wisdom of Menopause and Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom

"Surgery is controlled trauma. Finally I understand why we cannot just "talk" patients back to full recovery. Here is a blue print for using the right brain to deliver health."--Mehmet Oz, M.D., author of Healing from The Heart

"Belleruth Naparstek is a treasure, deeply engaged, boundlessly energetic, visionary. Her new work on trauma is as wise as it is practical. We are all in her debt."--James S. Gordon, MD, Founder and Director, Center for Mind-Body Medicine, author of Manifesto for a New Medicine


From the Hardcover edition.

From the Inside Flap
If you or someone you love has suffered a traumatic event, you know the devastating impact it can have on your life and your spirit. Life-threatening accidents, illnesses, assaults, abusive relationships—or a tragedy like 9/11—all can leave deep emotional wounds that persist long after physical scars have healed. Survivors become "invisible heroes," courageously struggling to lead normal lives in spite of symptoms so baffling and disturbing that they sometimes doubt their own sanity.

Now there is new hope for the millions affected by posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Drawing on more than thirty years’ experience as a therapist and on the most recent cutting-edge research, Belleruth Naparstek presents a clinically proven program for recovery using the potent tool of guided imagery. She reveals how guided imagery goes straight to the right side of the brain, where it impacts the nonverbal wiring of the nervous system itself, the key to alleviating suffering.

Filled with the voices of real trauma survivors and therapists whose lives and work have been changed by this approach, Invisible Heroes offers:

• New understanding of the physical, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral effects of PTSD, who is most susceptible, and why symptoms can get worse rather than better with time

• Important insights into how the brain and body respond to trauma, why conventional talk therapy can actually impede recovery, and why the nonverbal, image-based right brain is crucial to healing

• A step-by-step program with more than twenty scripts for guided-imagery exercises tailored to the three stages of recovery, from immediate relief of anxiety attacks, flashbacks, nightmares, and insomnia, to freedom from depression and isolation, to renewed engagement with life

• A helpful guide to the best of the new imagery-based therapies, and how to incorporate them into an overall recovery plan

Belleruth Naparstek concludes with the inspiring words of survivors who have found their way back to peace, purpose, and a deep joy in living. Her compassionate, groundbreaking book can lead you and those in your care to the same renewal and healing.

"The bad news is that stress-related disorders are epidemic in our society. The good news is the new array of therapies that are truly effective in healing them. INVISIBLE HEROES is a package of hope for anyone whose life is compromised by the insidious effects of emotional trauma. This is one of those blessed books that deserves to be called life-changing." -- Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Healing Beyond the Body, Reinventing Medicine and Healing Words

"Belleruth Naparstek is both a compassionate therapist and authority on the role of imagery in health. Her new book on PTSD ingeniously combines her therapeutic work with the latest brain research on how to heal from trauma. The end result is a book full of wisdom, compassion, and practical solutions that can help anyone access their inner ability to heal even from worst case scenarios. The world certainly needs this information now more than ever."
--Christiane Northrup, M.D., author of The Wisdom of Menopause and Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom

"Surgery is controlled trauma. Finally I understand why we cannot just "talk" patients back to full recovery. Here is a blue print for using the right brain to deliver health."
-- Mehmet Oz, M.D., author of Healing from The Heart

"Belleruth Naparstek is a treasure, deeply engaged, boundlessly energetic, visionary. Her new work on trauma is as wise as it is practical. We are all in her debt."
--James S. Gordon, MD, Founder and Director, Center for Mind-Body Medicine, author of Manifesto for a New Medicine

" This is a remarkable book that is likely to find application as a reference manual for trauma psychotherapists as well as an enlightening and educational book for trauma victims and the general lay public."
--Robert Scaer, M.D., author, The Body Bears the Burden: Trauma, Dissociation and Disease, Trauma Tells the Tale: Understanding Your Life.

"A classic that will be utilized by patients, loved ones and therapists for years to come."--Ruth M Buczynski, PhD, Licensed Psychologist President, The National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine

Customer Reviews

Fabulous resource for survivors & professional alike!
Belleruth Naparstek has such wisdom and compassion in discussing and working with survivors of a variety of traumas. Some students and clients have found this book a bit overwhelming but overall the responses have been as positive as mine. I highly, highly recommend this book.

Invisible Heroes is an important and useful book.
I have just purchased my 6th & 7th copies of Invisible Heroes. The others have all been given to psychotherapy clients; survivors of several kinds of traumatic experience. Trauma survivors find this book instructive and comforting -- they read and re-read it. Sometimes we make recordings of the imagery and meditations, sometimes they purchase those Belleruth has made so beautifully.

PTSD winner
This book contains the clearest, easiest to understand explanation I've found for how trauma affects the brain. A must read for all those dealing with trauma, trauma victims or PTSD.