BOOKS
Just Released: Our New Book
Sensory Pathways To Healing From Trauma
Hardcover Edition will release on July 11, 2025
Pre-order now and be the first to receive your copy.
#1 New Release in Trauma Psychology on Amazon
This forward-thinking book explores the impact of psychological trauma on the brain's sensory pathways and demonstrates the crucial role sensory-based interventions can play in recovery. Ruth A. Lanius and associates interweave neurobiological research with evocative case examples and narratives from survivors. The book shines a spotlight on the brain-body disconnect that is part of the lived experience of trauma, and traces what happens in all eight sensory systems when an individual is under threat.
Featuring "Bridging to Practice" sections in each chapter, the book reveals how working with sensory pathways can engage the whole brain, promote neuroplasticity, and optimize the effectiveness of standard psychotherapies. Illustrations include eight pages in full color.
Highlights: What You Will Learn
How do our senses shape how we perceive our internal and external world after trauma?
How can our senses harness our brain's capacity to change?
How can we reconnect the body and brain to enhance therapeutic outcomes?
What Expert Reviewers Are Saying
“A comprehensive, useful, and fascinating tour of the impact of trauma... Our tour guides offer not only clear, in-depth, and cutting-edge scientific views into the eight senses that shape our experience of being alive, but also practical clinical steps any therapist can harness to catalyze deep and lasting change toward well-being.”
— from the Foreword by Daniel. J. Siegel, MD, Executive Director, Mindsight Institute
“This is an amazing book, one that has the potential to challenge and reconfigure central aspects of how we currently provide trauma therapy... This is an ambitious, brilliant book that begs to be read, reread, and reflected upon. Very impressive.”
— John Briere, PhD, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences (Emeritus), Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California
“Reading this book is like downloading the mind of one of the greatest neuropsychiatrists of our age to learn about smarter, more effective trauma healing... The mental health field—and our world as a whole—has never needed Lanius's mind and heart more than we do right now.”
— Donna Jackson Nakazawa, author of Girls on the Brink and The Adverse Childhood Experiences Guided Journal
"The authors provide clinical insights into groundbreaking healing methods that are harnessing modern neuroscience to help survivors reclaim their lives. This book offers a new and hopeful understanding of how layers of trauma combine to shape the nervous system—and how they can be gently and effectively unwound.”
— Sebern F. Fisher, MS, BCN, author of Neurofeedback in the Treatment of Developmental Trauma
Just Released!
Explore Ruth's Other Books:
Finding Solid Ground: Overcoming Obstacles In Trauma Treatment
(Book and Workbook)
Finding Solid Ground was awarded the Frank W. Putnam Award for Outstanding Book from the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation in 2023
Even seasoned clinicians can struggle when trying to help to highly traumatized and dissociative patients. This book and its accompanying workbook for patients provide an evidence-informed, pragmatic, and compassionate approach to the stabilization and treatment of complex trauma and dissociation. These books will help clinicians immediately begin assessment and treatment with traumatized individuals using a comprehensive therapeutic program that includes session-by-session information sheets and exercises developed through decades of clinical experience, studies, and feedback from individuals living with trauma-related disorders.
Finding Solid Ground: Overcoming Obstacles in Trauma Treatment offers guidance on how to use the program in individual and group contexts, expert recommendations for assessing dissociation, and clinical vignettes that focus on how to overcome common challenges in trauma treatment. The companion workbook includes the patient-facing Information Sheets and Exercises that are the foundation of the Finding Solid Ground program.
Together, these books present a coherent, comprehensive approach to trauma treatment that rests upon a clearly articulated understanding of the neurobiological impacts of trauma. Clinicians of all levels of experience will find these books inspiring, informative, and accessible.​
The Finding Solid Ground Book was translated into Italian, which you can buy here, and it is currently being translated into more languages.
What Expert Reviewers Are Saying
"Finding Solid Ground is the most helpful book available on the treatment of clinical dissociation. Based on an extended clinical research study, this guide is highly recommended for those who seek concrete, evidence-based guidance in this area. Equally recommended is the associated workbook, which provides detailed and compassionate information and exercises for clients struggling with dissociate challenges."
