Why We Suffer and How We Heal

A groundbreaking guide to facing adversity by a world-leading psychiatrist and trauma expert.

When we're enjoying spring and summer, we don't imagine that they'll last forever. The same should be true for our own lives.

Some survivors are unflappable, yet it's not their optimism or grit that carries them forward, but their acceptance of life's inherent instability. In her debut book, Harvard- and Stanford-trained child and adult psychiatrist Dr Suzan Song draws from her clinical practice, patient stories and research to help readers release their unrealistic longing for stability, using the three tools that allow us to weather life's stormiest seasons: narrative, ritual and purpose.

Dr Song draws on the visual motifs of the 'three friends of winter' in Korean art - pine, bamboo and plum blossoms - plants that thrive even in the harshest of winters. For all humankind the universal 'three friends of winter,' are narrative, rituals and purpose. Why We Suffer and How We Heal will open us up to a new, heathier mindset and teach us to transform life's challenges into opportunities for growth and resilience.

Dr Suzan Song is a Harvard- and Stanford-trained psychiatrist, humanitarian researcher and adviser. For more than two decades, she has dedicated her work on building resilience in individuals and communities affected by adversity - from everyday struggles to the world's most challenging environments of war and human trafficking. Dr Song has advised the United Nations, multiple U.S. federal agencies and Ministries of Health, shaping systems of care for children and families in crisis to bridge clinical innovation with systems reform. She has a private practice in Washington D.C., is a professor of psychiatry at George Washington University and a sought-after speaker on leadership resilience, systems change and the science of healing. Her mission is to bridge clinical reality and systemic change, bringing the lessons of human survival into leadership, policy and programmes that can transform lives at scale.