The Trauma Banquet: Eating Pain - Feasting on Life

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The Trauma Banquet offers profound insights into building personal resilience amid lingering trauma, with a foreword by Professor Steven Hayes, a pioneer of acceptance and commitment therapy. Dr. Pakenham, a clinical psychology professor with 38 years of experience, emphasizes that pain from past traumas cannot be erased but must be embraced for transformation. This memoir illustrates how inner pain can invigorate life, drawing on real-life examples from his extensive work with clients and research in human behavior. Dr. Pakenham shares his own painful experiences, including a childhood marked by brutal domestic violence and the suicide of his mother when he was just 13. These early encounters with trauma shaped his understanding of life and pain. After facing violent bullying due to his gender and sexual diversity, he struggled with addiction and homelessness, seeking meaning in his suffering. A turning point came when he found salvation through education, marriage, and fatherhood, despite enduring the losses of loved ones during the AIDS crisis and a painful divorce. Ultimately, he reveals that the pain he once sought to escape became a source of vitality and purpose. The memoir concludes with an exploration of the strategies he developed to "eat" his pain and savor life, techniques he now encourages his clients to adopt.