Aftershock helps people identify and heal from the often-delayed emotional responses to seemingly ordinary life events like the death of a partner, a chronic illness diagnosis, or getting a new job that can have significant impact on our emotions and overall mental health.
You may be at a point in your life where you realize that you have been edgy, a bit depressed, feeling unsettled. Yet everything in your life seems to be okay. You look for a cause, but you just can’t put your finger on it. Perhaps you should examine your recent past—six months ago, a year ago—and ask yourself, "What did I go through that was stressful at the time, yet I was able to deal with by suppressing my stress until that situation was over?"
“Aftershock” is a term coined by clinical psychologist Dr. Geri-Lynn Utter, who came to recognize this largely ignored scenario in many of her patients. As a subclinical level of the more familiar post-traumatic stress disorder, “aftershock” may underlie your present emotional stress, a delayed emotional response that affects many of us after common, yet big deal, life events such as miscarriage, moving to a new city, divorce, or, for some people, the Covid-19 pandemic that has rocked much of the world.
The most urgent raison d’etre of Aftershock is to enlighten readers to the very presence of this psychological trauma—what it is and what causes it, how to recognize the symptoms, and how to heal when life''s stressors keep you in the center of the aftershock of a storm.
Industry Reviews
“Dr. Utter's book, Aftershock: How Past Events Shake Up Your Life Today, is the beginning of therapy for everyone. On completion of the book, you realize that everyone would benefit from talking to a mental health professional, especially one who is as insightful and able to read in between the lines of your thoughts like Dr. Utter. She lays out the groundwork from the beginning of the trauma, then takes you on a step-by-step experience of how to address it. At the end of each chapter, a brief “Let’s Review” section pinpoints the important issues discussed. Dr. Utter's humor and self-acknowledgement that she too benefits from therapy puts a person, even the most reluctant, at ease in understanding how to seek help and comfort. From the beginning, her personal stories are intertwined to explain how our psyches work. She then breaks it down into humorous examples for better understanding. At times, the ‘lol’ written on the pages really turned into ‘laugh out loud’ for me. I truly can say that I could not put this book down until finished and then wanted more!”
—Jan Widerman, DO, FACOP, FAAP, FAOAAM, FASAM
