The Body Keeps the Score

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.