to be loved: a story of truth, trauma, and transformation

＂This lucid and wonderful book provides the reader with a compelling autobiographical account of the intricate life journey of a prominent trauma therapist and his courageous road to healing. Frank Anderson gently shows how his life’s work has its roots in his own history--his troubled upbringing, the relatively late emergence of his sexual identity (that clearly led to a vastly heightened capacity for intimacy), and the courageous transition to raising two sons in a two-male-parent household. A passionate, courageous, and inspiring work.＂

--Bessel van der Kolk, MD, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Body Keeps the Score

＂A harrowingly self-revealing and tenderly self-loving memoir of trauma and transformation, by my colleague, respected psychiatrist, therapist, and teacher, Dr. Frank Anderson.＂

--Gabor Maté, MD, author of the instant New York Times bestseller, The Myth of Normal

＂Leading trauma expert Frank Anderson gifts us with an intimate and vulnerable glimpse into his personal journey of self-discovery to overcome his own childhood trauma. To Be Loved is a beautifully written and empowering story of resilience, healing, and forgiveness that offers hope for all survivors of childhood trauma.＂

-Nicole LePera, PhD, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller How to Be the Love You Seek and How to Do the Work

＂To Be Loved captures the precious fragility of a childhood impacted in equal measure by authentic love and deep dysfunction. Filled with humor, empathy, and candid self-reflection, Frank’s story demonstrates the power of love to heal trauma, develop resilience, and ultimately find forgiveness and restoration.＂

-Lori Gottlieb, New York Times bestselling author, TED speaker, co-host of the popular Dear Therapists podcast, and Dear Therapist columnist for The Atlantic

Rarely does a trauma therapist disclose their own trauma history . . . yet it’s the untold, brutally honest, incredibly heartbreaking story of Dr. Frank Anderson that made him the world-renowned trauma expert he is today.

Known for his magnetic and radiant personality, Frank spends his time training thousands of clinicians around the world on how to help clients with complex trauma make sense of their suffering. But underneath this charismatic exterior are his dark family secrets, including the marks of child abuse from his father and the invisible scars of shame.

His colleagues and fellow therapists would never know this . . . until now.

In To Be Loved, Frank shares his confusing experience of growing up an outsider in a typical midwestern Italian American home that was at one turn fiercely loving but at the same time unaccepting, abusive, and rife with secrets.

After enduring six years of therapy as a child in the 1970s, he was programmed to be something that he wasn’t for decades, and became driven to create the perfect life--complete with a family, a successful career and a house with white picket fence in the suburbs--until it all fell apart.

It was only then that he realized resilience, forgiveness and facing his trauma were the keys to living an authentic life--and finally knowing what it feels like to be loved.

Dr. Frank G. Anderson, MD is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist who specializes in understanding and treating the effects of trauma. A longtime associate of Bessel van der Kolk’s groundbreaking Trauma Research Center and Dick Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems Institute, Frank is the author of two best-selling guides to trauma recovery and maintains a private practice in Concord, MA. Frank believes that traumatic events can have lasting effects on the well-being and life of an individual, and a better understanding these events can help lead people down pathways of healing. He lives in the Boston area of Massachusetts.