What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing

The photo I shared is how my personal childhood trauma played out as an adult when I was 47. This book validates the experiences I had, and that in fact, I'm not an exception at all. My hope and prayer is that with this being on Oprah's list of 2021 best gifts that more folks will take the time to understand how in fact their past can and does play out in their life and in their relationships with others. The best gift any of us can give our children is to break generational cycles of abuse, neglect, and negative patterns. We can't do that without an understanding of how our brains work to deal with trauma we have experienced in our lives. Dr. Perry and Oprah take such a complicated topic and give concrete examples to help folks who haven't had exposure to this topic have a better understanding. You more than likely have had adverse experiences in your life that impact your current relationships. This book will help you have a better understanding of how past experiences play out in current relationships. Additionally, there are examples of how folks have overcome great adversities to go on and thrive. What happens to us doesn't have to define us or our future, we each need to process our past, understand how a wrong, injustice, or adversity, has shaped our worldview, and then make the decision to learn and grow from the experience. It's not easy, and I don't think in the book they allude to the fact that it is, it's very difficult, but as I've come to learn in life, probably like most folks, the rewards come after the difficult work/journeys. Nothing worthwhile in life is usually easy.My personal experience, I was brought up in a middle class white family, graduated college at 23, and on to work full-time, a fulfilling career, until my childhood trauma was triggered when I felt bullied by a $3trillion company. I suffered from dissociative trauma, as a child, fight or flight were not options to the significant abuse I suffered. This bully triggered the bully from my childhood that significantly abused me and I took all the anger from my childhood bully and placed it on this company. Whether I was right or wrong in feeling bullied is moot, book will point to that. I resigned from a career at this company of 11 years, a good career, and went on to file multiple lawsuits consuming two years of my life, the picture shows I took the case all the way to The Supreme Court of the US, after I was rejected in every other court. You see the child who did not have a voice when she was being abused, was determined this time to be heard, hence all the lawsuits begging someone to see how I was being bullied. I wasn't successful, every court denied to allow me to go to discovery, which just again, reactivated my childhood trauma of not being heard. This started for me in 2014, it would take me 4 years to walk through the doors of a trauma counselor where I would connect all the dots and be flooded with past memories, experience PTSD, body sensations, and here I am 3 years later, healthier and whole, but it was the most difficult process I've ever experienced. I was lucky, I had an incredible support system in my husband and friends but I can easily see how this type of event would cripple anyone and how they could be ostracized by friends and family, not that I didn't experience some of that, but those who were there for me helped me overcome.So, yes, I recommend the book because all of us have experienced adversities or trauma and most folks have no idea how it is playing out in their lives today and how they are passing it down to their children. If you take the time to be openminded, reflective, and honest, you will in fact take something away that will make your life better.Thank you Dr. Perry and Oprah, for all the work you have done in this field for decades. I can't imagine how difficult it has to be to hear so many of these stories, live it, and know it, and see how slow our society has been to address mental health. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Oprah for putting it on your 2021 list, and thank you too for sharing your personal story, how you struggled and resolved your relationship with your mother, it moved me to tears, for many reasons. May God bless you each abundantly and may His hand be upon the mission of expanding this topic of What Happened To you?Leigh Ann HarrisNorth Carolina

Whether you are a clinician or not, whether you work in a system or not, this book is for you. Dr. Perry breaks down very academic concepts in a simplistic fashion and because this is a conversation and is written in that way, it makes the book so simple to read. The addressing of concepts in terms of understanding the neurobiology of trauma and the importance of that knowledge, engagement with community and regulation is so good. He and Oprah's discussion of implicit bias is so necessary for all of us- to be able to reflect and then act. Excellent discussion.

I finished this book in a weekend. The book was so easy to follow and it reads easily as it is basically a conversation. Since I comprehend a lot better when I follow an audio version of any book, I found having headphones on as I moved throughout the daily chores and tasks allowed me to gain insight to the long term effects of trauma that stems from early childhood, while completing those mundane yet necessary tasks.The most profound concept I obtained from this well organized journey (I am referring to the book's lay-out here) through early childhood trauma or adverse childhood experiences was the simple question, "What happened to you?" For years, the medical and mental health fields have focused on the question, "What is WRONG with you?"Think about that for a moment, is there really anything wrong with anyone who seeks help from a health care system? Perhaps not, but rather something has happened to the patient/individual and they are seeking help from the place they believe questions will be answered and concerns addressed.Perhaps, if health care systems shift the triage/intake questions to what happened to you, more people will seek help? The inadequate feeling that there might be something wrong with them looms in the background of their mind and the person may not seek help at all. This book provides a beginning toward opening the mind into how trauma can be treated and how positive outcomes can be possible by shifting the sequence of questioning within the treatment sessions.After all, does a person want to feel as if there is something WRONG with them? I think not, a person would like to have validation that, yes, something has happened to them and with "treatment regimen" over time, the adversity can become something that is no longer a threat. The beginning of this book is detailed with how an infant experiences trauma. People and professionals in the field, have stated for years that a child will not have a cognitive memory of trauma from birth to age 4 or 5. Dr. Perry has discovered this to be false! Infants experience trauma as their brains are just forming concepts about the safety of their world at that time. It is important to save how he proves this to be true for the reader. Sorry, I cannot spoil this book for others, it is in the individual's own reading that true and unbiased opinions and realizations will develop independent of my own professional and personal opinion on this topic.

I loved this book. It gave me a better understanding on human behaviors and taught me a lot about myself. It has helped me have more patience and empathy towards people who are just trying to find their way by dealing with past trauma. Great read!

I’m in my internship year of grad school for school psychology and am hugely into neuropsychology and trauma-informed care. This book is amazing. I like to listen to the audiobook and then go back and highlight parts of the hard copy that I want to go back to. Excellent book for my professional library.

Highly recommend this book. Great introduction to childhood trauma and how childhood experiences shape who we are and the things we struggle with as adults and in relationships.

This wonderful book opened up a way to hope for me. It helped me understand myself more clearly. I always thought that if you really want something and if you toughened up you could get it. I’ve been stuck in the same patterns for years and thought that was my fault, I had to toughened up more. I would fail again and again and thought something was wrong with me. “What happened to me” helped me understand what happened to me and why I was functioning this way. This book gave me the understanding I needed to start healing and understand, okay this pattern is here because of what happened to me and I can change it by caring deeply for myself with no judgments and drop all the harshness I use to attach to getting out of patterns and getting better. My work to healing and getting better starts here. Thank you for this book.

I LOVED this book! It’s so rich, deeply transformational and accessible. I got it on Kindle, but ended up listening to the audio version - which was like eavesdropping on two wise teacher-friends, as it’s narrated by Oprah and Dr Perry. I’ll certainly return to this gem a few more times!

I cannot believe how transformative this book has been. Im only half way through and the amount of compassion it has taught me to have for myself has really changed something in my mind. My outlook on my life has changed from “whats wrong with me” to “what happened to me” and now i really appreciate how resilient i have been as a child. Now my goal is to work on going from trying to survive to thriving. Thank you for this book!To add, my book came in good condition and in an easily readable format. Really looking forward to finishing it.

I’m thrilled to receive this book today and can’t wait to read it; however, the cover has been torn in two places which I am not happy with at all.Delivery wasn’t great either - the parcel had been left propped up against my front door and the cardboard had a rip in it too!Not the end of the world I know but not the usual service I have had from Amazon - that’s why you lost a star.

This book is amazing to read, it give you an insight to how the brain works and great for anyone working with children to give them an in depth knowledge of the impact on their experiences in life.