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— John Briere, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California
"Finding Solid Ground is an enormous contribution to the field of trauma: the first book on trauma and dissociation written by authors who are both scholars and clinicians. They build a solid ground of research evidence to support an understanding of dissociation combined with practical applications that can be easily integrated into psychotherapy or serve as a stand-alone treatment."
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— Janina Fisher, Ph.D, Licensed Clinical Psychologist, Trainer, Educator & Author
"Finding Solid Ground, provides invaluable resources on the treatment of dissociative trauma-related disorders. The authors are educators par excellence who have used their expertise as researchers and clinicians to produce a highly readable overview of dissociation along with treatment guidelines and exercises. Their innovative TOP DD studies offer empirical support for their approach. A major contribution!"
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— Christine A. Courtois, PhD, ABPP, Licensed Psychologist, Consultant/Trainer & Author
Healing The Traumatized Self:
Consciousness, Neuroscience, Treatment
Cultivation of emotional awareness is difficult, even for those of us not afflicted by serious mental illness. This book discusses the neurobiology behind emotional states and presents exercises for developing self awareness. Topics include mood (both unipolar and bipolar), anxiety (particularly PTSD), and dissociative disorders. The authors Drs. Frewen and Lanius comprehensively review psychological and neurobiological research, and explain how to use this research to become aware of emotional states within both normal and psychopathological functioning.
Therapists will be able to help survivors of trauma, mood disorders, anxiety disorders, and dissociative disorders develop emotional awareness. The book also includes case studies, detailed instructions for clinicians, and handouts ready for use in assessment/therapy with patients/clients. This book was part of the Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology in 2015, a series which included top experts in trauma.
What Expert Reviewers Are Saying
"Breaking new ground, if not creating an entirely new research and clinical domain, this book startles with its intelligence and breadth. Frewen and Lanius call upon over a decade of functional MRI research and detailed clinical interviews to define what they refer to as ‘trauma-related altered states of consciousness’ (TRASC). The ideas are new, the data are very strong, and the grounding in the real-world experience of suffering people is refreshing. This is a whole new step forward in understanding and assisting those with dissociative difficulties."​
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— John Briere, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California
"Scholarly, highly focused, yet accessible and readable... The deep clinical insights coupled with state of the art neuroimaging data permit an in-depth analysis of dissociation in its many forms, and its relationship to traumatization, perception, and brain/mind/body connections. This work considerably advances our knowledge of dissociation and lays out a pathway for successful therapeutic interventions for highly traumatized individuals."
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— Rachel Yehuda, PhD, Director of the Traumatic Stress Studies Division at Icahn School of Medicine; Mental Health Patient Care Center Director at the James J. Peters Veterans Affairs Medical Center
"This is a landmark book in the history of psychotraumatology. Frewen and Lanius have created a new intellectual blueprint for understanding dissociation. Their book is unique in providing a detailed integration of the latest neuroscientific findings with the experience of what it is like to be traumatized. It is a treasure trove of ideas for anyone pursuing the study or healing of the traumatized self."
— Chris R. Brewin, Professor of Clinical Psychology, University College London
"[T]he most noteworthy aspect of the book is the inclusion of patient testimonies in the forms of artwork, poetry, and vignettes... [T]he audience can scrutinize in a more involved and understandable way than simply reading technical words on a page, a feat not many research-oriented publications are able to achieve."
— Somatic Psychotherapy Today
The Impact of Early Life Trauma on Health and Disease: The Hidden Epidemic
There is now ample evidence from the preclinical and clinical fields that early life trauma has both dramatic and long-lasting effects on neurobiological systems and functions that are involved in different forms of psychopathology as well as on health in general. To date, a comprehensive review of the recent research on the effects of early and later life trauma is lacking.
This book fills an obvious gap in academic and clinical literature by providing reviews which summarize and synthesize these findings. Topics considered and discussed include the possible biological and neuropsychological effects of trauma at different epochs and their effect on health. This book will be essential reading for psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, mental health professionals, social workers, pediatricians and specialists in child development.