Written Work
Books | Articles & Chapters | Blog
Books
Second edition published as Trauma Therapy and Clinical Practice: Considerations on Neuroscience, Gestalt and the Body. Available now.
"A superb book, with original and ground-breaking thinking" (Private communication). "Richly informative and thought provoking, with a new emphasis on context and cultural sensitivity" (Personal Communication)
Deepening Trauma Practice: A Gestalt Approach to Ecology and Ethics, 2021, London, Open University Press. "A tour de force".
Trauma Therapy and Clinical Practice: Neuroscience, Gestalt and the Body, Open University Press, published in March 2014.
"Miriam Taylor's [first book] is a major contribution to Gestalt therapy's growing catalogue of clinical literature... A clinically sound, theoretically grounded, and highly practical guide to working with victims of trauma... [the] presentation of the Window of Tolerance and the Integrative Model of Change are clinical gems", Peter Cole, Gestalt Review, Vol 20, No 1, 2016.
Both French and Italian translations of my first book are available.
Articles & Chapters
Article: On Safe Ground: Using Sensorimotor Methods in Trauma Work, 2013, British Gestalt Journal, 22:2 (5-13) (download PDF)
Chapter: Undoing the Splits: A Relational Field Perspective on Trauma in The Aesthetic of Otherness: Meeting at the boundary in a desensitsed world 2018, Bloom, D.; Djoric, D.;.Roubal, J.; Cannavo, M.; La FRosa, R.; Tosi, S.; Pinna, V.; (eds).
Co-Authored article with Vienna Duff: 2018, Reorganising the Traumatised Relational Field: The Well Grounded Therapist; British Gestalt Journal, Vol. 28, No2 (download PDF)
Article: In the Face of Trauma: Ethics, Relationship and the Possibility of Presence, 2019, Gestalt Review, Vol. 23, No.3, 261-276 (download PDF)
Article: Collective Trauma and the Relational Field, 2020, The Humanistic Psychologist, 8(4): 382-388, American Psychological Association
Article: On Being Essentially Nosey was published in French translation in La lettre de recherche en Gestalt-therapy by the Commission Mixte Recherche in April 2015
Article Reconnecting after Trauma: From the personal to the political translated into Norwegian for: Gestalt, the magazine of the Norsk Gestalttherapeut Forening Vol 1:1 2017
Article: Developing a Trauma Mindset translated into French in Journal de Psychologues, No 359, July 2018
Article: The Ecological Self: Narratives for Changing Times, British Gestalt Journal, Vol 32.1, 39-48, 2023 (download PDF)
Blog
4th Feb 2026
Fairy Tales and Reality
E and T and A and G and M and F. The individuals named in the recently released Epstein Files read like a disordered alphabet, papers flung out from a locked cabinet, not landing, not landing, not landing.
I am not okay. Like millions upon millions of women and men abused as children, the content of the Epstein files has scratched at old wounds and made them bleed. My heart bleeds for the people I have been honoured to work with who have more than a little in common with the Epstein survivors; how are they faring just now, I wonder? I've been privileged to have had the conditions to learn how to manage this, and to continue to work in this field for over 30 years. I thought I had heard everything - some of the things that have been disclosed in recent days happened to me when I was very small - but nothing prepared me either for the scale of this or for the documents I have not been able to face reading. This is completely new to me, and I simply don't have the words to convey my revulsion, rage and shock. As a trauma practitioner with lived experience who has been immersed in understanding, teaching and writing about the machinery of power and oppression, I cannot comprehend the scale on which our society seems to have been built on the abuse of children. Regardless of healing, the long shadow of trauma is undoing us. Humanity is being undone. It's going to take quite some time to reckon with this. I will be okay.
And yet, the naming of it brings relief. My own moments of awakening came with a clarity 'Oh, so that's what happened, now it makes sense.' Secrecy fuels abuse and horrific though it is, it cannot begin to be reckoned with while it continues to do its harm in the dark. If we sweep these things under the carpet we only persist in walking on bumpy ground; they will run the show anyway as we are witnessing. Needless to say there is a deep split between those who can see and are feeling the hurt, and those who question, deny, minimise, deflect, protect. There is an irreconcilable compulsion to know about deep trauma and an imperative to not know. 'This is too horrific to process' quickly becomes 'It isn't real'. Just another fairy tale, a trick of the imagination. It's easy to understand why it feels better not to look. I wish, I wish, I wish I didn't know.
I have spoken often about the need to build capacity to endure the reality of trauma without dissociating. While I mainly address that to therapists, it applies universally. This is how we are wired to cope with terrible things which are beyond comprehension. Once the magic kiss has brought you to your senses, it is harder to return to that dream state. I can't offer a recipe for building capacity, but it is may experience - and the theory bears this out - that learning to face reality, both the good and the bad, in incremental stages helps to build that ground. That's why this present deluge of shocking information is so instantly overwhelming and destabilising. It takes all that we humanly are to continue to meet this. We must gather layers of protection around us, with the understanding that what hurts doesn't necessarily do us harm. Now, it is not for me to tell you what to do. Turn away if you must, to the extent that you have to. Listen tenderly to your body, to your nervous system and let it guide you.
A famous poem by Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh is titled Call Me By My True Names. Wake up and look, the emperor really does have no clothes. With a childlike immediacy - what's right here, right now, right in front of you? Wake up! We are living through a crisis of consciousness; arguably it is also a crisis of morality. Sadly, it is my belief that if something exists in imagination, it will likely exist in reality. There are people who are unable to distinguish between fantasy and reality and act accordingly. Giving something its true name matters because important shifts become possible. Shifting from blame to accountability; shifting identity from victim to claiming full humanity; shifting the alienation of silence to building community; shifting the seemingly personal to the systemic. And here's the rub - when I can for just a moment stop believing in fairy tales to face down reality, separating my suffering from that of others, I develop more capacity for compassion, and I am - almost - okay.
© Copyright 2026 Miriam Taylor.