Book review: The harm reduction guide for psychological trauma survivors - Strong support for the healing journey

By: Tom Cloyd - 13 min. read (Published: 2025-05-17; reviewed: 2025-05-20:1620 Pacific Time (USA))

Lewis, Gregorio. (2024). The Harm Reduction Guide For Psychological Trauma Survivors. Better Days Recovery Press. 47 pages, $13.99 - Shopify (Note all his books, here)

This workbook helps trauma survivors learn through active involvement with several kinds of knowledge directly connected to recovery from chronic childhood abuse and neglect. It does not promise recovery, but it does provide vital support for learning essential to recovery. Well-thought-out and effectively presented, it will surely help individuals working on their healing.

Organized around a group of focal topics, each topic initially looks at what happened in the childhood trauma survivor’s personal history. The focus then shifts to helping see how this is affecting them in their present life. Finally, the focus shifts to gaining increased skill in managing and reducing trauma symptoms.

This is no small undertaking, but the potential payoffs are large. For that reason this workbook deserves our careful and thoughtful attention.

Page contents…

• Serious childhood abuse and neglect impact more people than you think ^
• The book’s topics show creativity and strong support for healthy behavior ^
• Behavior modeling and dialog are two of the handbook’s best features ^
• The challenge of acquiring real self-knowledge organizes much of the workbook ^
• Lewis knows well the power of relationship ^
• Summing up - what is this, and what can be done with it? ^
• References ^
• Notes ^

Serious childhood abuse and neglect impact more people than you think ^{^}

Common knowledge of the extent and persistence of chronic childhood abuse and neglect is minimal and often wrong. While there are real problems both with reliable measurement and clear definition of what is to be measured, serious efforts to estimate the extent of the problem have been made.

The US CDC reports that “At least one in seven children experienced child abuse or neglect in the past year in the United States. This is likely an underestimate because many cases are unreported.”¹

Critically, they also report that “Children living in poverty experience more abuse and neglect…Rates of child abuse and neglect are five times higher for children in families with low socioeconomic status compared to families with a higher socioeconomic status.”¹

However, one of the points made by this workbook is that abuse and neglect occur in all social strata. The United Nations confirms that it also occurs across the globe, impacting an estimated one billion children during their childhood, and impacting them for their entire lives, in most cases.²

The book’s topics show creativity and strong support for healthy behavior ^{^}

With an overall concern for validation and empowerment of abuse survivors, the book’s topics are personal and diverse. Some may not appear relevant to some readers, which is no surprise. For example, Lewis takes up “Fear of men”, which is highly appropriate if your abuser was male. But, wait - read into how he presents the topic and it turns out likely to apply to many people, and has nothing necessarily to do with men.

Such clever and creative ways of developing his topics are seen throughout the workbook. The overall effect is lively and energizing, which is perfect for any workbook, and especially for one devoted to a topic as serious as chronic childhood abuse and neglect.

His creativity is evident in his treatment of forgiveness (p. 26). To be forgiving is all but a mandate in the Abrahamic cultures³, and it is common for trauma victims to be advised simply to “forgive”, as if that were some kind of simple thing. The title of this topic asks us “Do We Have to Forgive People Who Have Hurt Us?” Well, no, he says. As a psychotherapist, I heartily agree. I know the research on achieving forgiveness, and it tells us that it’s quite hard and most often not achieved. He asks us to consider that “Forgiveness for you may not look like what our society tells us forgiveness is. Investigate your own motives and you’ll find the answer…” to the question posed by the topic title.

I am particularly pleased by the author’s consistent validation of the reader’s personal views and situation. How is it for you, he keeps asking. Listen to yourself and take what you hear seriously, he says. This specific support empowers trauma victims, especially chronic childhood abuse victims, for in their lives they have NOT been told by caregivers that their thoughts and feelings matter. Rather, they have been objectified, depersonalized, and dehumanized. This workbook is all about moving in the other direction.

