The Joy Reset: Six Ways Trauma Steals Happiness and How to Win It Back

A groundbreaking, accessible, and actionable guide to healing trauma through a reframing and adaptation of Positive Psychology, by author of Unbroken Dr. MaryCatherine McDonald.

Joy can feel complicated, especially to someone who is struggling. Against the very real darkness that life offers up, a chorus of “but do you have a gratitude journal?” or “have you tried yoga?” can feel isolating and dismissive. And yet, the research on resilience, joy, gratitude, hope, and posttraumatic growth proves unequivocally that these emotions are healing. When it comes to deploying that research and adapting it into actionable tools for people with a trauma history, psychology falls desperately short. To bridge this gap, Dr. MaryCatherine McDonald has reframed these concepts and created new interventions for anyone who struggles to feel at home with joy.

In The Joy Reset, Dr. McDonald helps readers identify six common barriers that prevent people from accessing joy – hypervigilance, emotional numbing, fear of loss, conditioning, guilt, and shame – and then redefines positive emotions as those tenacious, gritty, often tiny experiences that appear within the darkest moments and form the very foundation of psychological resilience. Rooted in the neurobiology that explains how and why trauma and suffering can impede our path to hope and joy, Dr. McDonald shares exercises that make joy and gratitude both bite-sized and accessible, inviting readers to welcome these emotions back in.
By emphasizing the very real ways that joy and hope show up even in our toughest moments, The Joy Reset empowers readers to find the light in the dark – no matter what.