The Trusting Heart: Addiction, Recovery, and Intergenerational Trauma
The Trusting Heart is part family drama, part recovery odyssey, part character sketch, and part addiction text. Most of all, it encourages the reader to seek inside, to be mindful not only of one's own perceptions and sensibilities, but also of the events and experiences that have been handed down from prior generations. Aanavi describes in beautiful prose the everlasting energy of trauma, how it passes from generation to generation, and the ways in which this intergenerational injury arises in self-destructive acts and tendencies. He encourages the reader to trust that which so many of us have grown to distrust namely, our selves, our bodies, our hearts and in the process, to reconnect directly with the accumulated effects of trauma, even when this requires facing one's ghosts. Aanavi's tale of personal suffering, his disconnection from himself through heroin, and his own ultimate identification with his ancestral wounds has much to offer those of us who suffer in addiction, grief and loss, emotional turmoil, and personal trauma, and who seek to reconnect with the meaning within. Indeed, it is a guidebook for those who bear the burdens of those who came before, which, in a very real sense, is each of us. --Steve Balt, MD, MS, editor-in-chief of The Carlat Psychiatry ReportThere is a plethora of first-person accounts describing substance addiction but The Trusting Heart is one-of-a-kind because Michael Aanavi takes his reader on an unforgettable journey into his own psyche as well as his ethnic and familial milieu. This book has a range that is both broad and deep, both philosophical and intimate, encompassing ancestral trauma, Jewish cuisine, teenage drug dealing, somatic experiencing, and mindfulness meditation. It is a coming of age story that brilliantly evokes how the author succumbed to the opiate embrace but eventually awakened to recovery. --Stanley Krippner, PhD, Professor of Psychology, Saybrook Institute, Co-author, Personal Mythology and Haunted by CombatThe Trusting Heart is a courageous and uncompromising book that brings together the author's story of recovery from addiction and intergenerational trauma and his clinical expertise as a psychotherapist and acupuncturist. Integrating the wisdom of Taoism, archetypal psychology and his own embodied experiences, Aanavi reframes the recovery process from a life-long letting go of destructive habits to a radical opportunity for spiritual transformation. This is a must read for anyone working personally or professionally with addiction who is ready to go beyond the limitations of current therapeutic models and is not afraid to face addiction's underlying longing: the reclaiming of authentic nature and a vital, meaningful encounter with the Self. --Lorie Eve Dechar, MAc, Author of Five Spirits: Alchemical Acupuncture for Psychological and Spiritual HealingThere is a plethora of first-person accounts describing substance addiction but The Trusting Heart is one-of-a-kind because Michael Aanavi takes his reader on an unforegettable journey into his own psyche as well as his ethnic and familial milieu. This book has a range that is both broad and deep, both philiosophical and intimate, encompassing ancestral trauma, Jewish cuisine, teenage drug dealing, somatic experiencing, and mindfulness meditation. It is a coming of age story that brilliantly evokes how the author succumbed to the opiate embrace but eventually awakened to recovery. --Stanley Krippner, PhD, Professor of Psychology, Saybrook Institute, Co-author, Personal Mythology and Haunted by CombatThe Trusting Heart is a courageous and uncompromising book that brings together the author's story of recovery from addiction and intergenerational trauma and his clinical expertise as a psychotherapist and acupuncturist. Integrating the wisdom of Taoism, archetypal psychology and his own embodied experiences, Aanavi reframes the recovery process from a life-long letting go of destructive habits to a radical opportunity for spiritual transformation. This is a must read for anyone working personally or professionally with addiction who is ready to go beyond the limitations of current therapeutic models and is not afraid to face addiction's underlying longing: the reclaiming of authentic nature and a vital, meaningful encounter with the Self. --Lorie Eve Dechar, MAc, Author of Five Spirits: Alchemical Acupunctures for Psychological and Spiritual Healing