Post-Traumatic Success: Positive Psychology and Solution Focused Strategies to Help Clients Survive and Thrive

In the face of trauma, what do people do to survive? What makes them strong? What renews their sense of safety and security? This book offers resiliency-focused approaches to managing trauma in therapy. With a positive, solution-oriented approach and a focus on increasing the overall well being of traumatized clients, Bannink presents techniques and principles for therapists, based on current research and practice, for cultivating resilience and posttraumatic growth.

Through stories and exercises, the book explores concepts of what it is that makes life worth living, empowering readers to directly apply these insights to change the lives of their clients. Therapists will learn to generate dedicated occasions for self-reflection in their clients, engendering positive affects (like hope, self-efficacy, self-esteem, joy, happiness, gratitude, and love), which are proven by research to foster the intrinsic motivation to change. Bringing together the best elements of change-based and meaning-based psychotherapy approaches, this is a much-needed guide to improving the therapeutic alliance, creating preferred futures for clients, and mapping the pathways to flourishing after trauma.