Making Meaning of Difficult Experiences

A Self-Guided Program

By: Sheila A.M. Rauch, Barbara O. Rothbaum

Narrated by: Marie Jenkins

Up to 90% of adults in the US will experience one or more traumatic events in their lifetimes, including interpersonal violence, traffic collisions, and sexual assault. While most who suffer a trauma naturally recover over time, for others difficulties continue, and may lead to full-blown depression, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), substance use, anxiety disorders, and other problems that interfere with healthy daily functioning.

Making Meaning of Difficult Experiences is a self-guided mental health resource for people who have had potentially traumatic experiences and who wish to work through them independently, outside of a formal therapeutic setting. Based on psychological treatments with strong scientific support, this book introduces listeners to several useful tools that will help them to emotionally process difficult experiences, with the goal of moving on from the event and building future resilience. The program takes the listener step-by-step through four skill sets to facilitate emotional processing of difficult experiences: Memory Exposure and Processing, Behavioral Activation, Social Connection, and Self-Care. Listeners use this self-evaluation to determine what is working or not working for them, enabling them to focus more on certain skills, or to complete the full program based on their needs.

©2023 Oxford University Press (P)2023 Tantor

Terrific self-help workbook- better if using the audiobook to supplement the paperback

This is an excellent guide to help get “unstuck” from negative emotional do-loops which are common after difficult experiences. The principals are clearly explained and illustrated by four engaging stories. There are worksheets to guide you through the steps to work through emotional stuck points which are much more clear when seeing them on the page rather than listening to them being read. Having said that, the audiobook can be a nice complement to the paperback by allowing you to listen to the narrative while walking or gardening or doing mindless chores. I suggest “speed listening” through the worksheets.