In “What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience and Healing,” Oprah Winfrey teams up with Dr. Bruce D. Perry, a child trauma specialist, to ask practitioners to make a switch. Instead of focusing on what’s wrong with clients, they suggest the question should be, “What happened to you?”
While seemingly simple, the shift is groundbreaking, say the authors of the similarly titled book. With a transition in thinking, the two hope to pave the way for increased understanding about how childhood trauma impacts current adult behaviors. Winfrey connected with Perry early on because of his extensive background researching the impact of trauma on the brain, especially as it relates to children. Winfrey’s expertise comes from her own experience of feeling abandoned by her parents and being raised by a strict grandmother who used beatings to show love. Winfrey realized how a lack of early nurturing caused her to go inward, and how fear of corporal punishment led her to become a people pleaser. Practitioners such as Tameka Wade Brewington, owner of Real Talk Counseling in Charlotte, North Carolina, shared her perspective. “This is not a new concept,” she says. “The book explores looking at client concerns from the perspective of the trauma the person may have experienced as opposed to looking at them as bad or wrong.”For clinicians, that means acting and reacting from the view of the client. “So, if someone you’re working with is exposed to abuse in childhood, that person is going to act and react from that perspective.” A licensed therapist, Brewington says while this concept has been practiced for years among herself and her colleagues, Winfrey and Perry’s book will give this form of treatment a larger platform. For mental health professionals, recommending this book as a resource for clients could be a way to help their clients gain grace and compassion for their experiences. Shared in a conversational style with both Winfrey and Perry alternating their experiences on the page and in the audio version, the book reads like an intimate examination from two notables in their fields. Additionally, practitioners can draw from the breadth of examples and research in this accessible, less-scholarly manner to help bridge the gap between the science and experience. What this book does well is lay reasons the trauma experienced in our present lives shouldn’t be ignored. Instead of blaming ourselves for certain shortcomings, we may need to go to the source of our trauma and examine it – then, if necessary, work through and repair any tears and fissures in order to live more fulfilling lives.
First published in Black Mental Health Today, Winter 2021 (No. 2).