In fact, people don't have to be the victims of trauma, just witnessing or being indirectly involved in such events, can trigger Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. Even in psychology, they're used to describe a broad range of causes and symptoms. The words trauma and traumatic, are used very loosely in everyday conversation. Hope in the form of treatments that can help people reconnect to themselves and others, and the normal rhythm of everyday life. Most importantly, this book gives us hope. Furthermore, by examining new neuroscientific research, the aim is to change how we think about trauma and how we go about treating it. Van der Kolk provides insights into his client's experiences, as well as explanations as to how trauma wires the brain, changes our capacity to think, and controls our bodies. Trauma and stress are the norms, rather than the exceptions, so it's vital to explore them. Most of us will experience some form of trauma in our lifetime, and this summary will briefly guide us through how to deal with it more effectively.

So, put simply, the body keeps the score. This has devastating consequences, not only for trauma survivors, but also for people close to them. The threat is unavoidable and overwhelming, and there’s no escape. Instead, it persuades the brain and body that the trauma will happen repeatedly and that the only way to cope is to be on constant high alert. Trauma shows no respect for our typical timeline of past, present, and future. That message was, while we may think that trauma belongs in the past, the reality is that the body remembers what the mind is trying to block out. In short, when it comes to understanding trauma, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone with more expertise in the field.įor over thirty years, his clients, who include war veterans, survivors of adult and childhood trauma, and victims of sexual abuse, kept giving him an unequivocal message. He’s also a highly acclaimed professor of psychiatry, and president of the Trauma Research Foundation. With a better idea of self-care and healing, we can avoid numerous life-threatening diseases.īessel van der Kolk is a psychiatrist who has published a whopping 150 peer-reviewed articles, and written numerous books around the subject of trauma. Van der Kolk uncovers the true cost of stress, anxiety, and trauma, and shows how the body is literally keeping score of how we're treating it.

The Body Keeps the Score, examines the need to address trauma in order to move towards the present. How many times have you ignored what your body is telling you, and how many times have you eventually realized that what it’s saying isn’t going to go away? So many things eventually catch up to us, and the body is no different.

The brain keeps the score