"Everyday Trauma: Remapping the Brain's Response to Stress, Anxiety, and Painful Memories for a Better Life" by Dr. Tracey Shors is a fascinating dive into the neuroscience of trauma, especially as it impacts women, and a hopeful guide toward healing.

Trauma, as Dr. Shors explains, isn’t always a life-shattering event; it’s often an accumulation of smaller stressors that embed themselves in our brains. Her central thesis—that trauma gets encoded and re-encoded in our neural pathways every time we relive it—makes a compelling case for why healing requires both understanding and rewiring our mental processes.

The first half of the book leans heavily on neuroscience, detailing how trauma impacts the brain and why some individuals seem more vulnerable than others. While the scientific explanations are thorough, they might feel dense for readers without a background in the subject. However, the latter half of the book introduces Shors’ MAP Training—a combination of mental and physical exercises designed to rewire the brain and ease the grip of trauma. The simplicity of this approach—meditation followed by aerobic activity—is its strength. Shors emphasizes that anyone can try it, making her methodology accessible and empowering.

For those looking for a concise introduction to trauma science, particularly with a lens on women’s experiences, this book is a valuable resource. It’s not a quick fix or exhaustive guide, but it serves as a meaningful first step in recognizing and remapping the patterns trauma leaves behind.

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to review a temporary digital ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

I am always particularly interested in books about processing trauma, and so I was very drawn to this title when I saw it on NetGalley. Everyday Trauma is an intro book to the topic and is data heavy in the first half (focused on neuroscience) and more interactive in the following half.

I liked this mix because it felt like it laid a great foundation about how trauma works inside your brain, and then moved on to how you can "remap your brain" through difference exercises and practices.

All in all, I found that this was a solid introduction to the topic and I enjoyed the balance of information vs. actionable steps. Thank you to Flatiron Books for my review copy.

While this book is quite concise, I did find it interesting. It is a nice, general overview on the subject of trauma and various treatment methods. She includes a lifestyle change that she uses and has found to statistically improve rumination and depression in those diagnosed with PTSD. There are tons of sources in the back of the book for the reader to further research her studies. I loved the emphasis on neuroscience and how scans were used to collaborate various methods she utilized.

I really enjoyed this book!
THANK YOU FOR SHARING THIS BOOK WITH ME!
I got behind in the COVID DRAMA and missed posting about this important book when it came out.
Thank you!

This is an excellent overview of how trauma works in the brain, the effect it has on the body, and how to manage or heal the wounds it leaves behind. The most interesting and important thing to note about this book is that it looks closely at how trauma is experienced by women, including traumas related to childbirth and other common experiences that many people do not realize can be deeply traumatic. Well done. Essential for library collections, if you are a selector.

A very thorough discussion about how trauma affects the body, with a straightforward RX for how to deal with it. This is not a quick read, but does provide in-depth information about the many ways in which the body holds trauma.

An interesting book about trauma (mostly focused on trauma suffered by women) with insights about how the mind processes certain traumatic events. Dr. Shors gives real examples and stories from people who have suffered various painful events in their lives and delves into their minds to explain why they have or have not properly processed the events and teaches the readers about how it effects every day living. However, this is not a self-help book as the book reads more like a thesis or a paper one would write for reporting. If you are looking for help how to heal your trauma, this book is more of a first step in that process by teaching you to understand what changes have happened to your mind because of the traumatic events and what exactly trauma is. Still, a very engaging read. It is rare to find anything about PTSD in "regular people" rather than vets, medical personal, etc.

I picked up this book to potentially help process some memories and lead to healing. The first had of this book talks about trauma, it's impact on the brain, and how many people process these memories. It's very data heavy and at times, I'm not sure if it was meant for me, a very non-sciency reader. It was interesting to read but mostly dry material.

Halfway in the author introduces a combination of meditation and exercise activities that help you remap your brain. It's helpful but feels overly simplistic. It didn't speak to my need to understand the impact of past traumatic events and how it has influenced my life now and how I can heal.

With that said, it's a fairly interesting book even if not fully satisfying.

EVERYDAY TRAUMA offers a fairly basic coping technique - meditation followed by aerobic exercise - that can be used by anyone to offset the impact of trauma. I appreciate that it is simple and easy for anyone to try. And the results seem promising based on cited research.

I could have done without the early chapters filled with stories illustrating what trauma is - anyone who picks up a book with the word trauma in the title doesn’t need to have it defined, and I found the stories pretty stressful..

I’m not sure this methodology warrants an entire book - there was a lot of filler here. But it does seem like a helpful thing anyone can try, which makes this a worthwhile project in this age of extreme stress hitting from all directions.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing a copy of this book.