The Transformation: Discovering Wholeness and Healing After Trauma

Book Title: The Transformation: Discovering Wholeness and Healing After Trauma

Author: James S. Gordon

Publication Information: New York, HarperOne, 2019, 376 pp., $27.99, hardcover

The Transformation, by James Gordon, MD, addresses the effects trauma can have on our minds and bodies. Part scientific narrative, part self-help book, Dr Gordon proposes a road map of activities and lifestyle modifications intended to help the reader navigate the aftereffects of a traumatic experience. Dr Gordon bases this largely on his experience evaluating and counseling victims of war-zone violence, which he discusses in anecdotes throughout the book. While the narrative seems occasionally too reliant on Dr Gordon’s first-hand encounters with individual patients, he does a nice job of placing the stories within the broader context of scientific thought and practical advice.

Early in his career, Dr Gordon, a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, held research positions at the National Institutes for Mental Health, along with various other governmental agencies. It was through these positions that Dr Gordon first began to work with war-zone survivors, including from the Balkans and the Middle East. He tells a particularly compelling story of a young girl in war-torn Syria (p 17). Nine-year-old Azhaar had lost her father in 2014, and when Dr Gordon met her, she expressed a desire to die so that she could be with her father. In working through a course of therapeutic drawing exercises, Azhaar progressed from drawing her own death to drawing scenes of herself becoming a cardiologist to help others. Although the physician reader—certainly moved by this story—might wonder about its applicability to typical patients seen in practice, Dr Gordon does make reference to studies demonstrating the appallingly common occurrence of adverse childhood environments.

The middle part of the text pivots toward explorations of the physiologic effects of experienced trauma, and practical steps for the patient to take (or physician to recommend) to palliate these effects. The first of these strategies is called “Soft Belly,” which Dr Gordon references throughout the book in various contexts. Soft Belly is essentially a guided meditation technique, with the goal of the individual being able to gain awareness of the physiologic effects they are experiencing, and then (ideally) modulate the effects by mindful breathing (eg, slowing one’s heart rate). It seems plausible that an individual could pick the technique up, or a physician could counsel to it, rather easily. Dr Gordon relates an anecdote potentially of interest to those in medical education, about the positive effect on and enthusiasm with which medical students under his instruction took to this technique (p 50).

The center of the book also risks becoming tedious with the number of anecdotes presented from Dr Gordon’s experience over a long career working with patients, both in war zones and regular practice. As mentioned above, some readers will likely be captivated by the author’s stories and adventures in conflict zones, while others will start to wonder at the relevance to their own experience or their own practice setting.

Many of the book’s core tenets are expressed through Dr Gordon’s core recommendation, The Trauma-Healing Diet. The busy reader, in perusing chapter 10 by itself (p 140), will come away with most of the underpinnings of Dr Gordon’s philosophies, as well as his key suggestions. The Trauma-Healing Diet emphasizes whole, natural foods; minimal use of fat and dairy products; and avoidance of sugar-added foods, artificial sweeteners, etc. This chapter, like the book as a whole, is well-written and accessible for the lay reader, making it easy for the physician to recommend to a patient. That said, the physician or scientifically savvy reader will come away from the diet wondering how it differs from a general Mediterranean diet, and whether its effect on healing from trauma is supported by anything more than specious pathophysiological hypotheticals.

One also wonders at the author’s enthusiastic recommendation of the EMPowerPlus supplements as part of a trauma-healing approach (p 157). Dr Gordon states that this formulation was developed by researchers in New Zealand to help individuals displaced by volcanoes and other natural disasters heal. This is partially true; such displaced individuals were offered micronutrients, but studies of the effect were small, mostly by a single researcher, and predated the specific product being recommended in the book.1 Although no impropriety appears, it seems quite a leap to posit this particular commercial product as an essential ingredient in healing from trauma.

In summary, Dr Gordon’s The Transformation is an accessible, often entertaining, but occasionally unsatisfying exploration of trauma, its effects, and ways to heal. The physician reader will likely remember it as a useful text to recommend to patients searching for tools to help them cope with past experiences.