Healing the Wounds of Childhood and Culture

Don St John Ph.D.

Description

This book will help make sense of the variety of struggles so many of us face every day in our lives. It offers a perspective of health and well-being that includes spiritual, psycho-emotional, relationship and somatic development. It bridges these subjects in a visionary and practical way.

In Healing the Wounds of Childhood and Culture, author Dr. Don St. John offers a new model of wholeness, and he challenges us to embark on an adventure of a lifetime. It awakens us to the multiple effects of personal traumas and of the wounds inflicted by our culture.

Blending his personal and clinical experiences, St. John discusses why many have failed to recognize how their potential has been limited. In this guide, he helps you understand the root causes of many of society’s ills: violence, addictions, substance abuse, loneliness, depression, apathy, polarization, and relationship distress.

Insightful, Healing the Wounds of Childhood and Culture points the way toward harmony, self-love, and a capacity for deep, emotional intimacy. It provides an understanding of what’s needed to flourish and thrive, especially in relationship to ourselves and our loved ones. It’s what we as individuals and as a culture need to understand to move beyond survival and scarcity and embrace abundance and harmony.

Sujets

• Santé et bien-être
• Développement personnel
• Personal Growth
• Relationships
• Wellness
• Mental health
• Self-love
• Psychological trauma
• Wound
• Healing
• Childhood
• Self-help
• Relationship
• Psychology
• Mind
• Scream/Childhood
• Body
• Trauma
• Spirit
• Culture

Informations

• Publié par: Archway Publishing
• Date de parution: 04 novembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781665727112
• Langue: English

Extrait

HEALING the WOUNDS of CHILDHOOD and CULTURE
AN ADVENTURE OF A LIFETIME
DON ST JOHN, PH.D.


Copyright © 2022 Don St John, Ph.D.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
 
 
Archway Publishing
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.archwaypublishing.com
844-669-3957
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6657-2712-9 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-2710-5 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-2711-2 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022913210
 
 
 
Archway Publishing rev. date: 11/03/2022
Contents
Acknowledgments
 
Introduction to Part 1
 
1 A New Model of Health and Well-Being
2 We’ve All Been Wounded
3 Cultural Wounds
4 Creating Our Reality: Core Limiting Beliefs and Sense of Self
5 Your Brain Requires Emotional Intimacy to Grow
6 Uncovering the Roots of Stress
7 Stress and Health
8 A New Model of Our Autonomic Nervous System
9 Reflections on the Heart
10 Our Flesh Matters
 
Introduction to Part 2
 
11 The Somatic Dimension of Wholeness
12 The Emotional/Psychological Dimension of Wholeness
13 The Relational Dimension of Wholeness
14 The Spiritual Dimension of Wholeness
 
Bibliography

This book is dedicated to all of you who intuitively know that “being normal” is so far from who you can truly be. It is dedicated to all of you who know you carry scars of early wounding, who know your childhood was less than perfect, and who may struggle with health, relationship, or well-being issues. It is dedicated to all of you who want to understand fully how you may have been affected and how you can best heal, grow, and thrive.
I dedicate it as well to all the psychotherapists and counselors who want to understand where the body fits into healing and growth and to all the “body people”—from physicians to somatic therapists, acupuncturists, and bodyworkers—who want to understand how upbringing and relationships influence the bodies they work with.

