⚡️30 Second Summary:
The Body Keeps the Score, by renowned psychiatrist and trauma expert Bessel van der Kolk, is an invaluable resource that delves deep into the impact of psychological trauma on individuals, their families, and the world around them. Van der Kolk masterfully explains the neuroscience of trauma and provides effective treatments, such as eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), yoga, and limbic system therapy. With 30+ years of experience in the mental health field, van der Kolk shares his career and patient stories, offering a comprehensive perspective.
“finding words where words were absent before and, as a result, being able to share your deepest pain and deepest feelings with another human being. This is one of most profound experiences we can have, and such resonance, in which hitherto unspoken words can be discovered, uttered, and received, is fundamental to healing the isolation of trauma-especially if other people in our lives have ignored or silenced us. Communicating fully is the opposite of being traumatized.“
👤 Who Should Read It:
Everyone interested in the fields of psychology of trauma, emotional regulation, and mental health should read this book. It provides valuable insight into the complexities of these topics and offers practical strategies for managing them. The book is well-written and easy to understand, with a wide range of examples that help to have a better grasp of particular aspects of trauma.
💭 How The Book Affected Me:
I first heard about this book on a Tim Ferriss show episode, and it was highly recommended, so I decided to read it. This book has been an incredible resource for me on my journey to understanding trauma and the deep-seated effects of our early years on our attachment styles and emotional wellbeing. It has shown me how to recognize potential trauma triggers in both myself and those around me, as well as providing valuable insight on how to be aware of these triggers and use effective strategies to address them. My eyes have been opened to the complex ways in which trauma can manifest itself, and I now have the knowledge to make better, conscious decisions regarding these issues.
Book Notes and Highlights
💊 Antidepressants Disrupted Mental Health Support
Van der Kolk argues that our over-reliance on antidepressants has caused us to overlook the importance of other components of mental health support such as the power of healing one another, language to alter our circumstances, techniques to control our physiology, and the need to modify social conditions for people to feel secure and thrive.
🚨 A Renewed Paradigm of Trauma
His research has been instrumental in reviving the concept of trauma, which was first identified by Pierre Janet in the late 1800s. Van der Kolk’s work with veterans and survivors of incest revealed how trauma can distort the brain’s perception of reality, and his research has extended to a wider range of individuals, showing that trauma can arise from any experience of extreme stress or pain that leaves the person feeling powerless.
🫂 Trauma Influences Relationships
He discusses the impact of trauma on individuals, such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), depression, and substance abuse, and how it can lead to distrust of others. He also shares an example of how he had to build rapport with a group of war veterans over weeks of listening, empathizing, and building trust in order to gain their trust, as trauma is often caused by trusted people in the first place.
“A secure attachment combined with the cultivation of competency builds an internal locus of control, the key factor in healthy coping throughout life. (…)The need for attachment never lessens. Most human beings simply cannot tolerate being disengaged from others for any length of time. People who cannot connect through work, friendships, or family usually find other ways of bonding, as through illnesses, lawsuits, or family feuds. Anything is preferable to that godforsaken sense of irrelevance and alienation.“
🔼 Take Action
Trauma can cause us to feel hopeless and stuck. To heal, it is important to take action and create a sense of safety. This helps turn off the body’s “fight or flight” response, which is when the body releases stress hormones. These hormones can stop the brain from making decisions. To heal, it is important to use therapies that help the brain process emotions (“bottom-up”) and also help the brain better control our body’s reactions (“top-down”). Examples of these therapies include mindfulness meditation, yoga, breathing, movement, and touch techniques
🧘♀️ How Different Therapies Approaches Can Help Treat Trauma
Van der Kolk explains how the brain’s health and adaptive responses to stressors are essential for action, but when stress is overwhelming, such as with traumatic events, it can block the body’s adaptive response.
Therapy for traumatized individuals should employ both top-down and bottom-up techniques, such as mindfulness, yoga, breathing, movement, and touch approaches. Dissociation is the core of trauma, so therapists should: Help clients reconnect with their sense of self through mindfulness; Draw out blocked sensory information and assist clients in befriending, rather than suppressing, their bodily responses, thereby completing self-preserving physical actions that were thwarted by terror. Guide clients through imagination, as the brain cannot differentiate between real life and imagination.
EMDR therapy helps the traumatized person process information adaptively, allowing them to move forward.
Your body and mind have a close relationship, and trauma can make it difficult to understand and manage this interconnection. To cope, many traumatized individuals will turn to things that numb their feelings. An alternative that can help you get in touch with your emotions is yoga. According to Van der Kolk, many of his patients have successfully encouraged signals about their emotional state by using yoga. Yoga allows traumatized individuals to adopt vulnerable positions within a safe environment.
“As Sebern explained, feedback provides the brain with a mirror of its own function: the oscillations and rhythms that underpin the currents and crosscurrents of the mind. Neurofeedback nudges the brain to make more of some frequencies and less of others, creating new patterns that enhance its natural complexity and its bias toward self-regulation.* “In effect, she told me, “we may be freeing up innate but stuck oscillatory properties in the brain and allowing new ones to develop.”
📑 Final Review
The Body Keeps the Score is an excellent book. It has a comprehensive understanding of trauma and years of experience to back it up. Even though there is some repetition of examples and the scientific and historical research context can make it a bit more challenging to read, I still highly recommend it.