The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk

This book appears to be in between a trade book and a pop-science book, which makes it quite accessible imo and also interesting to read further on some of the topics. From the reviews I saw beforehand I’m aware there are some bits that verged on the woo-woo, but I’ll also acknowledge that this is research from at least 10 years ago. And it’s been more than that much time since I myself sat in a psyc-101 class. Some reviews also mention this book doesn’t offer a perspective on the socio-economic perspective on how trauma forms and perpecuates, but I actually think it made some pretty good points on that front.

The opening chapters were tough for me - I do agree with some reviews that he showed less sympathy for victims of war (women, children) then those that committed those crimes and suffered later. But the veterans are his patients and not the poor women in vietnam - so I guess one’s perspective is always limited. Some descriptions of the traumatic events in the book did make it hard for me to read. I took a pretty long break in between some chapters when they brought up too many bad memories. So read at your own pace.

Since the central thesis of the book is that trauma is not only a mental process, but also physical changes in the body - the treatments discussed focus on combining talk therapy with something else:

• body-based - e.g. yoga, breathing exercises, etc. I’ve been personally expermenting with some breathing techniques, and they do have an effect. But I need much more practice to remember using them when I actually need them the most.
• theatre - to play other characters seems to help one confront and process ones’ own trauma
• Internal Family Systems (IFS) - by treating different parts of the “self” as different members of a family, each with their own needs and wants, you can address internal conflicts
• Eye Movement Desnsitisation and Reprecessing (EMDR) - this bit souded a bit too magical to me. Basically by moving your eyes back and forth in some way, it helps the brain to process traumatic stuff. I’m curious if this is something I can try out when I’m taking a walk by the canals.
• neuralfeedback - this is another magical one. Out of curiousity I searched for practices in my area that offer this as a service, and it turns out there’s a lot of them! Apparently it’s also a pretty popular brain-hacking activity, with portable devices you can use at your own home. Many of them advertise “producitvity gain” or “better focus” or whatever modern life aspires to. But I think I’m not adventourous enough (yet) to mess with my brain waves. Side note, I do think van der Kolk made a good point about the chemial vs physical processes which the brain relies on for its functions - there’s an overwhelming focus on using pharmaceuticals to fix people, but research in using physical properties of the brain (e.g. how the electrical signals move across neurons) is not as popular, at least for a lay person like me.
• psychedelics (used under the direction of a professional) - need I say more :).