The Body Keeps the Score

this book was great. I think it's extremely important for everyone to read. If you have had a traumatic experience/childhood, then this book will help you understand yourself and your trauma responses. If you have never really had any traumatic experiences, then this book will help you become more sympathetic and understanding of other people.

Kolk deals with the ‘what' and the ‘why' of trauma really well. What exactly does trauma do to your brain, and why your body reacts the way it does. Without going into my own personal trauma, I can say that it's helped me become kinder to myself and my body because I now understand that all the things I might dislike about myself is simply the way my body has adapted to trauma. My body has worked its hardest to keep me alive and survive through trauma.

It has helped explain certain things about myself such as my adhd, why I find it difficult to put into words exactly what I'm feeling (alexithymia), my social anxiety, and even my sexual experiences.

Kolk also addresses the ‘how' - how to deal with trauma and the trauma induced behaviours. He does so by going through the various forms of healing trauma, from meditation & yoga to neurofeedback to acting! Although I wish he went a bit deeper into the meditation/yoga I like that he doesn't try too hard to talk about the things that are out of the scope of his experience. That being said, because his experience is more in the medical field, there are no concrete suggestions on how you can deal with trauma when you can't really go to therapy.

This book is very extensive and science based, but told through lots of anecdotes. It's a little bit too anecdotal for my personal liking but nothing too extreme. Very accessible and easy to read.

This was a tough and thought provoking book - the beginning half covers trauma and PTSD experiences and how it effects the whole bodies response and ability to think. It was hard to read about child abuse and trauma, and all the lasting impacts it can have later into life on many fronts, including incarnation and substance abuse. The second half dives into possible treatments for trauma and is really fascinating exploring how important it is to feel safe, and feel comfortable in our bodies, to process experiences and think & feel clearly. With 2020 causing disruption to so many, and our existing support systems and routines - it was really interesting to read about therapies that help people process and cope.

I absolutely loved this book. I'm sure it is going to be a reference for me for the rest of my life. One thing I didn't realize going into it was that it is such a polemical book. I thought it was mainly just educational about trauma; but no, it is a book that wants to argue with the establishment and the ideas we take for granted in mental health. It is a book of deconstruction and, hopefully, reconstruction. Or rather, more accurately, reclamation of older (and at times pre-scientific) ways of thinking about mental health and treatment. Just as one brief example, I've become accustomed to Freud being appreciated for who he was at his time, but that he has little to no bearing on our understanding of humans or treating their difficulties today. But this book gave me renewed respect and insight into Freud and how he thought about things.

It is really hard to distill all of my thoughts from such a big book that goes in so many different directions. I already had a decent understanding of trauma-informed care, adverse childhood experiences, and the role of the body in processing trauma. So, going into this book, I mainly thought I would just enjoy how he goes about explaining it to lay people in a way that captured the mainstream consciousness when it was published. I thought I would hear about some research studies and stories about trauma I had never heard, but I wouldn't necessarily learn much that was revolutionary or earth-shattering to me. Boy was I wrong.

Pretty much no aspect of mental health and treatment today is left untouched by Van der Kolk's analysis. Yet at the same time, he's not just gleefully bashing the establishments and throwing the baby out with the bath water. He really is seeking a comprehensive, nuanced, and balanced approach to treatment that is truly helpful to people, no matter what that means or where it takes him.

Van der Kolk gives voice to a lot of things a lot of us intuitively wonder or question about mental health treatment today but just shrug off because “the experts” say otherwise. Psych meds are amazing, and have changed lives, but have they really changed society? Or made us happier overall? Is it truly the case that all these other holistic, older, bodily, pre-scientific approaches have little to no merit or place in “real” psychotherapy? Does non-medication mental health treatment deserve its status as lesser and less-substantive than psychiatric care? Etc. Etc.

I walked away with a lot of takeaways, thoughts, and experiences—too much to put here in this paper. I really want to get trained in a number of the treatment modalities described, especially Internal Family Systems Therapy and EMDR. I will surely explore referring future clients to yoga and theater/improv activities. I would really love to undergo neurofeedback treatment myself. I like yoga a lot and have gone through fits and starts of doing it occasionally in my life. As I was reading this book, I even tried a long yoga session geared for PTSD. It was interesting. It was slower and gentler but still a pretty standard yoga session. I think the benefit is probably more in regularity and not one-off sessions. I also signed up through PESI for a 9-hour webinar with Van der Kolk with more up-to-date research than in the book, and was focused more on the complexities of this in treatment (i.e. very few people are only struggling with some pure form of PTSD). (By the way, I had it on in the background while at work, and it was mainly going through stuff in the book, so I didn't count more than a few hours of it for these internship hours.)

I also appreciated his critiques of policy through history and today, making it very relevant for social workers in our task of discerning what systems and policies to advocate for change in. The lack of research funding and insurance reimbursement for neurofeedback is a scandal, and just how little attention we give to ACEs in our society is a tragedy. As far as return on investment goes, challenging the systems and structures and social policies that foster ACEs seem to be one of the clearest, most efficient ways we could fundamentally reshape the spirit and health of our country.

I loved this book, but it was still a lot all at once, and I don't know that he really brings it all together at the end in a way I had hoped. I leave the book pretty overwhelmed with all these blind spots in psychotherapy and a huge number of possible, less-mainstream treatments that may be even more effective than current treatments. But once I have a client in front of me, how do I choose between EMDR, Spatial Psychomotor Therapy, Yoga, Theater, or Internal Family Systems Therapy? I was hoping for some final chapter about how we therapists shouldn't stress about all of this too much, and the specific intervention doesn't matter so much as accomplishing such-and-such specific tasks, however that most effectively can be done with a given patient.

