Who is the author of What Happened to You??

The authors of What Happened to You? are Bruce D. Perry and Oprah Winfrey.

Psychology

What Happened to You? Book Summary - What Happened to You? Book explained in key points

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What Happened to You? summary

Name: What Happened to You?
Rating: 4.3 (739 reviews)
Author: Bruce D. Perry and Oprah Winfrey

Bruce D. Perry Oprah Winfrey

Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing

4.3 (739 ratings)

27 mins

Brief summary

What Happened to You? by Bruce D. Perry and Oprah Winfrey explores how childhood experiences shape our lives and relationships, and offers insights and tools to nurture healing, resilience, and self-awareness. A powerful guide to understanding and transforming our emotional and mental well-being.

Topics

Mental Health Self-Care The Brain Personality

Table of Contents

What Happened to You?
Summary of 8 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 8

What’s in it for me? Learn to develop resilience in the face of trauma.

Have you ever reacted to something in a way that felt like it came out of nowhere? Or been powerless to stop addictive habits like overeating or drinking when you’re upset?

Well, that inexplicable reaction, or those unhealthy habits, might be driven by trauma.

Trauma is difficult to understand and treat because it’s often invisible, even to ourselves. If you experience abuse or neglect as a child, those experiences shape your interpretations of the world, and how you respond to stress. But if you’re not conscious of the trauma then you won’t be able to confront it head-on.

That’s something Oprah Winfrey knows from personal experience. She experienced neglect, abuse, and physical assault in her childhood. Understanding this trauma was key to freeing herself from her destructive coping mechanisms, like people-pleasing and overeating. Today, she’s a passionate advocate for trauma survivors, working with Dr. Bruce Perry to increase the visibility and understanding of trauma, and how it affects young people’s lives.

These blinks synthesize the key insights from their conversation, providing innovative ways to understand trauma and the brain, and practical strategies to apply in your own life.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

why a little bit of stress is actually healthy;
how dancing can help us deal with trauma; and
why there’s a strong connection between trauma and addiction.

Our brains are shaped by our unique childhood experiences.

Oprah Winfrey’s clearest childhood memory is of a feeling – a feeling of intense loneliness. Even as a young child, she knew she was unwanted. Her mother was very young, a teenager. She didn’t have the money or the emotional resources to care for her daughter. So Oprah spent her childhood in the care of different family members, bouncing among households. These relatives only made matters worse. They not only neglected Oprah; they often beat her severely.

All these experiences formed Oprah’s view of the world. They shaped her expectations of the people around her. They shaped how she saw herself. And they literally affected the formation of her brain.

The key message here is: Our brains are shaped by our unique childhood experiences.

The rational part of a child’s brain – the cortex – takes years to develop. About three years, to be exact. People sometimes think this means that young children don’t absorb much – that abuse or trauma experienced by, say, a two-year-old doesn’t count. The opposite is true. In fact, the younger a child is, the more damaging trauma is for their brain. A baby’s brain develops at an astounding rate: 20,000 new neurons per second. And every experience is logged in a personal “codebook” in the brain. Later, traumatic experiences may manifest as complex memories that can’t be understood rationally.

Take the example of Samuel. As a child, he was physically abused by his father. The abuse only stopped after he was removed from his father’s care by Child Protective Services. After a turbulent few years cycling through foster homes, Sam moved into a group home. There, he got the support he needed and was progressing well. But then he got a new teacher and, suddenly, he started acting out at school, becoming aggressive and withdrawn. Dr. Perry was mystified by this behavior until he witnessed a visit from Sam’s father. The man was wearing a strong cologne – Old Spice. In a flash, Perry realized that Sam’s teacher also wore Old Spice. Sam’s behavior suddenly made sense. The aroma awakened terrifying sensory memories, causing him to act out as if he were under attack. In the end, the solution to Sam’s problem was simple. His teacher changed his cologne, and Sam’s behavior changed, too.

When we’re trying to understand trauma, there is one essential question to ask: What happened to you? And, especially, what happened to you when you were very young? That’s a question that’s been central to Oprah’s life as she’s worked to heal her childhood trauma. Deciphering your own personal codebook will help you to understand seemingly inexplicable reactions and survival mechanisms that evolved to help keep you safe.

You can’t treat trauma without understanding how the brain works.

War veteran Mike Roseman was out on a date when, suddenly, he found himself cowering on the ground in a state of complete terror. His girlfriend tried to help him, but he lashed out blindly, hitting her in the process. It took ten minutes for him to come out of it and start thinking clearly again.

