Author Description

In Trauma Ruled My Life Until, Dr. Hannah Abadi, a retired academic and prolific researcher, describes being pummeled by PSTD for more than six decades. She explains how psychotherapy with a psychologist and an innovative therapeutic approach with a psychologist specializing in trauma led to healing. Through words, art, and poetry, Abadi eloquently describes her complicated recovery - living with PTSD, surviving child neglect, sexual abuse, chronic illnesses, and discovering that her husband was transgendered. She takes the reader through her exceptional healing process as she experienced psychotherapy, dance/movement therapy (DMT), eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), equine facilitated psychotherapy, and accelerated resolution therapy (ART). In lay language, she explains each therapeutic approach and its impact. She describes the myriad impacts of PTSD and demonstrates how a dysfunctional mother-child attachment can impair reality and developing healthy relationships. Abadi cogently shows how and why an intellectual understanding of attachment wounds and traumas may be insufficient to fostering recovery. Her courageous battle is a remarkable attestation of how determination, an unwillingness to succumb to obstacles, and grit led to breaking a generational cycle of emotional and physical abuse, child neglect, and trauma so that future generations can come into this world. Her book is invaluable for professionals and will give hope and strength to others who suffer from trauma. In Trauma Ruled My Life Until, Dr. Abadi shows why it is important listen to the healthy voice inside that whispers keep trying because recovery is a process that takes time, patience, and determination.