Whacked Out: Understanding why, achieving wellness brings a science-based account to well-being. Fully grounded in peer-reviewed science (99%), it presents the causes and effects of human unwellness. The first section fully articulates childhood mistreatment in forms of verbal and emotional abuse, laying out individual behaviors carefully, then turns to neuroscience to illustrate the impacts of such mistreatment on the developing human brain. Spoiler: neuroscience and neuropsychiatry show that emotional manipulation and verbal aggression in childhood warp the child’s developing brain, causing the brain’s fear response to grow enlarged for detection of threat while the portions of the brain dedicated to well-being and executive functioning dwarf. We then get out into the adult world with brains that are literally deficient in gray matter in key areas. Thus, it is no wonder that people suffer from addiction, anxiety, depression, food problems, relationship problems, and a host of physiological conditions such as chronic pain, migraine, and heart disease, to name a few. This section also addresses how we cope with such deficiencies in our daily lives, some in healthy but most in unhealthy ways.The second section of the book presents healing strategies in the six main domains of the human experience, each fully backed by science and supplemented with strategies science has not yet tapped. These domains include spiritual, physical, emotional intelligence, psychological, social intelligence, and intellectual. Each of these chapters offers a rich array of techniques and strategies that science has demonstrated lead to wellness. Readers can select any technique that speaks to them as a focus, working with a single dimension at a time or drawing from multiple dimensions simultaneously, as desired.This book offers the full spectrum of causes, effects, and healing from the kind of childhood mistreatment most of us endure as kids. It brings tremendous insight to this aspect of the human condition, and provides numerous strategies for achieving wellness. Indeed, many people can move from unwellness across the threshold into mental health and wellness with the insights and techniques this book offers.Scientific disciplines relied upon for this book: neuroscience, neuropsychiatry, psychology, social psychology, communication.
