Summary of What Happened to You? by Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Bruce Perry

by Smart Reads

This is an unofficial summary & analysis of Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Bruce Perry’s “What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing” designed to offer an in-depth look at this book so you can appreciate it even more. Smart Reads is responsible for this summary content and is not associated with the original author in any way.It by chapter summaries-Trivia questions-Discussion questionsAnd much more!Download and start reading immediately!Dr. Bruce D. Perry is a neuroscientist and child psychologist. He leads the Neurosequential Network, which holds at its core a "biologically respectful" approach to working with and treating children. He is also a senior fellow in the ChildTrauma Academy, and he teaches psychiatry and behavioral studies at the School of Allied Health (La Trobe University) and the Feinberg School of Medicine (Northwestern University). He has authored two other Born for Love, on the nature of empathy, and The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog, on childhood maltreatment.Oprah Winfrey, also known as the "Queen of all Media," is one of the most recognized media hosts in the world today. Her former show (The Oprah Winfrey Show) was top-rated and won many awards during its twenty-five-year running history, and she now runs her own TV network — the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). Winfrey has been awarded many notable accolades over the years and was the world's first African American billionaire. She has co-authored four other books.What's wrong with you?This was the dominant perspective a few decades ago, just as Perry was getting started with his studies of childhood trauma. Whenever an individual exhibited behavioral or mental health struggles — even medical challenges — the question that would be asked about them was what's wrong with this person? It was in that context that Perry and his colleagues began asking a new what happened to you? They believed that this new question provided better insight into the person's behavior and mental state and paved the road for more effective solutions to be discovered and implemented. It is that perspective that forms the foundation for this book.Through an interview-style format, Oprah Winfrey and her colleague Dr. Bruce Perry discuss the what happened to you approach to trauma and healing. While Oprah brings her unique perspective in the form of personal stories and insight from the thousands of interviews she’s conducted over the years, Perry shares more concrete scientific insights and unusual, sometimes extreme, clinical stories to illustrate core concepts about how humans operate in the face and wake of pain. Although the book’s topic is a difficult one, the authors' ultimate purpose is one of hope. They argue that all pain — all trauma — can ultimately serve a positive purpose… if we’re willing to do the work of healing. But thanks to the insight and strategies shared in this book, that healing work can be within anyone’s grasp.No matter who you are, and no matter what you’ve been through... health, wisdom, and connection are all possible for you. It all starts with the question what happened to you?

67 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 22, 2021