Publisher’s Thoughts:
The Body Keeps the Score is the inspiring story of how a group of therapists and scientists— together with their courageous and memorable patients—has struggled to integrate recent advances in brain science, attachment research, and body awareness into treatments that can free trauma survivors from the tyranny of the past. These new paths to recovery activate the brain’s natural neuroplasticity to rewire disturbed functioning and rebuild step by step the ability to “know what you know and feel what you feel.” They also offer experiences that directly counteract the helplessness and invisibility associated with trauma, enabling both adults and children to reclaim ownership of their bodies and their lives.
Drawing on more than thirty years at the forefront of research and clinical practice, Bessel van der Kolk shows that the terror and isolation at the core of trauma literally reshape both brain and body. New insights into our survival instincts explain why traumatized people experience incomprehensible anxiety and numbing and intolerable rage, and how trauma affects their capacity to concentrate, to remember, to form trusting relationships, and even to feel at home in their own bodies. Having lost the sense of control of themselves and frustrated by failed therapies, they often fear that they are damaged beyond repair.
What distinguishes THE BODY KEEPS THE SCORE is that the author is both a scientific researcher with a long history of measuring the effect of trauma on brain function, memory, and treatment outcomes, and an active therapist who keeps learning from his patients what benefits them most. This makes for deeply personal, analytic, and highly readable (not to mention incredibly moving) approach to the topic of trauma recovery.
The title underscores the book’s central idea: Exposure the abuse and violence fosters the development of a hyperactive alarm system and molds a body that gets stuck in fight/flight, and freeze. Trauma interferes with the brain circuits that involve focusing, flexibility, and being able to stay in emotional control. A constant sense of danger and helplessness promotes the continuous secretion of stress hormones, which wreaks havoc with the immune system and the functioning of the body’s organs. Only making it safe for trauma victims to inhabit their bodies, and to tolerate feeling what they feel, and knowing what they know, can lead to lasting healing. This may involve a range of therapeutic interventions (one size never fits all), including various forms of trauma processing, neurofeedback, theater, meditation, play, and yoga.
Readers will come away from this book with awe at human resilience and at the power of our relationships—whether in the intimacy of home or in our wider communities—to both hurt and heal.
Staff Thoughts:
The Body Keeps the Score was recommended to me last year by several different people in a relatively short amount of time, which is interesting considering it was published back in 2014. It turned out to be a fascinating read and would surely interest anyone who is curious about psychology, mental health, neuroscience, trauma, and healing.
The book is packed with information and the author weaves in the story of how Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was first identified and studied, and how our understanding of it has changed over time. He also shares many case studies and his own gradual journey of understanding how trauma affects the whole person (along with the profession’s journey as a whole). Though the book is filled to the brim with information, it reads easily thanks to the author’s narrative format. It is interspersed with bits of humor, pain, humbling mistakes, and a variety of interesting studies.
The Body Keeps the Score has helped to bring about the current focus on trauma-informed care, and the author himself has contributed greatly to research in different treatment modalities. His focus is on integrating the body – via movement, exercise, dancing, yoga and more – into therapy, and allowing individuals who have suffered trauma to physically as well as emotionally work through their issues. Bringing about awareness of one’s physical reactions to the emotions caused by trauma and finding your own power and strength through movement and connectedness to the body is perhaps the single strongest message I took away from this book. I would highly recommend it for anyone dealing with a loved one’s (or their own) trauma.
