What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma

Complex PTSD is not the same as PTSD, though it took decades for the medical establishment to distinguish them. It develops from prolonged trauma, often in childhood, and produces a constellation of symptoms that can look like depression, anxiety, or personality disorder without the underlying cause being obvious. Stephanie Foo was told a lot of incorrect things about herself before she got the right diagnosis. What My Bones Know documents what came after—the research, the therapy, the treatments both mainstream and alternative—with the rigor of a journalist and the stakes of someone whose life depended on getting it right. She’s candid about what worked and what didn’t, and about the ways the mental health system is particularly poorly designed for people with her history. For readers who have experienced trauma themselves, or who are trying to understand someone close to them, this is one of the more useful books on the subject written for a general audience.