The Body Keeps the Score summary

Do you ever remember something embarrassing you did and feel yourself squirm or blush? Then you’ve got a tiny insight into how memories of trauma can impact the body.

When a PTSD sufferer is reminded of their trauma, their body and brain enter a high-stress mode, since they experience the memory as if it were real. This is called a flashback, an impact of trauma that the author studied in an experiment he carried out with his patients.

Traumatic experiences are hard enough to deal with as an adult, but there is nothing more difficult than facing trauma as a young child. With brains that aren’t even fully developed, children who undergo a trauma are at greater risk to experience a wide range of negative consequences. These consequences surface in the years immediately following their experiences and later in adulthood.

Traumatized children often expect bad things to happen. The author demonstrated this in an experiment in which cards with pictures from magazines were shown to children who had experienced trauma, and to those who hadn’t.

When we tell stories, we tend to embellish, exaggerate or omit parts of our experiences. By the fifth time you’ve told a story, chances are it’ll be quite different from the first version. We even remember things differently over time. Why is this?

In general, we don’t tend to memorize the sensory details of events. Most of us remember what we did or how we felt in general, but don’t store vivid memories about the smell of the room we were in or the exact details of someone’s face. But it’s a different story when it comes to traumatic memories – we remember these situations vividly, and the memories don’t change over time.

It may sound simple, but one of the most effective techniques the author uses involves only a finger moving back and forth across a patient’s field of vision. While the patient follows the finger with their eyes, they’re guided through a traumatic memory and encouraged to make new associations along the way.

This technique is known as EMDR, or eye movement desensitization and reprocessing.

Our body and mind share a close relationship. In order to live a balanced, stable life, we need to understand how our emotions work, and how they impact our bodies. Unfortunately, trauma can make this very difficult.

Trauma often leaves people with a hypersensitive alarm system in their bodies. Those who suffered sexual abuse as children, for example, find that they experience crippling panic in harmless situations, such as cuddling with their partner.

Mindfulness is a pretty trendy concept right now, but it’s not just a fad – it’s an incredibly effective lifestyle choice. It also constitutes a powerful tool for trauma recovery, but how does it work?

Mindfulness is all about maintaining a conscious awareness of your body and your emotions, rather than denying them. This is especially tough after trauma, as painful memories cause us to repress our emotions rather than address them.

Did you know that electrical signals are responsible for just about everything that goes on in your brain? These brain waves govern our thought processes, so they’re quite important. Unfortunately, they can also be damaged by trauma. Let’s find out how.

There are many different types of brain waves, one of these being alpha waves, which are triggered when we feel calm and relaxed. A recent study at the University of Adelaide in Australia examined soldiers who served in Iraq or Afghanistan, and revealed that the longer they spent in the war zone, the fewer alpha waves their brains produced. Instead, soldiers produced brain waves similar to those of children diagnosed with ADHD, hampering their ability to relax, stay calm and focus.