I am so happy to share ANOTHER book that's been published by one of our amazing Dream Book members:

No Sticks or Stones No Broken Bones: Healing cPTSD when the trauma wasn’t physical; It was naCCT: Non-physically-assaultive, attachment-based Chronic Covert Trauma by Ricia Fleming.

Here is Ricia in a beach labyrinth she made with some friends:

Ricia is a long-time member of Dream Book and a continual source of inspiration to me. I've been DELIGHTED to watch this book take shape over time, but didn't realize until I started reading it this weekend, what an incredible revelation it is.

What Ricia has defined as non-physically-assaultive, attachment-based Chronic Covert Trauma is something that I believe almost all of us suffer from, kind of an inevitable side-effect of late stage capitalism.

It's WHY we struggle to believe in ourselves and go after our dreams with the full force of our creative genius.

So, obviously, I believe this is a very important book for my fellow creative dreamers and encourage you to check it out.

In Ricia's words:

Some of us remember tightening our stomachs and chanting with all the bravado we could muster:

Sticks and stones may break my bones, 

                                                But names will never hurt me. 

How we longed for that to be true. We longed to be delivered from the dizzy feeling, the sensation like a fist in the stomach, that told us how badly we'd been hurt by a name, how deeply wounded we'd been when we were left out, humiliated, or abandoned.

Many decades as a psychotherapist have compelled me to respect these intangible wounds. Like many of my colleagues, I have become convinced that these wounds, especially those that recur in a child's relationship with a caregiver, are often serious enough to be accurately classified as trauma. The name I've given them is (naCCT).

The reality of naCCT was brought home to me in my work with over 4000 people challenged by such problems as anxiety, depression, addictions,and physical pain. Their struggles testified to the power of naCCT.  And their triumphs demonstrated that healing is possible.

 Recovery takes a lot of nerve.

Here is a map of the recovery process from the point of view of the adult survivor of naCCT, grappling with the cPTSD it caused. what you are going to do, how you are going to do it, what tools and resources will help you do it, and special tips for success, what to say to yourself and what to do for yourself.

On writing the book:

Writing the book is a record of what I experienced as a hero's journey to validate myself and puzzle out an answer to the question: "if nothing was wrong, what's wrong with me?"

As I wrote the book, the me that is a struggling human being and the me that is a professional therapist came together, merged and integrated. "Physician, heal thyself," This is the story of how PatRicia J. Fleming Licensed Mental Health Counselor, Ph.D. in English, detective and researcher in the mysteries of the human soul, came to apply her professional expertise to her own misery and learn to trust her own experience and validate herself. It is not a memoir. It is a record of discovery. The exercises, the healing activity interludes, are very like those I did myself. The footnotes and references are not to lifeless articles in dry as dust archives, they are the life-saving words of validation and sanity given to me by my friends in books, guidance given to a lost child searching in a bramble wood by marvelous wise beings send by higher powers of love and wisdom. I hope what I write will serve that guidance function for readers.

Going through the experience of writing this book, I learned that a door to healing opens when you turn toward the very things about yourself and your life that you want to avoid

--the painful moods, distressing physical problems, embarrassing behaviors, unhappy relationships and situations. Instead of just bashing yourself for having these difficulties and trying to will them away or sweep them under the rug, pay kind respectful attention to them.

Pay attention to troublesome symptoms, especially when you have dismissed the possibility of trauma in your childhood.

Dignify your distress. Trust your present experience, especially body based experiences such as painful body/feeling states (including depression, anxiety, and physical sensations, even including pain), the nature of relationships, and attempts at self-medication (e.g. addictions). Welcome the insights they give you into your true story, your total life experience and what lessons you may learn in this lifetime.

Honor that experience, respect it, take it seriously. Provide yourself with compassionate witness and gentle guidance, free from self-hate, shame, and moral condemnation.

