Introduction to Book Reviews
I have really struggled to find a therapist I can work with in California. I’ve realized, across my four separate attempts, that what I’m looking for is incredibly specific, and that finding someone who has a considerable amount of expertise and isn’t completely uneducated in one of the critical areas I need support is not a small task.
On the one hand, I’ll likely try to find another therapist eventually. I do believe that some things are best left to a professional, and also that it’s incredibly difficult to handle attachment issues working entirely alone. On the other hand, I also recognize that I’m the sort of patient that should come with a warning label. Part of that is because my constellation of issues makes it difficult for any one therapist to successfully treat me. I need someone who’s done additional training in treating patients with trauma. I no longer take it at face value when clinicians say they’re trauma informed. I need to see evidence of that. I need someone who understands the trans experience. Simply calling oneself an ally is not enough. I also have Schrodinger’s autism, and need a clinician who isn’t relying on body language and eye contact to make an assessment. On top of all of that, I’ve done a lot of research into the treatment of my issues in particular, which means the baseline recommendations are going to feel and sound condescending to me. Finding a therapist who can deal with all of those issues and who is researched enough to give me new tools is a big ask. I know that I have a long road of trying out therapists for two or three sessions and then bouncing back out ahead of me. I also know that right now what I really need is a break, and to put some new tools in my toolbox.
You’d think that finding a book that could give me new information that’s at least marginally useful would be easier, but it hasn’t been. For starters, the books geared toward patients are largely meant to help people who are at the beginning of their journey. It makes sense to set a goal of giving people who are actively struggling and dealing with the worst of their symptoms some basic tools to work with, so they have the energy and motivation to seek out help in the first place. I understand aiming a book on trauma towards those struggling the most. That said, that makes them pretty useless to me personally. For instance, I read Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, and found that it was a laundry list of tools to control the emotional outbursts of said parents, and also a guide to setting expectations for them in hell. I am positive that the book did a world of good for people just starting to recognize that their relationship with their parents isn’t what they need. To me, though, it was a guidebook for all the coping strategies that ultimately burned me out and left me feeling like my parents’ emotions were my job to manage.
Clinician guides aren’t much better. That also makes an amount of sense. Of course the books that trained the therapists who cannot help me aren’t markedly better than the books meant for patients. Both are set up to help a group of people I’m just not a part of anymore. The only difference is that the latter feels markedly less condescending and will also own up to the fact that some techniques just aren’t meant for patients like me. Their ideas about what might help are largely unsupported, though.
For instance, in Internal Family Systems Skill Training Manual, the authors admit that patients with emotional blunting would benefit from starting with a bottom-up approach before beginning IFS work. They recommended starting with somatic therapy. Now, I don’t necessarily agree with them, as I’ve been doing something akin to IFS for most of my life without realizing it, but still, I decided to check out a book on somatic therapy, just to see what that would look like. I then read Somatic Psychotherapy Toolbox and found that those authors also didn’t think somatic work was right for patients with emotional blunting, and recommended polyvagal work instead. I have found my current book on polyvagal theory more helpful, but I think you see my point here. Even the authors of textbooks for clinicians don’t agree on what to do with patients like me. Recommended interventions disagree with each other constantly, and at the end of the day, I’m left with another modality to read up on.
It’s not all bad news, though. There are some books that I’ve found tremendously helpful. For instance, CPTSD: From Surviving to Thriving was incredible, and gave me resources to work with that I didn’t have before. I also really enjoyed Dr. Thema Bryant’s Homecoming. Both were patient oriented and focused on actively giving people a path forward, no matter where they were starting from. There are good and useful books out there for CPTSD. What I’ve found, though, is that a lot of what’s popular and widely recommended doesn’t fit into that category. I’m looking at you The Body Keeps the Score.
What I’d like to do is start a series of book reviews for people in my predicament. I am certain that I’m not the only person too self-aware for the average therapist to be able to treat, who is still desperately looking for some kind of help coping with persistent, daily symptoms that make life difficult. I both want to point people towards the books that changed the way I think about my mental health, and also have an earnest conversation about books that I didn’t find helpful. My goal here has always been to leave a roadmap for other people a few steps behind me on the journey toward healing, and I think this is a good way to do that.
Before I do, though, I want to state explicitly that I am not a mental health expert. I’m not qualified to diagnose anyone with anything, nor am I qualified to make anything other than broad recommendations based on my own experience. I’d encourage anyone reading my book reviews to consider where our experiences are similar and where they’re different, and make their own decisions.
These posts will be the first in my experiment with not queueing every essay I write, and as such, won’t be on a schedule. That said, I’ve read quite a few books on the topic, so watch this space for book reviews coming soon.
