How traumatic events can break our vital connections―and how to restore love, wholeness, and resiliency in your life.
From our earliest years, we develop an attachment style that follows us through life, replaying in our daily emotional landscape, our relationships, and how we feel about ourselves. And in the wake of a traumatic event―such as a car accident, severe illness, loss of a loved one, or experience of abuse―that attachment style can deeply influence what happens next.
In The Power of Attachment, Dr. Diane Poole Heller, a pioneer in attachment theory and trauma resolution, shows how overwhelming experiences can disrupt our most important connections― with the parts of ourselves within, with the physical world around us, and with others.
The good news is that we can restore and reconnect at all levels, regardless of our past.
Here, you’ll learn key insights and practices to help you:
• Restore the broken connections caused by trauma
• Get embodied and grounded in your body
• Integrate the parts of yourself that feel wounded and fragmented
• Emerge from grief, fear, and powerlessness to regain strength, joy, and resiliency
• Reclaim access to your inner resources and spiritual nature
“We are fundamentally designed to heal,” teaches Dr. Heller. “Even if our childhood is less than ideal, our secure attachment system is biologically programmed in us, and our job is to simply find out what’s interfering with it―and learn what we can do to make those secure tendencies more dominant.”
With expertise drawn from Dr. Heller’s research, clinical work, and training programs, this book invites you to begin that journey back to wholeness.
Diane Poole Heller, PhD, is an established expert in the field of Adult Attachment Theory, the Somatic Experiencing® method of trauma resolution, and a synthesis of integrative healing methods. She is a trainer and presenter who offers workshops and educational materials on trauma, attachment models and their dynamics in childhood and adult relationships, and other topics.
For several decades, Dr. Heller has lectured and taught around the world as both a Somatic Experiencing trainer and special topics presenter, most recently with her popular DARe (Dynamic Attachment Re-Patterning experience) series on Adult Attachment.
She began her work with Dr. Peter Levine, founder of the Foundation for Human Enrichment, now the Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute, and the Somatic Experiencing method of trauma resolution. As a senior faculty member for the Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute, she teaches work based on Dr. Levine’s model in the US and worldwide, including Denmark, Italy, Norway, Switzerland, Israel, Germany, and Australia.
She weaves her 30 years of experience in the Diamond Approach spiritual practice with principles from the fields of body, mind, and spiritual sciences in a holistic approach to trauma healing.
Her book Crash Course, a guidebook on how to resolve auto accident trauma, is used as a resource for healing many types of trauma, both in the US and internationally.
Dr. Heller presents at national seminars and conferences, and is the author of numerous articles in the field, as well as the documentary "Surviving Columbine," featured on CNN. As president of DARe and Trauma Solutions, a psychotherapy training organization, she concentrates her efforts to support the helping community through an array of specialized psychotherapy topics. Learn more at dianepooleheller.com.
Peter A. Levine, PhD, has spent 45 years studying and treating stress and trauma. He holds a doctorate degree in medical biophysics from the University of California at Berkeley and in psychology from International University. He is the developer of Somatic Experiencing®, a naturalistic approach to healing trauma. He has practiced and taught at treatment centers, hospitals, and pain clinics throughout the world, and has dealt with a wide range of trauma, including accidents, rapes, assaults, abuse, and invasive medical procedures. Peter was a stress consultant for NASA during the development of the Space Shuttle program. He served with the Institute for World Affairs Task Force for "Psychologists for Social Responsibility" and the American Psychological Association "Presidential Initiative on Responding to Large-Scale Disasters and Ethno-Centric Warfare." He is also the bestselling author of Waking the Tiger (published in 22 languages), as well as several other books and audio programs that teach people how to use the body as a tool in resolving trauma. Peter is the founder of the Foundation for Human Enrichment, based out of Boulder, Colorado, which now has a membership of 5,000 Somatic Experiencing® training practitioners worldwide. His current interests include prevention of trauma in children, for which he has published two books, his most recent being Trauma-Proofing Your Kids: a Parent’s Guide to Instilling Confidence, Joy, and Resilience.
In Fall 2010, he published his master opus In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness. In October 2010 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the United States Association for Body Psychotherapy (USABP.org).
