Christiane Sanderson Counselling in Fulham
Expert  in  Child Sexual Abuse,  Domestic Abuse  and Trauma

Introduction to Counselling Survivors of Interpersonal Trauma

The betrayal of trust and dehumanisation in interpersonal trauma creates paradoxes that distort the survivor’s reality, leading to alterations in perception, withdrawal and disconnection from self and others. Christiane Sanderson’s new book explains how counsellors can help to restore reality and promote re-connection to self and others to facilitate recovery within a safe and supportive therapeutic relationship.

The book provides a solid understanding of the nature, dynamics, impact, and long-term effects of interpersonal trauma, and explains how to create a secure therapeutic base from which to explore and integrate its effects. Clinical examples are used throughout to highlight the unique features of each type of interpersonal trauma and to illustrate how to work most effectively with survivors of such trauma. Professional challenges and the impact of counselling survivors of interpersonal trauma are also examined in order to minimise the risk of vicarious traumatisation and secondary traumatic stress.

This book is essential reading for counsellors, therapists, social workers, mental health professionals, health care professionals including GPs and midwives, legal professionals and all those working with survivors of interpersonal trauma, including sexual violence, child abuse, domestic abuse, elder abuse, institutional abuse and abuse by professionals.

Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Reviews from Amazon Viewers

4.0 out of 5 stars A great, very engaging book even for a general reader., 12 Jan 2010
By
J. Murray "Curious Reader" (UK)

Christiane Sanderson's new book is a real tour de force. She introduces a number of areas of interpersonal trauma such as child abuse, domestic abuse, elder abuse, sexual exploitation, human trafficking and rape, institutional abuse, as well as sexual abuse by therapists,
While some of these topics make for uncomfortable reading the book is written in clear and accessible language. The style of writing is very engaging and will appeal not just to professionals but also the general reader, including survivors of interpersonal trauma. For me this book is even easier to read than some of her other books on the subject. The early chapters are particularly illuminating in describing how abusers entice and ensnare potential victims through the use of deception and manipulation. The book really captures how survivors are coerced, dehumanised and forced to surrender through the use of isolation and the distortion of reality. I found the description of how abusers create paradoxes that cannot be resolved wherein care and affection masquerades as abuse most useful in understanding how survivors are forced to submit and how this impacts on them. I found the book an invaluable resource to help make sense of my own experiences and restore trust in my own perceptions. The message of hope throughout the book is a powerful one in restoring control to the survivor so that they can reconnect to the concealed aspects of the self, to others and the world. Reading this book was like a therapeutic journey to self discovery which has restored my vitality and helped me to live more authentically.

5.0 out of 5 stars Shedding light on a dark area of life, 9 Dec 2009
By E. R. Taylor (UK)

This book will be of value to therapists of all persuasions as well as to the lay reader. It is clearly a distillation of the wisdom gained from years of humane clinical experience. With helpful chapter summaries and many illustrative case vignettes, it is both accessible and hard-hitting. The author provides a thoroughly convincing (if sometimes disturbing) account of what counsellors in the field of interpersonal trauma need to know, ranging from child sexual abuse to elder abuse and from rape to sexual slavery. Not least, it stresses the need for therapists and counsellors to protect themselves from secondary traumatic stress. For the lay reader, who may have absorbed media-peddled stereotypes of `victim' and perpetrator, it will be a revelation.

amazon book review

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book, 13 April 2010

By
Tom Sawyer "Tom" (London, UK) - see all my reviews
This review is from: Introduction to Counselling Survivors of Interpersonal Trauma (Paperback)
As a student psychotherapist this is an indispensable book which will appeal to any one interested in this subject or suffering for domestic abuse. Excellently written too.


"Sanderson writes readably and positively...that a vital part of the work is in developing an empathic relationship in which the client can begin to trust in a human relationship, possibly for the first time....Chapters have a clear structure, excellent summaries and each is illustrated by a relevant case vignette. A valuable addition to staff bookshelves. This book has given me a far clearer understanding of the insidiousness of the traps laid by abusers, and of the liminal world in which the quarry both 'knows' but 'does not know'; such is the power of the abuser's entrapment." Therapy Today May, 2010