Elizabeth A. Stanley, PhD

Meet Liz

Resilience can be learned.


A pioneering researcher gives us a new understanding of stress and trauma, as well as the tools to heal and thrive.

This groundbreaking book examines the cultural norms that impede resilience in America, especially our collective tendency to disconnect stress from its consequences and override our need to recover. It explains why an event that’s stressful for one person can be traumatizing for another. Most importantly, it explores how recovery and resilience can be learned.

With stories from the men and women she’s trained, as well as her own striking experiences with stress and trauma, Liz gives readers hands-on strategies they can use themselves—whether they want to perform under pressure or heal from traumatic experience—while pointing our understanding in a new direction.

What People Are Saying


This book should be read by all national security professionals desiring a sustainable, productive career in a high-octane environment…. Rarely does a book come along that is readable, yet grounded in scientific research, that has the ability to literally change lives.”

Tammy Schultz, Ph.D., review in War on the Rocks

Widen the Window is a comprehensive overview of stress and trauma, responses to it, and tools for healing and thriving. It’s not only for those in high-intensity work, but for everyone.”

Mindful Magazine

“I don’t think I have ever read a book that paints such a complex and accurate landscape of what it is like to live with the legacy of trauma as this book does, while offering a comprehensive approach to healing that is simultaneously based on both on the author’s own personal experiences and journey into health, as well as on a thorough scientific understanding of the underlying issues about the ways that mind, brain, and body are affected by traumatic stress.”

Bessel van der Kolk, MD, author of The Body Keeps the Score

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