Just reading his list of topics is exciting. Here are two:

• “Dear Mom: A Letter to My Dead Abuser” - this section is intensely personal. It is also compelling. I have never talked with a survivor of childhood abuse whose story was not compelling, and the reader, in their working through this section, well may come to appreciate the uniqueness of their own story. A famous therapist I know of wrote a book titled “Every person’s life deserves a novel.” It’s true! Consider how that makes you feel, if you take it seriously. Lewis wants you to, and for good reason.

• “How to Cope with Not Being Accepted by Your Family” - there are no simple answers here, and the author suggests, again, that individuals differ in their life experiences and what this does to them. This individuality can create situations leading to isolation, misunderstandings, and even (he suggests) ineffective psychotherapy. The covert message that it’s OK to be who you are, with all your uniqueness, is once again evident. This message needs to be delivered to abuse survivors again and again, because so often their healing journey is anything but simple, and they end up thinking that it’s their fault. The truth is that what they’re trying to do is hard.⁴ Persistence is needed, and for that much encouragement may be needed as well. It’s not an easy journey.

Other topics consider boundaries, grief, family secrets, discouragement, and a number of other matters clearly relevant to abuse survivors.

Behavior modeling and dialog are two of the handbook’s best features ^{^}

Author Lewis uses a compelling personal narrative to structure his book. This not only grips our attention, it also lends great potency to each element of the workbook as he introduces it.

He tells us: “I grew up in a home in which I was exposed to profoundly abusive behaviors. I was a child. It was the responsibility of the adults in my life to do things right. These adults included my parents, family friends, aunts, uncles and cousins, neighbors, teachers, doctors and mental health providers. I am the product of a collective failure of highly educated, well respected, and mostly financially sound adults.”⁵

This is serious business, from the beginning - as is being a child. A bad thing happened to me, he tells us, and it should not have. People likely to read this workbook will immediately identify with him, regardless of the circumstances of their injury. The simple strength and clarity of his statement validates the feelings of many childhood abuse survivors. It is undeniable that children deserve safety, care, and effective guidance, not neglect and abuse. Too often this does not happen. Compounding this problem, I would add, is the long-running systemic denial of child abuse and neglect, in individuals, families, and societies.⁶

Lewis is not healed, and he makes that clear. Yet he has a remarkable ability to trust you with his story, and then invite you to explore your own life more deeply. What he is doing is what any good parent would do for their child: he is modeling healthy behavior. Acting in healthy ways, over time, tends to create and perpetuate health.

A core symptom of posttraumatic stress disorder is avoidance of distressing thoughts, feelings, people, places, and so on. But this short-term symptom management tactic is not the path of healing. Lewis time and again invites the reader to go the other direction - to acknowledge personal history and injury and to engage with the healing power of sharing one’s story. For many, this will be a new idea.

Probably the most important behavior he is modeling is honesty. He shows us again and again that it is possible simply to tell one’s story. It’s alright, even when the story is awful. Then, he invites the reader to look at themselves, and to carefully consider what happened to them and to look at some effects of this.

Because Lewis is continually telling us his story as we go through the book, it becomes easy for us to begin telling our own story to ourselves in a deeper and more compelling way than we probably have ever before. Quietly, without calling attention to it, he is helping any reader with a history of childhood abuse or neglect reduce their ignorance and denial about the reality of their life.

The challenge of acquiring real self-knowledge organizes much of the workbook ^{^}

My own experience with my trauma clients is that they almost never fully realize what happened to them. For one thing, parts of it are highly technical, and they are likely never to understand those parts⁷ - essential to a full understanding of psychological trauma injuries yet well beyond the grasp of many non-professionals.

But beyond that is the already-mentioned problem of avoidance. This is a fundamental defense we all employ when attempting to manage persistent overwhelming emotions. With abuse and neglect victims, it is very common simply because they carry with them through life so much that is painful to look at. Without help, this avoidance likely will persist, if only because it’s the only defense known. But cleaning wounds is part of healing, and telling one’s story, as is much encouraged in this workbook, can be very cleansing.