Acclaim for Healing the Wounds of Childhood and Culture
This authoritative and comprehensive exploration of healing and wellness is also a riveting page-turner full of practical advice and personal stories, including from the author’s own traumatic childhood. It offers a remarkable and uncommon integration of brain science, mainstream psychology, and cutting-edge ideas and practices. Effective, hopeful, and profound, this is a gem.
Rick Hanson, PhD, author of Buddha’s Brain and Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence
Don St. John’s book is a huge accomplishment, a miraculous personal journey intertwined with the miraculous evolution of many disciplines seeking to understand mind and human heart to help people heal. Despite the pervasiveness of trauma amply manifested in the author’s own beginnings, his theme is that love is ever abundant—if we learn how to receive it and how to take it in so that we can thrive. Read this book to learn about the evolution of science and the field of psychotherapy. Read this book to learn about one man’s journey from trauma to lovability. And read this book to get some wonderful, sage, truly tried-and-true advice about how you too can apply these lessons to make your journey sweeter and richer.
Dr. Diana Fosha, developer of AEDP and author of The Healing Power of Affect and The Healing Power of Emotion: Affective Neuroscience, Development and Clinical Practice, edited with Daniel Siegel and Marion Solomon
We are very pleased to recommend Don’s book to all of you. Healing the Wounds of Childhood and Culture is really two different offerings. First of all, it is a very personal anecdotal document that lays out the raw wounds of his life and how he dealt with them. In opening his personal process to us, he also has given to his readers a clear and intimate view of a wide range of therapeutic disciplines. Thirdly he is able to tie it all together with a combination of wisdom, clarity, and always a sense of presence in relationship to the material and to the reader. The wounds of our life are made to be healed by our efforts rather than being drowned in the sense of victimhood that so easily can run our life. Don’s writing is a gift to those of us who do our best to travel the path of consciousness and to those of us who are looking for how to begin the journey.
Hal Stone, PhD, and Sidra Stone, PhD, authors of Embracing Our Selves: The Voice Dialogue Manual; Embracing Each Other: How to Make All Your Relationships Work for You; Embracing the Inner Critic: Turning Self Criticism into a Creative Asset; The Shadow King: The Invisible Force That Holds Women Back; and Partnering: A New Kind of Relationship
In this book, Don St. John draws on his personal experience to develop a model of integration that is both simple and profoundly effective. He begins by looking at the values that are really important to our development as people. He illustrates his points by describing experiences from his personal and his professional development with the sort of sensitivity that can result from deep wounding. After a thorough tour of all the physiological as well as the psychological elements of a healthy life, he delivers an intelligent and coherent pathway to integrate all the various aspects of our lives and to literally incorporate the lessons from both our positive and our “negative” experiences. It is a pathway in that it includes for each aspect some practical steps to integrate that aspect. An inspired and inspiring work of synthesis, I think it is brilliant!
Joseph Heller, author of Bodywise and founder of Hellerwork Structural Integration.
Acknowledgments
This book would never have been written without the love and support of my wife, partner, and dearest friend, Diane. I don’t mean that just in the sense of the enormous generosity of time and energy that she has contributed. Indeed, she has tirelessly read each version of the manuscript and has been among my sharpest critics—editing, suggesting, and urging for more clarity. Of course, this in itself has been hugely helpful. More importantly, however, I have been able to write this book because she is the person who, along with me, forged something neither one of us knew in the past: a strong, enduring, intimate marriage that seems to improve with every passing year. Without this, I would not have the ground, the moral standing, to speak of a thriving life.
I want to thank our very dear friend Elizabeth Anne Sutcliffe for her courageous feedback and support. My first edition editor, Sarah Aschenbach, did a great job.
Joseph Heller has been both mentor and friend for over forty years. Many years ago, he predicted that I would write this type of book. I owe a great deal to Emilie Conrad and Susan Harper, mentors who taught me something about what it means to be alive in this body.
Thank you to my oldest and dear friends Jerry and Nancy Noloboff, who throughout this writing expressed their love and support.
And to my brother, Rocky. I have loved you since the day you were born.
And to Debbie, Matt, Elias, and Ruth, I thank you from the depths of my heart for being such a great family.
Introduction to Part 1
Embarking on a healing journey is the surest way to a rewarding, adventurous, meaningful, vibrant life. It is the most certain way to grow self-knowledge and to discover new aspects of ourselves. We can live life with a growing sense of agency, a sense of “I’m the one in charge of my life,” and simultaneously a growing sense of alignment with a higher order—whether religious, spiritual, or secular—a sense of something supportive beyond the limits of our body-mind. When committed to this journey, higher energies will present themselves, even if only in the form of improbable coincidences or even a sequence of improbable events. My surviving a serious heart attack without any medical treatment for three months was one of those for me. But I’m getting well ahead of myself here. Among the joys that can be found along this path is sustained emotional and sexual intimacy, the likes of which one may have never even imagined. In my seventy-ninth year, I can say with utter confidence that my voyage continues, and a remarkable journey it is.
Healing means to become whole; to become whole does not mean to reach a static state of “now I’m whole.” It can be an ever-growing “felt-sense” of wholeness. It does not mean only a relief of symptoms. Healing is an ongoing process of identifying, claiming, integrating, refining, letting go, and developing aspects of ourselves. It hugely involves letting go—of bad habits, addictions, vices, ways of perceiving, and ways of being in the world that are limiting or have negative consequences. It’s a process of discovery, even learning we do not have to age in the same way our parents and grandparents did. What I am suggesting is an adventure in every sense of the word, replete with surprises, with sublime moments,