Getting Unstuck: Unraveling the Knot of Depression, Attention and Trauma

Getting Unstuck is a groundbreaking first-look at “stuckness”—the profound inability to move one’s life forward. Being stuck is a mental health problem that affects thousands of adults; and yet, it has gone unrecognized and misunderstood by mental health professionals, until now. The author, psychiatrist Don Kerson, argues that adults who are stuck are bedeviled by a complex interaction between depression, attention deficit disorder and dissociation, a consequence of childhood trauma.

People who are stuck can’t get things done, no matter how smart, skilled, articulate or creative they may be. Their personal and professional lives are often on shaky ground, and depression is a constant problem. Therapy helps, sometimes. Anti-depressants help, sometimes. But they never really feel good. They remain stuck, Kerson argues, because the problem—if recognized at all—is being treated only partially. The key to getting people unstuck is to tease apart the depression, ADD, and dissociation (or whichever of these conditions is present at any one time), and then to address each of them separately.

Kerson wrote Getting Unstuck to help people with this problem to lead more productive and satisfying lives and to share what he’s discovered with mental health professionals so they can begin to recognize the problem and offer effective treatment for it. Kerson details the successful and efficient method he developed to help his patients get their lives moving again. It includes the innovative use of neo-Ericksonian hypnotherapeutic integration exercises to address the procrastination and disorganization that plague individuals with ADD.