But he did not give us that. So I'm left with both too much and not enough information and ideas, which I fear will end up meaning I just default to the way things usually go instead of staying open to the spirit of creativity and tenacity that animates this book. That's why I said in the beginning that I'll likely treat the book more as a very helpful reference or refresher book, even as I try to get more into the nitty-gritty elsewhere.

But still, this book was life-affirming and changing on several levels, and will benefit clients (and myself) for years to come.

I think that Dr. Judith Herman's quote on the front of the book is an excellent summary, and she's a giant in the field of trauma as well: “A masterpiece that combines the boundless curiosity of the scientist, the erudition of the scholar, and the passion of the truth teller.” Van Der Kolk has many strengths as a clinician and writer, including humility, a willingness to look for and test alternative hypotheses, and a refusal to put any tribal allegiance to a particular treatment above “do what works for the patient.” This book would be interesting for the non-clinician, I think, but is a must-read for any clinician who does work with trauma. For people who are far enough in their trauma recoveries to tolerate reading about those of others, this book can also be healing for them (I have several patients who have found it very helpful). The bad news is that many people are traumatized. The good news is that there is an increasingly integrative body of knowledge on how to holistically treat them.

I purchased this book a while back, and it sat on my shelf for some time, calling me, while I ignored it.

I was afraid.

Afraid that this book would tell me that my 18-month tenure of cancer treatment was just the beginning; that I'd be sentenced to further lifelong trauma and a ripple effect of ways my body would attempt to betray me.

This book did none of that.

This book should be required reading for, well, anyone, but especially teachers, social workers, healthcare professionals, school board members, politicians, billionaires...

It's maddening at just how little support Dr Van Der Kolk was able to receive, especially when it comes to diagnostic aids such as the DSM. Too often we prescribe medication as an attempt at treatment when it's really just a terrible band aid.

Reading about the alternative approaches to PTSD like EMDR, neurofeedback, yoga, and theatre (yes, really!) has helped open my worldview on ways we can all work through trauma.

Fair warning: This book was one of the best books I've ever read on trauma. However, it can also be incredibly triggering and potentially detrimental if read during a time that you may not be able to process some of the content in a productive way. I really liked it, but it also set my mental health progress back quite a bit for a little while due to its triggering nature. Just wanted to add this note so those who might want to read it can consider if it is a good time and if they are in a good place to read it. :)

I don't know how to rate this so I'm just not going to. I found parts of this to be interesting and helped me understand a little bit more about specific trauma thingies - the concepts behind Internal Family Systems, the disconnect in the body of traumatized people between feelings and emotions, etc- but other parts just made me feel so icky.

He often talks about how attractive his patients are and it can feel like he bends over backward to feel extra empathic for people who have confessed to doing horrible things like murder and child rape. (Not that traumatized people who end up doing horrible things don't deserve compassion - we all do - but he walks a line between compassion for them and absolving them of all responsibility for their actions in a way that made me very uncomfortable!)

Anyway, I can also see how folks say this is a better book for clinicians than traumatized people/survivors and I think that makes sense. I found Stephanie Foo's What My Bones Know to be way more impactful and enlightening than this one even while finding some passages interesting and helpful.

I really liked this book. It was pretty difficult to push through on an emotional level & yet still enlightening. There is a lot of anecdotal discussion that is interesting/captivating. I found that the biggest value of reading this was definitely being fully convinced that the title is indeed the truth – the body remembers everything in a very painful and intriguing way, and I believe that having this insight can shed light for numerous people who are knowingly or unknowingly coping with trauma.

I wish that there was more discussion of the nuance of trauma throughout the book. Many times the author noted how common trauma is across the population, but there was a lack of exploration of the various degrees; the examples seemed to be lumped into categories without much room for recognizing the individuality of everyone's experiences. This did not take away from the value I mentioned above but could've made it more meaningful for a lot more people.

A really interesting, informative and well written book which I know I will return to in the future. I think some people may have come to it expecting a self-help manual - and while there are things that you could take from it to work on, that's not what it's about. It's an introduction to trauma care for the lay person. A starting point for those who have some interest but it doesn't require too much knowledge.

Short Review: This is a good introduction to the concept and treatment of various types of trauma. Roughly the first 200 pages introduces the evolution of the understanding of trauma over the past 30-40 years, mostly through tracing Dr van der Kolk's career and research interests. And roughly the last 200 pages explore the treatment of trauma and research basis of that treatment. I think as an introduction the first 200 pages is the most important if you are only willing to read 200 pages. But even as a non-medical lay person the last half is still quite readable.

It can be a difficult book to read because so much of the trauma needs to be described to be explained. But I think this is helpful and important, especially for those like teachers or pastors that work with a variety of people that may have trauma in their background.

My nearly 1000 word review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/body-keeps-score/

My honest rating would be 3.5 stars. I like that this book goes in depth about how trauna affects the body and mind especially if they suffered from child abuse and neglect along with being a war veteran. I also appreciated that they went in depth about different treatments to treat PTSD and the history of PTSD in the DSM.

I would've liked to see how other traumatic events can affect whether someone would develop PTSD and how people with disabilities are at increased risk of developing PTSD. I think that religious trauma, racial trauma, and medical trauma should've been explored here too.

Otherwise, I liked learning about trauma more in depth here.