The Trouble With Trauma

The Search to Discover How Beliefs Become Facts

Dr. Michael Scheeringa questions the long-term physical effects of complex trauma and how we choose to ignore scientific evidence and practice self-deception based on heuristics for survival.

Theories that psychological trauma can permanently damage your brain, cause physical disease, and change your essential character have become staples of human thought worldwide. Dr. Scheeringa explains how those theories are widely believed whilst not being true, and at the heart of the story is an explanation of how humans make ill-informed decisions and practice delusional thinking in an effort to chart a course through a multipolar world. Heuristics is a rapid and efficient method to make judgments about threatening situations, which may be especially relevant during an epidemic and the spread of misinformation.

This is a narrative of one of the first modern examples of successfully weaponizing psychological neuroscience to try to reshape society. But The Trouble with Trauma is more than a critique of social policy. This is a book for anyone who wants a better understanding on how groupthink and herd mentality works and improves our ability to understand scientific fact. Dr. Scheeringa sheds light on why we choose to ignore scientific evidence while engaging the reader in a lively conversation on how we come to believe.