Healing the Wounds of Childhood: A psychologist’s journey and discoveries from wretched beginnings to a thriving life

by Don St. John

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. The road to healing and self-fulfillment is not always an easy one. It can be ever-growing, with swift turns, unexpected detours, and complicated signs often leading to frustration, irritation, and a sense of defeat. But you don’t have to do it alone, and it doesn’t have to be a headache of conflicting information. Are you ready to embark on the adventure of a lifetime? Let Dr. Don St John take your hand and lead the way towards your revitalization. In Healing the Wounds of Childhood and Culture , he doesn’t promise easy fixes, but meaningful, impactful ones that will guide you through the rest of your life. In blending his personal and clinical experiences, Dr. St John awakens his readers to the multiple effects of personal traumas and the wounds inflicted by our culture that cut into us no matter what age, gender, or backstory. The author shares his own story of growing up in an environment replete with violence and ignorance. He knows his subject matter not only through decades of professional study, but from his own experience as well. His is an “If I can do it, you can do it” story, written from his heart and soul. You can be more than just the culmination of your past. In his book, Dr. St John discusses why many have failed to recognize how their potential has been limited. He calls the process of uncovering , discovering and developing our potential an adventure of a lifetime. As with any great adventure, it can be filled with the unexpected, with challenges and with breathtaking rewards. His own life testifies to this statement. The author shows how societal ills, such as violence, addiction, substance abuse, loneliness, depression, apathy, polarization, and relationship distress, all have roots in trauma, including scarcity and neglect. But if this is where your story began, it most certainly doesn't have to be where your story ends. Your past does not have to limit you to what you can do with your life. Read this from an author who walks his talk. Healing the Wounds of Childhood and Culture points towards a future of harmony, self-love, and an increasing capacity for deep, emotional intimacy. It provides an understanding of what is needed for us not only to survive, but to flourish, especially in relationships with ourselves and our loved ones.
Are you ready to move beyond survival and scarcity and embrace abundance and harmony? The journey is yours to take, with Healing the Wounds of Childhood and Culture , yours to conquer.

Genres: Psychology

282 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 17, 2015

Reviews

[Julene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Healing the Wounds of Childhood is an excellent view of the introduction of somatic therapies and their history intertwined with psychotherapy. Don St. John, a PhD level psychologist, has a rich background and uses his own history to show how integrating the body into therapy is a key component of change. I appreciated his explanations of stress, how our birth affects us, and how trauma, not just the big T or PTSD, is derived from many experiences including our primary birth experience and our time in the womb. Like him I started out with traditional therapy, like him I began to explore body work and found that this work through the body accentuated my growth, like him I came to a similar conclusion, "I could have stayed in talk therapy forever and would not have explored the depths I have managed to reach once I included the somatic therapies in my healing regimen. As important and valuable as good psychotherapy is, it is not enough." He has an excellent chapter that defines sensory motor amnesia (SMA) and how it equals the chronic tension so many experience.

He explains in great detail the brain, our nervous system, and the 'heart brain.' He is a living example of the fluid work of Continuum movement, a work I myself have practiced since 1988. His doctor said it was a miracle, how he was able to walk around during and after a massive heart attack. And once discovered and having had a major surgery he healed exceptionally fast. He is a wounded healer who had an extremely abusive childhood, which he also uses in the book to show exactly how it affected his life and how he was able to change himself for the better.

One of the questions Emilie Conrad, the founder of Continuum, asked first about the ability of a person to heal, "How exhausted is the person?" This is a key question for healing. We live in a speeded up environment, and Continuum is a process of slowing down and feeling into our fluid system. Don St. John writes an excellent, readable, explanation of how the interweavings of mind and body works. He utilizes his process of healing to exemplify how he was able to heal fast and well because of the fluidity he adapted through a variety of body therapies: he worked with Ida Rolf, who worked through fascia doing structural integration; he worked with Wilheim Reich, he worked with emotions and muscles, and he worked with Continuum Movement, with Emilie Conrad, she worked through the fluids of the body, and also he worked with Tom Hanna, who worked through the muscles, brain and antonomic nervous system. He studied with and had amazing experiences with many masters in the field. Also, with Peter Levine who founded Somatic Experiencing (SE), which works with trauma, and Diana Fosha who founded Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychtherapy, who works at the charge to let love into our being. And there are more.

Not everyone can follow this long journeyed path, but we can gain from this excellent book and he gives us leads on how to find the sources. My only wish for the book is that it have an index. It has a great Bibliography at the back and is an incredible resource, I recommend to every therapist and lay person who is on a healing journey.

[Heiki Eesmaa · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book has an appeal as a description of somebody's journey from disorganized attachment (ie serious childhood abuse) to higher than normal functioning. The author has studied with many important and interesting innovators of the human potential movement, even if he is no innovator himself. It is a natural synthesis but occasionally feels stale due to a lack of originality.

The structure and style of the book are faitlrly unpolished. There appear to be errors that should not have passed the editor's hand.

I think 7 USD is a really fair price for it on Kindle. It probably is better thought of as a paid-for blog rather than as a proper book. I like it, so I rate it a bit higher than two stars.

[Suzan Lemont]

I can't quite put my finger on why I didn't like this book more and why it took me so long to finish it. I may be that the author promises a great story of overcoming severe childhood mistreatment and trauma but doesn't tell the story very compellingly, cohesively, or completely. It could be because the chapters on the methods he highlights as being helpful in the recovery from trauma are too short and vague to be of any real practical or educational value to one who would like to incorporate some of the work into their own practice. As an expressive arts therapist with a minor in psychology and 25 years of further self-study and immersion into trauma treatment since I got my Masters degree I didn't find quite as much that was new and inspiring as I had hoped. A bit of a mishmash really. I bought the book because it's one of the very few that mentions Hellerwork and ever since I read BodyMind by Joseph Heller (maybe 15 years ago) I have resonated deeply with that way of working and integrated some of the teaching into my own unique way of working. I did look at the TOC before buying but it didn't register that each method ST. John highlights is only given a few pages.

I had a bit of a problem with how the experience of yet another privileged white male is given space while so many others are left untold, neglected, ignored and under-valued. The book is fairly recent but it feels like it was from an earlier era; one before so many were researching and writing about BIPOC and their bodies, and the experience of trauma from these more urgent perspectives. St. John's path of education and development would not be even remotely available to most Black or Latinx men, let alone womxn. This isn't acknowledged at all in the telling of the story.

For someone completely new to the field, with little knowledge of polyvagal theory or any of the body-mind theories and practices he skims over it might serve as a decent introduction, and a digestible lesson on nervous system regulation but for a professional already using many of these methods it was a laborious read. I do have quite a few highlighted passages though, so there were some useful tidbits. But I had to really slog through it to get to them.