Attending to present distressing moods, physical symptoms, troublesome relationships and annoying behaviors can lead to knowing and appreciating your true life story, developing the ability to gently guide yourself in new directions that will bring you to a place of greater joy.

Get the book here!

I am SO HAPPY to share with you Janet Gerson's new book: Reclaimative Post-Conflict Justice: Democratizing Justice in the World Tribunal on Iraq.

Janet's deep commitment to peace has been so inspiring to me.

It's easy to feel daunted and "too small" and "what can I possibly do" about world peace, and yet Janet shows up and works hard and brings her all to the process of peace.

We can all learn a lot from her.

Janet is a long-time participant in Dream Book, and she says the Creative Dream Incubator has been instrumental in helping her pursue this accomplishment. Yay!

I know that a lot of you have books in you to share, and I hope Janet's success helps inspire you.

Drs. Janet Gerson and Dale Snauwaert’s forthcoming book Reclaimative Post-Conflict Justice: Democratizing Justice in the World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI) examines the historic case of the WTI’s global civil society tribunal, a creative collaboration organized non-hierarchically to record, analyse, and demand accountability for the 2003 war and occupation of Iraq. Reclaimative post-conflict justice is a new conception for grounding the revitalization of democratic ethics underlying justice and peace. Previous scholarship on post-conflict justice tribunals has been conceptualized along two lines, retributive as exemplified by the Nuremberg Tribunal after World War II or restorative as exemplified by the South Africa Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The WTI enacted a third form, reclaimative post-conflict justice. The WTI’s purpose was not to punishment, nor the restoration of political legitimacy, nor clarification of Iraq’s boundaries, but to enact a democratizing and deliberative model, which exemplifies a dialogical turn in various methodologies of normative justification. Reclaimative justice and its democratic tribunal form exemplified by the WTI are basic elements of post-conflict justice, in that they constitute a methodological procedure necessary for the normative justification and thereby appropriate for key tribunal questions of legitimacy, legality, and accountability, and agency. In this way reclaimative democratizing justice as organized through the WTI’s deliberative and democratizing processes aligns with the methodological procedures of contemporary normative theories of justice.

What was your inspiration for writing the book?

The World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI) was an outstanding global people’s tribunal, one that documented what no government or official institution acknowledged – the illegitimacy and illegality of the Iraq War and occupation. The WTI modelled positive globalization as peace action -- global citizens coordinating justice as accountability, agency, and responsibility.

What does your book do differently to similar titles?

Citizens and people’s tribunals typically publish documentation of their forums. However, Reclaimative Justice places the WTI within the ethical and historical contexts of exemplar tribunals -- retributive, restorative, and alternative. The World Tribunal on Iraq (Sökmen, Ed., 2008) documentary text provides a history of the Iraq war and occupation from the perspectives of international law and state sovereignty, but importantly from violations against people of Iraq, the environment, cultural history, and of global civil society for the right to peace. This book brings out what is most innovative about the WTI’s “creative assertion” – how the WTI Coordination used a democratic ethic of participation, non-hierarchical organizing, deliberation, and consensus decision-making to demonstrate how non-domination, communicative action, and nonviolence can be the basis of justice.

What new insights has the book revealed?

Reclaimative democratizing justice in the WTI demonstrates the necessity of transnational interdependence and a global civic culture for conceptualizing democracy and justice. In the modern era, democracy and justice have been couched in the context of the nation-state. However, the increasing recognition of various dimensions of transnational interdependence -- economic, political, legal, ethical, cultural, and ecological -- suggests that our national conceptions of democracy and justice are outdated. The WTI brought together thousands of people from all over the world, from diverse disciplines, experiences, and even ideologies. The WTI instantiated in practice many of the ideas concerning global democracy and justice that we have understood to have philosophical validity based upon reasoned argument and the standards of normative justification that that reasoning is based upon. It constitutes an enactment of fundamental normative principles that are of great significance for the ongoing pursuit of democracy and justice, locally and globally.

Get the book here.