What had happened? A car had backfired, its exhaust pipe emitting a loud popping sound. The noise was similar to gunfire, and it activated a traumatic memory of when Roseman had been in the Korean War 30 years before. His survival responses instantly went into overdrive, and he dived to the ground as if he were hiding from a sniper.

Learning positive regulation strategies is essential for dealing with trauma.

When she was starting out as a journalist, Oprah routinely worked 100-hour weeks, doing everything she could to excel at her job. She was exhausted and stressed, but she ignored all the signals her body was sending her that something was wrong. The abuse she’d experienced had trained her to be a skilled people-pleaser. She completely ignored her own boundaries, trying to fulfill everyone else’s needs instead. And she numbed her feelings with her favorite drug: food.

Whenever we become uncomfortable or stressed, it means that we’re out of balance. But, like Oprah, many trauma survivors have been trained to ignore the signals. And they haven’t learned positive strategies for regulating themselves and reestablishing balance when they’re stressed out.

Working with our natural rhythms is key to healing from trauma.

Put your hand over your heart for a moment, and get very quiet. You’ll feel it beating steadily against your chest.

A heartbeat is the first, most primal rhythm we hear. We hear it in the womb. Our mothers’ resting heart rate of 60 to 80 beats per minute becomes our baseline, indicating safety and continuity. That’s why babies are instantly comforted by a rhythmic rocking motion. And as we grow up, rhythm remains important to our mental health.

Learning how to form positive relationships is key to healing trauma.

How do you know how to love someone? If you grew up with doting caregivers, that will sound like a strange question. The capacity to love seems as natural as the capacity to breathe. But, actually, it’s something we have to learn from our earliest days. If you’ve never been loved, you simply won’t know how to do it.

That was the experience of Gloria, a young mother who had grown up in a series of foster homes. She wanted to love and nurture her daughter, Tilly, but she had no idea how. In the end, Tilly was taken into care because she wasn’t being looked after properly. Usually, women like Gloria are demonized as bad mothers. No one takes the time to look at what happened to make them that way.

Stress can help build resilience – in the right doses.

Stress gets a bad rap. We read scare stories every day about how much stress affects our physical and mental health. But did you know that experiencing stress in small doses is a vital part of human development?

Every time we have a new experience, or do a work project that stretches our abilities, we experience stress. Managing that stress successfully is like lifting weights; afterward, we’re stronger and more resilient.

The trauma of systemic racism is transmitted across generations.

Imagine you’re walking across the road with your mother when you pass a big dog. You feel your mother stiffen next to you, and suddenly you start feeling afraid.

Emotions are contagious, especially for children. They soak up their parents’ thoughts and feelings like a sponge. In that way, trauma can be passed down through generations. So we don’t only have to ask, What happened to you? We also have to understand what happened to them – what happened to your parents and their parents, and what did you inherit from them?

We can overcome traumatic experiences with the right support.

Almost half of the children living in the United States have had a serious traumatic experience. And 60 percent of adults report having at least one traumatic incident in their past.

Given what we know now about how trauma affects the brain, imagine the effect of these experiences on our broader communities and country as a whole. If so many people have sensitized stress responses, is it any wonder that so many lash out with violence or with intolerance of difference? Is it surprising that adults aren’t able to give their children the support they need to regulate themselves?

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What is What Happened to You? about?

What Happened to You? (2021) is an in-depth exploration of trauma and how it affects the brain. Long before we can make rational sense of traumatic experiences, they become etched into our neural circuits. They influence how we respond to stress, form relationships, and make meaning. Unfortunately, trauma is often misunderstood. By understanding trauma as both a brain issue and a societal issue, we can start to support trauma survivors with the tools they need to heal.

What Happened to You? Review

What Happened to You? (2021) by Bruce D. Perry and Oprah Winfrey sheds light on the transformative power of understanding and responding to trauma. Here's why this book is worth reading:

It offers a powerful exploration of how early experiences shape our lives, inspiring empathy and compassion for ourselves and others.
By combining scientific research and personal stories, the book provides a nuanced understanding of trauma and its impact on our brains and bodies.
With its accessible language and insightful anecdotes, it keeps readers engaged, making it a captivating and enlightening read.

Who should read What Happened to You??

Survivors of trauma
Teachers, caregivers, and medical practitioners
Psychology buffs interested in trauma’s effects on the brain

About the Author

Dr. Bruce D. Perry is a neuroscientist and child psychiatrist. He’s also the principal of the Neurosequential Network and senior fellow of the Child Trauma Academy. His previous best-selling books include The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog and Born For Love.

Oprah Winfrey is the renowned host and supervising producer of The Oprah Winfrey Show. As an activist and philanthropist, she’s worked tirelessly to bring attention to experiences of trauma and sexual abuse, and advocate for survivors.

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