Book review: The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel A. Van der Kolk

Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

This book is divided into five parts: The origins of trauma, The body’s response to trauma, The effects of childhood trauma, The way trauma affects memory, and Methods for healing trauma. It begins with statistics on why the author considers trauma an epidemic.

The author goes into the exponentially increasing prescriptions for antidepressants and antipsychotics and ponders if it is due to adaptation or disease. He believes the brain-disease model ignores four truths:

1. Healthy relationships and community are essential for well-being
2. The path to meaning is through language
3. We can regulate our physiology through breathing, movement, and touch
4. We can create safe environments

The author states that if we make adjustments in treatment that respect these four truths, improvements in mental health are a lot better. The book continues by looking inside the brain and its physical changes in response to trauma or the anatomy of survival. In promoting survival, the brain needs to generate internal signals of physiological needs, create a map of the world to direct us where to satisfy our needs, generate the actions necessary to strive for our needs, warn us of threats, and adjust our actions based on the requirements of the moment. The author states that problems develop when these things are inhibited.

In the body-brain connection part of this book, the author goes into lost connection with the body due to things like trauma or molestation and how the person resorts to other means to self-care such as promiscuity, drugs, alcohol, eating disorders, and cutting which show significant disconnection from the body. Healing trauma requires the integrations of sensory experience in order to be able to comfortably live with the natural flow of feelings. Agency, which is the feeling of being in charge, is necessary to heal. Integrating traumatic memories, cognitive behavioral therapy, and desensitization are explored.

In the role of language and trauma the author goes into the process of self-discovery, yourself versus your story, writing to yourself, art, music and dance, the limits of language, dealing with reality and becoming some body that interprets the present without the filters of the past. The part I enjoyed the most is the yoga therapy by numbing the within. Also good was the psychomotor therapy where we go about restructuring inner maps and revising the past to rescript our lives.

At the end of the day, we’re all trying to survive. If we find ourselves in situations where we are unable to escape threats, our bodies tend to develop a physiological imprint, in order to protect us going forward. While it means well, it is detrimental to our normal functioning and social engagement. Trauma treatment is all about taming the physiological imprint but factors like memory, reenactments, dissociation, etc., serve as obstacles in our way. With diligent awareness and patience, we can help others and ourselves live more bearable lives.

Until my next post, why not check out my YA novels about mental illness, memoir writing, novel in verse, or even my Native American mystery series on Amazon, or follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Goodreads, LinkedIn, Bookbub , BookSprout, or AllAuthor.