The Trusting Heart: Addiction, Recovery, & Intergenerational Trauma
“Aanavi’s story takes us into the belly of the beast in an exploration of the soul’s wounding and stands eye-to-eye with the demons in an honest attempt to make a different relationship with these entities. Dr. Aanavi hones in on the entity of heroin, which is the one spirit visitor that has given him the gift of insight during this lifetime.”

–From the foreword by Dr. Eduardo Duran, author of Healing the Soul Wound and Native American Postcolonial Psychology

Carl Jung spoke of pistis, the trusting heart. He said that this fundamental capacity for trust is the precursor to faith, and that without this essential quality, faith in something greater, faith in one’s own process, faith in the wholeness of the psyche is impossible. For the author of this book, pistis involves the ability to trust one’s own subjectivity, one’s felt sense, regardless of whether it jibes with what is externally acceptable or valid, regardless of the outcome.

In The Trusting Heart, Dr. Aanavi writes about his experience over the past twenty-plus years, both as a person in recovery and as a clinician. The book is about his exploration, his process, and his commitment to both the profoundly personal and the remarkably vast. It is about telling the stories of one’s experience and committing to the integrity of one’s felt truth, and to following one’s energetic thread wherever it might lead.

The Trusting Heart is available in trade paperback and ebook formats from Chiron Publications.

Praise for the book
Stanley Krippner, PhD
Professor of Psychology, Saybrook Institute
Co-author, Personal Mythology and Haunted by Combat
There is a plethora of first-person accounts describing substance addiction but The Trusting Heart is one-of-a-kind because Michael Aanavi takes his reader on an unforgettable journey into his own psyche as well as his ethnic and familial milieu. This book has a range that is both broad and deep, both philosophical and intimate, encompassing ancestral trauma, Jewish cuisine, teenage drug dealing, somatic experiencing, and mindfulness meditation. It is a coming of age story that brilliantly evokes how the author succumbed to the opiate embrace but eventually awakened to recovery.

Lorie Eve Dechar, MAc
Author – Five Spirits: Alchemical Acupuncture for Psychological and Spiritual Healing
The Trusting Heart is a courageous and uncompromising book that brings together the author’s story of recovery from addiction and intergenerational trauma and his clinical expertise as a psychotherapist and acupuncturist. Integrating the wisdom of Taoism, archetypal psychology and his own embodied experiences, Aanavi reframes the recovery process from a life-long letting go of destructive habits to a radical opportunity for spiritual transformation. This is a must read for anyone working personally or professionally with addiction who is ready to go beyond the limitations of current therapeutic models and is not afraid to face addiction’s underlying longing: the reclaiming of authentic nature and a vital, meaningful encounter with the Self.

Steven Hickman, PsyD
Founding Director, UCSD Center for Mindfulness
The Trusting Heart is a richly-textured and multi-layered exploration of the intimate personal healing journey of the author. Michael Aanavi finds a way to connect the acutely intra-personal nightmare of trauma and addiction to the universal embrace of the transpersonal and the legacy of the multi-generational, encompassing a fascinating blend of traditional Chinese medicine, Jung, pop culture and philosophy from all corners of the planet in between. Life is never neatly tucked into a singular model or a tidy theory, and Aanavi has managed to acknowledge that while keeping the story, his story, engaging, intriguing and reverential to the awesome power of human healing and trans-traumatic growth. This is truly a gift to all who suffer, that is to each of us in our own way.

Benjamin R. Tong, PhD
Professor of Clinical Psychology, California Institute of Integral Studies
Against the backdrop of a relentless appraisal of the underpinnings of addiction and trauma, Dr. Aanavi narrates a subtle personal memoir that thrusts dead to center at the reader, offering compelling insights into the process of recovery.