Widen the Window: Training Your Brain and Body to Thrive During Stress and Recover from Trauma

A pioneering researcher gives a new understanding of stress and trauma, as well as the tools to heal and thrive. This groundbreaking book examines the cultural norms that impede resilience in America, especially the collective tendency to disconnect stress from its potentially extreme consequences and override the need to recover. I don't think I've ever read a book that paints such a complex and accurate landscape of what it is like to live with the legacy of trauma as this book does, while offering a comprehensive approach to healing. --from the foreword by Bessel van der Kolk   A pioneering researcher gives us a new understanding of stress and trauma, as well as the tools to heal and thrive   Stress is our internal response to an experience that our brain perceives as threatening or challenging. Trauma is our response to an experience in which we feel powerless or lacking agency. Until now, researchers have treated these conditions as different, but they actually lie along a contin