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The Body Keeps the Score summary

Name: The Body Keeps the Score
Rating: 4.5 (857 reviews)
Author: Bessel van der Kolk

Bessel van der Kolk

Mind, Brain and the Body in the Transformation of Trauma

4.5 (857 ratings)

18 mins

Brief summary

The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk is an insightful exploration of trauma, its effects on the body and mind, and various healing techniques.

Topics

The Body Trauma & Healing Mental Health

Table of Contents

The Body Keeps the Score
Summary of 8 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 8

What’s in it for me? Learn how trauma affects your body and mind.

We’re all familiar with stories of traumatized war veterans who have experienced cruelty and pain, who have killed other people during combat or who have witnessed the death of a fellow soldier. Often, traumatized soldiers cannot find their way back into society. They struggle with their memories, develop hypersensitive reactions and become strangers to themselves and their loved ones.

What happens in the body and mind of people who have experienced trauma? And why is it so difficult to find relief from it?

In these blinks, you’ll learn why traumatic experiences haunt us. You’ll learn how trauma patients perceive their environment. Finally, you’ll learn why there’s hope for traumatized people and how trauma can be healed.

You’ll also find out

why war veterans only trust other war veterans;
why an ordinary picture in a magazine can trigger horrifying thoughts; and
how yoga relieves trauma patients of their pain.

Trauma is incredibly common in our society.

Trauma isn’t just something faced by war veterans – it’s far more prevalent in our society than we realize. The truth is that trauma can happen to anyone, and it’s time we found out what this really means.

Traumas result from an experience of extreme stress or pain that leaves an individual feeling helpless, or too overwhelmed, to cope with adversity. Experiences involving war typically result in traumas, but violent crimes and accidents cause them too.

Rape and child abuse are terrible events, and they are also unfortunately more common than you might think. Reports reveal that 12 million women were victims of rape in the United States in 2014 alone, and that more than 50 percent of those women were under the age of 15 at the time of the assault. Every year in the United States, there are 3 million cases of child abuse.

These traumatic experiences can change the lives of those affected, as well as the lives of their friends and family. Traumatized people often suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which can lead to depression and substance abuse.

In addition, traumatized people tend to mistrust anyone who hasn’t experienced the same suffering they have, and assume that nobody can understand them. This was illustrated in one of the therapy groups the author set up for Vietnam veterans.

While the group helped the veterans find friends and share their experiences, those who weren’t traumatized by the war were considered outsiders by the group – including the author. It took weeks of listening, empathizing and building trust with the veterans for them to accept him.

Establishing a rapport with someone suffering from PTSD is a challenge on its own, so just imagine trying to maintain a marriage, a close friendship or a stable parent-child relationship. Traumatized people find it difficult to trust even those who love them most, including partners and kids. This can be very tough on friends and families, often leading to estrangement or divorce.

Flashbacks cause people to relive the mental and physical experience of trauma when they’re reminded of it.

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.

Childhood trauma has negative impacts, not just in a person’s youth but well into adulthood, too.

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.

While normal memories fade and change, traumatic memories are vivid, unchanging and easily triggered.

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.

EMDR allows patients to integrate their memories and restores a sense of agency over their mind and body.

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.

Yoga offers trauma sufferers a safe way to explore the relationship between their body and mind.

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 and supportive relationships are essential to trauma recovery.

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.

Neurofeedback helps trauma sufferers rewire their brains.

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.

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What is The Body Keeps the Score about?

The Body Keeps the Score (2014) explains what trauma is and how it can change our lives for the worse. These blinks investigate the wide-ranging effects experienced not only by traumatized people, but also those around them. Nevertheless, while trauma presents a number of challenges, there are ways to heal.

The Body Keeps the Score Review

The Body Keeps The Score (2014) is a groundbreaking book on understanding and healing trauma. This important work stands out for its:

Comprehensive overview of trauma's impact on the body, brain, and emotions.
In-depth discussion of various therapeutic approaches, from traditional to alternative methods.
Empowering message that promotes resilience and recovery for trauma survivors.

Learn about the science of trauma and the path to healing by reading The Body Keeps The Score.

Best quote from The Body Keeps the Score

People who have not shared the traumatic experience cannot be trusted, because they cant understand it.

—Bessel van der Kolk

Who should read The Body Keeps the Score?

People struggling with chronic pain, anxiety or depression
Family and friends of PTSD sufferers
Students of psychology and medicine

About the Author

Bessel van der Kolk, MD, is a physician, researcher and teacher specializing in post-traumatic stress. His other books include Psychological Trauma and Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society. Van der Kolk is a professor of psychiatry at the Boston University School of Medicine and directed the Trauma Center at Justice Resource Institute.

Categories with The Body Keeps the Score

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