The Post Traumatic Growth of a Guardian Healer

PTSD Can Become a Gift Rather Than a Lifetime Disability

By: Greg Becker

Narrated by: Michael W. Cover

Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins

Publisher's summary

This book is critically relevant to health workers and others who may develop PTSD because of extreme stress. In the 1970s, I experienced deep traumas while running a hospital in the Central African bush where I had to ration care because of severe shortages of medicines - a situation very similar to the decisions faced by physicians, nurses and EMTs in our overburdened health systems.

During my long career I had repetitive exposure to traumas in places like Afghanistan during the war, Haiti after the earthquake, and Liberia during the Ebola crisis.

My lifetime spent in support of hospitals in the world’s trouble spots has been filled with perilous yet life-affirming experiences.

I have been fortunate to participate in some of the most momentous changes of recent history, and to witness events as few others have. While the experiences have been incredible, the cost of my calling has been continued exposure to horror and human suffering, and an ongoing struggle with PTSD.

During over 40 years of repetitive trauma, I have experienced an ongoing cycle of relapse and recovery. The gift of this ongoing effort has been growth from the pain, and ultimately, a new perspective on this life-threatening condition.

The pursuit of post-traumatic growth (PTG) has given me gifts of empathy, compassion, and an understanding of humanity that I could have gained in no other way.

The practice of PTG described in this book clearly shows that PTSD does not need to be a disability for those who are able to turn trauma into growth. In my current role as a PTSD peer counselor, my approach to PTSD mitigation and recovery is to use the principles of “Psychological First Aid” (National Child Traumatic Stress Network and National Center for PTSD) in the immediate acute phase. This is then followed by Skills for Psychological Recovery (National Child Traumatic Stress Network and National Center for PTSD). Finally, when long-term recovery begins, I use PTG as contained in this book.

©2017, 2019 Greg Becker (P)2021 Greg Becker

Guide to Post-Traumatic Growth/Great autobiography

Greg Becker doesn't list all the details about himself or of his amazing life right away in this interesting listen. He reminds me of Frank Abnegale of "Catch Me If You Can" fame, except that Abnegale was a fraud, and Becker actually has done the things he describes -- from being an EMT in strife-torn Detroit, to a divemaster and underwater photographer in the Caribbean to a bush doctor doing amazingly complex OB/GYN in Central Africa, to setting up hospitals in the former Soviet Union to working in some of the most dangerous places in the world, including war-torn Afghanistan to the height of the Ebola epidemic in Liberia.

It's also late in the book that Becker mentions his size. He's 6'8" and weighs 330 lbs. He is an imposing presence in all the areas where he has done emergency work, and he uses it to his advantage to gain respect and cooperation from his foreign hosts.

Where normal people run from burning buildings, Becker has spent a lifetime running toward the fires, confident that he can be of help to people in dire situations. He certainly has done so, but not without personal cost. He enumerates three episodes when he contracted illnesses that were deeply life-threatening. But, perhaps more importantly, he has experienced a significant amount of PTSD, just from the trauma-to-trauma-to-trauma existence he has chosen to expose himself to. And this giant of a man has been brought low, on more than one occasion, by the cumulative effects. He talks with great honesty about his alcoholism and recovery, and also details how he has dealt with his PTSD. In the end, he takes a positive view -- that post-traumatic growth (PTG) is actually possible -- not in spite of, but because of, his remarkable set of experiences.

This book should interest anyone who wants a first-person story about PTG, or who just wants to hear an amazing autobiography.

Michael Cover's reading is excellent and articulate, a real benefit to the listener, but there were times I wished he had injected some emotion when touching on some of the suspenseful moments in the story.

The planet is a better place because Greg Becker walked upon it.