It is in reversing this tendency to avoid that this workbook can be so helpful in recovery. There’s plenty of material here, and in fact I would suggest that people take up one topic a week, at most. That would make this workbook an almost 5-month project. That rate of self-exploration seems about right. Exploring the matters it takes up are not to be rushed.

Lewis knows well the power of relationship ^{^}

There is a saying in the dissociative identity disorder treatment community of which I am a part: That which is injured in relationship is healed in relationship.

The truth of this statement derives both from our inherently social nature and the ongoing validation of oneself by others which is needed for healthy development and life.⁸

Lewis employs the healing power of relationship in two ways.

First is the modeling he offers by sharing his own abuse story in successive topic chapters, always followed by an invitation to the reader to then tell some of their story. Entire careers in psychology have been built around the idea of the power that one person’s behavior can have to influence and support other people.

His second use of the power of relationship is his questions to the reader about how they might speak to or get information from another person. At the end of many of the workbook’s topics he either speaks directly to the reader, or asks them to consider how they might speak to someone else about something related to the topic of concern. It’s lonely, being a survivor of abuse and neglect. Active work to engage with other people is essential to healing, and doing it in one’s imagination is an excellent way to move in this direction.⁹ I’m very pleased to see this repeated emphasis from the author on such engagement.

Summing up - what is this, and what can be done with it? ^{^}

The first step in healing from psychological injury that occurred in childhood is acknowledging that you are wounded, instead of just weird or crazy. For many, this is a big step. But it’s only the beginning.

The next big step is to get a decent sense of what actually happened - a challenge not to be underestimated. In reality, it’s a life-long project, for many reasons. Getting off to a good start is simply hard, without help.

This workbook, both for those in therapy and those not yet there, offers significant help for those ready to activate their healing potentials. For others, not yet ready, it offers a promise of help that will ultimately be hard to ignore.

The reality of psychological injury is affirmed, repeatedly, as the reader works through the topics. The normality of the awfulness of one’s personal history - for the individual living with it - is also affirmed. This means that it is normal for them to feel and act injured, because they were and are. Acknowledging this is critical to good self-care, which is not possible when there is avoidance or denial of a chronic mental health issue. This workbook consistently addresses this problem.

Finally, there is a major idea implicit here that is worth underlining: While it is true that formal trauma-related disorders that do not resolve within about a year will almost certainly need professional help,¹⁰ there is so much that one can do on one’s own that will reduce symptoms, and help speed up treatment once it’s undertaken.

This workbook can quickly show you the truth of this statement. If you are a survivor of childhood abuse and neglect, you deserve to have this experience, and you can give it to yourself, with this workbook. I hope you do.

References ^{^}

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (n.d.). About Child Abuse and Neglect. Retrieved 2025-05-17 from https://www.cdc.gov/child-abuse-neglect/about/index.html.

Driskell, J. E., Copper, C., & Moran, A. (1994). Does mental practice enhance performance? Journal of Applied Psychology, 79(4), 481–492. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.79.4.481

Freud, S. (1896). The Aetiology of Hysteria. In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume III. London: Hogarth Press. (This is Freud’s paper where he outlines his initial ideas about the sexual abuse of some of his clients - the “seduction theory”.)

Lewis, G. (2024). The Harm Reduction Guide For Psychological Trauma Survivors. Better Days Recovery Press.

McCrory, E. (2025). Verbal abuse of children has serious life-long impacts. Retrieved 2025-05-17 from https://www.gettraumainfo.com/pid156-children-abusive-language-brain/.

Schimek, J. G. (1987). Fact and Fantasy in the Seduction Theory: A Historical Review. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. https://doi.org/10.1177/000306518703500407. (A thoughtful, scholarly review of the “seduction theory” and commentary about it.)

Siegel, D. J. (2020). The developing mind: How relationships and the brain interact to shape who we are (Third edition). Guilford Press.

World Health Organization. (2022-11-29). Violence against children. Retrieved from https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/violence-against-children.

Notes ^{^}

 

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