The Invisible Machine: The Startling Truth About Trauma and the Scientific Breakthrough That Can Transform Your Life

National Indie Excellence Award Winner

PenCraft Book Awards 2023 Non-Fiction Runner Up

The world has long misunderstood trauma. Now, leading experts in the field have a radical new understanding of post-traumatic stress . . . and a surprising new treatment to reverse it could have profound implications for medicine, mental health, and society.

Despite its prevalence, post-traumatic stress, PTSD, is often seen as an unbeatable lifelong mental disorder. However, top trauma doctors and neuroscientists now understand that the result of trauma is not a disorder, but rather a physical injury—and while invisible to the naked eye, the posttraumatic stress injury (PTSI) can now be seen on a scan. Most importantly, the effects of PTSI are reversible.

Meet Dr. Eugene Lipov. His research and partnerships have led to an amazing discovery that all trauma has at its root a single piece of human hardware: the sympathetic nervous system, controlling the fight-or-flight response. Anyone who has endured trauma, including long-term microdoses of emotional stress, can have this injury. Dr. Lipov has pioneered a safe, 15-minute procedure that reverses the injury, relieving mild to extreme symptoms of PTSI—irritability, hypervigilance, anxiety, insomnia, and more—for survivors to combat soldiers to the everyday person.

Weaving hard science with moving human stories, The Invisible Machine reveals how this treatment was developed. It also tells the incredible story of the unlikely team, including the doctor, an artist, Special Forces leadership, and a sheriff, who are working together to change our understanding of post-traumatic stress and why it matters to society.

Coauthored by artist and innovator Jamie Mustard and in collaboration with writer Holly Lorincz, The Invisible Machine weaves hard science with moving stories of warriors, prisoners, and ordinary people to provide a stark new understanding of the human condition. The implications for a better, pain-free world are astounding—and that world could be nearer than we think.

Dr. Eugene Lipov is a complex anesthesiologist and has been called the “Einstein of modern anesthesiology.” His discovery and innovation, the Dual Sympathetic Reset (DSR), was endorsed by President Obama in 2010. His research has an 85-90% success rate in reducing the effects of trauma.

Jamie Mustard is a conceptual artist, artistic director, culturist and writer including his work on perception in the physical world relating to art, imagery and ideas.  

Jamie believes that ‘emotional art’ is an accelerator of change. His work on the endurance of ideas has been featured in Forbes, Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg, ABC News, Flaunt Magazine, Psychology Today and NPR. Growing up in severe poverty and illiteracy in inner city Los Angeles, Jamie overcame obstacles to eventually reverse engineer ideas to help humans STAND OUT based on primal laws. He believes that because of digital overload, we are all struggling to be seen and experiencing the same invisibility he felt as a child and calls this ‘the economics of attention’.

His books have won the National Indie Excellence Award, the OWL—Outstanding Works in Literature—given by the largest e-commerce bookseller in the world, and runner-up for the PenCraft Book Award for Literary Excellence. Jamie is co-author of the groundbreaking book, The Invisible Machine on the biology of trauma and a children’s book about resilience. His book, The Iconist is currently in-flight entertainment on American Airlines.

A graduate of the London School of Economics, Jamie’s work has included the world’s leading universities, business, science, technology, art, design, creativity and non-profits—Nike, Cisco, Intel, Adidas, Symantec, Parsons | The New School, Pratt Institute, Georgetown University, Pacific Northwest College of Art, Hult International Business School, US Army Special Forces, US Army Special Forces Psychological Operations, The Portland Art museum, Content London, The California Department of Public Health and TEDx at creative giant Wieden + Kennedy. 

In late fall of 2025, his first graphic novel, HYBRED, will be released—a world written, conceived and art directed by Jamie, with all images drawn and colored in a little stone town in Southern Italy with artist Francesca Filomena. A universal story of resilience in the face of overwhelming odds, Child X celebrates yet transcends race—and is ultimately an uplifting impossible to believe story of rising out of adversity and building a life full of meaning and connection. With this book, Jamie continues working to restore his family’s legacy and provides a salient saga of the road to humanity and self-possession.

Holly Lorincz is a successful collaborative writer and the owner of Lorincz Literary Services. She is an award-winning novelist (Smart Mouth, The Everything Girl) and co-writer (including the bestselling Crown Heights, How to Survive a Day in Prison, and Arsenal of Hope), a nationally recognized speaking coach, and the proud new proprietor of Cloud and Leaf Bookstore on the Oregon coast.