Donna Jackson Nakazawa | Neuroscience-Based Practices for Trauma

Mentally Flexible

My guest today is Donna Jackson Nakazawa. Donna is an award-winning science journalist and author of eight books exploring the connections between emotions, trauma, and health, offering you new pathways to healing. Her book, Girls on the Brink: Helping Our Daughters Thrive in an Era of Increased Anxiety, Depression, and Social Media, was named a best book of 2022 by The Washington Post. Her newest book, The Adverse Childhood Experiences Guided Journal (foreword by Nedra Glover Tawwab), offers targeted writing techniques to help readers recognize the effects of childhood adversity and reset their brain's internal stories for neurobiological resilience. Her writing has appeared in Wired, The Boston Globe, Stat, The Washington Post, and Psychotherapy Networker. She has appeared on The Today Show and NPR and is a regular speaker at events, including the Child Mind Institute, Harvard Science, UCLA Health, Rutgers, Johns Hopkins, Children’s Hospitals, and the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine.

Some of the topics we explore in this episode include:
- How Donna’s background informs her new book
- The unique benefits and processes involved in writing as a modality of healing
- The concept of CUTS (chronic unpredictable toxic stress)
- How unpredictable stress leads to hypervigilance
- Explicit vs implicit memory
- Increasing awareness and self-compassion to heal from trauma
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Donna’s Website: https://donnajacksonnakazawa.com/

The Adverse Childhood Experiences Guided Journal: https://a.co/d/cy1vJJn

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