Coping with trauma - Dr Yvonne L Waft

DR YVONNE WAFT is a well renowned Clinical Psychologist, EMDR Consultant and Facilitator with many years’ experience working with trauma and complex trauma, both in the NHS and in private practice. In December 2023, she published her first book, Coping with Trauma, based not only on her vast clinical experience in the field, but also on her personal experiences of trauma. The book came about as part of a collaboration between Sequoia Books and the Association of Clinical Psychologists. The aim of the collaboration is to create a series of books by clinical psychologists with personal experience of the topics they write about. Series editor, Dr Sarah Swan, initiated the idea for the series after her experience with breast cancer during the pandemic in 2020. She found writing about her experience helpful and saw the potential for this series.

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As a chartered clinical psychologist who has specialised in trauma, and an EMDR Consultant and Supervisor myself, I read Yvonne’s book soon after publication. My first impression was that it is a very easy-to read guide to a complex subject. The clarity of the language used makes it ideally suited to the lay-person, without the need for a scientific or psychological background. As such, this book fulfils a much-needed gap in the market of self-help for trauma. Often, the first step in trauma-focused therapy is to explain what trauma is and what the various symptoms mean. This is addressed in Yvonne’s book, with even very complex presentations being discussed in a matter of fact, de-stigmatising way. I particularly liked the way the different types of trauma were presented, including simple and complex trauma, attachment trauma, intergenerational trauma, and global trauma. I appreciated the way Yvonne distinguished between the need for diagnostic accuracy in certain fields, such as medico-legal work, versus the need for a looser, more traumainformed approach in the clinic room.

One real strength of this book is that it gives self-help exercises that can safely be done at home. This can either be in place of, or in preparation for, formal therapy. The exercises will all be familiar to anyone working in the field of trauma therapy and are part of the usual repertoire of the ‘stabilisation techniques’ we all use. I would argue that this makes the book an ideal primer for anyone starting out on a professional career in clinical or counselling psychology, or psychotherapy. What early-stage practitioner psychologist didn’t yearn for some techniques to use in the room with a new client? I certainly did.

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In the past, I have had a number of go-to books to recommend to clients at the start of trauma therapy. Russ Harris’ The Happiness Trap is good for learning stabilisation skills but does not address trauma specifically, whereas Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score is good for understanding trauma but can be too academic and complex for many of the people we are helping in clinic. I have always wished for a Happiness Trap for Trauma, or a simplified version of The Body Keeps the Score, as a handbook to go alongside trauma therapy. Yvonne’s book really does fit that gap very neatly. I now recommend Coping with Trauma to people enquiring about trauma therapy and have heard good feedback from people who have read it in advance of starting therapy with me.

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Yvonne’s book draws on a wide range of theory and research, whilst not coming over as an academic text at all. Yvonne has managed to condense a huge amount of current thinking on trauma and how to manage the symptoms, at a self-help level. This will benefit people struggling to access formal trauma therapy or just wanting to prepare themselves ahead of therapy starting. It will also be hugely beneficial to people at the start of a career in the helping professions, needing to understand what might be going on for their client, and to give some ideas of how to get started with helping them.

For anyone thinking of teaching the psychology of trauma at any level – this should be considered recommended reading.