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    Irritable Hearts: A PTSD Love Story
    Irritable Hearts: A PTSD Love Story
    Irritable Hearts: A PTSD Love Story
    Audiobook11 hours

    Irritable Hearts: A PTSD Love Story

    Written by Mac McClelland

    Narrated by Cassandra Campbell

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    In 2010, human rights reporter Mac McClelland left Haiti after covering the lingering devastation of the earthquake. Back home, McClelland finds herself imagining vivid scenes of violence. She can’t sleep or stop crying. It becomes clear that she is suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, triggered by her trip and seemingly exacerbated by her experiences in the other charged places she’d reported from, places where she thought she’d escaped emotionally unscathed. The bewilderment about this sudden loss of self-control is magnified by her feelings for Nico, a French soldier she met in Haiti who despite their brief connection seems to have found a place in her confused heart.

    With inspiring fearlessness, McClelland sets out to repair her broken psyche. Investigating her own illness and the history of PTSD, she discovers she is not alone: traumatic events have sweeping influence. While we most often connect it to veterans, PTSD is more often caused by other manner of trauma, and can even be contagious—close proximity to those afflicted can trigger it in those around them. As McClelland confronts the realities of her disorder, she learns to open her heart to the love that seems to have found her at an inopportune moment.

    Vivid, suspenseful, and intimate, Irritable Hearts is an unforgettable exploration of vulnerability and resilience, control and acceptance, and a compelling story of survival that expands the definition of what trauma is and offers powerful hope for those who need to work through it.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateFeb 24, 2015
    ISBN9781501214318
    Author

    Mac McClelland

    Mac McClelland is the author of For Us Surrender Is Out of the Question. She has written for Reuters, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, The New York Times Magazine, and The New York Times Book Review, among other publications, and has won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Sidney Hillman Foundation, the Online News Association, the Society of Environmental Journalists, and the Association for Women in Communications. Her work has also been nominated for two National Magazine Awards for Feature Writing and has been anthologized in Best American Magazine Writing 2011, Best American Nonrequired Reading 2011, and Best Business Writing 2013.

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    • 5/5
      An amazing read. The author not only shares her deeply personal story in a brutally honest way, but she also connects her life to a larger discussion about how women are treated in the world, and how often our experiences are dismissed. She shares everything she learns with the approach of "Can you freaking believe this?" I like how honest she is about her previous conceptions of PTSD and how hard those were to shake. I think she's also very aware of her own privileges, just as a white American with a good career. An important read for everyone to better understand the emotional minefields many walk through every day.
    • 4/5
      This book is written by a woman who witnesses a brutal attack while covering a news story in Haiti. It, along with other events in her life start her long struggle to overcome PTSD which triggers alcohol abuse and the desire for abusive sex. She has done a lot of research on the topic and this book would be helpful to someone who suffers from PTSD or family members affected by this condition. Through it all she maintains the love of an understanding partner.
    • 4/5
      "No one says that unresolved trauma can kill you. If anyone did, maybe people would take it more seriously. Serious as cancer." Mac McClelland is an American journalist and author that reports on domestic and international human rights stories. She has seen and heard a lot of nasty stuff through the course of her work, but it was a particularly violent sexual incident that she personally witnessed on the streets of Haiti in 2010 that ultimately led to her diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Mac adamantly refuses to describe that Haiti incident in detail for the reader, but instead focuses her memoir on the physical and mental after effects that she has now come to realize may be with her for a lifetime. Towards the end of the book, Mac spends some time contemplating secondary traumatic stress disorder (STSD) which can affect spouses, children, and caretakers. This was an important question for Mac because she also fell in love on that fateful trip to Haiti. My question: Is it possible to exhibit minor symptoms of STSD from just reading a raw, well-researched account of someone else's PTSD? I literally had to put this book down at times when my pounding headache and racing heart made it impossible to proceed. For me, that is evidence of the strength and impact of this book.