Customer Reviews
Everyone needs to read this book. This was a book I didn’t realize I needed. Such good information!!!
A profound read, rich with priceless insight. Every page offers depth, sincerity, and expertise. The thoughts expressed in this book leave the mind with timeless wisdom.
This book is a classic within the self-help, trauma-informed wellness community. You will not regret this purchase.
Book came with a very small dent but I began reading it the day after I got it. So far it’s good and I enjoy the stories of the Vietnam Vets and the “either you experienced trauma like we did and you can be trusted/you’re one of us” or “you didn’t go through what we’ve been through so you can’t be trusted” mentality that’s being currently discussed at the beginning of the book. I’ll edit my review once I read more of it.
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Traumaby Bessel van der Kolk, M.D. (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2014), 445 pp. + xvi, paper $10.86One of the most popular and influential books dealing with trauma from a secular psychological viewpoint is The Body Keeps the Score. It spent 141 weeks on the New York Times bestseller’s list for nonfiction and 27 of them in the number 1 position. The author, Bessel van der Kolk, is a professor of psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine and President of the Trauma Research Foundation at Brookline, Massachusetts. Yet, he parts ways from many of his peers and standard methods for treating those with mental issues, especially those who have experienced trauma such as PTSD (pp. 11, 19), defined as “a person [who] is exposed to a horrendous event that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others” (pp. 158-159). Van der Kolk believes new scientific branches reveal that such trauma produces physiological changes to the brain (pp. 2-3). His basic thesis is that real change happens when the body learns that the danger has passed and the person begins to live in the reality of the present (p. 21). This book is about the methodologies he believes are most successful in dealing with trauma.In describing his recommended therapies, van der Kolk distances himself from many other approaches. For example, the 1960s, psychiatry developed a new paradigm in which bad behaviors [what God calls sins] were recast as disorders that could be fixed by chemicals (pp. 27, 159, 208, 351). Disorders became the focus of mental health experts, even though their own Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-3) admitted in 1980 that its system was very imprecise (pp. 29, 139, 145). By 2013, the DSM-5 had identified 300 disorders (p. 166). Strangely, even the psychological community recognized the lack of validity of the DSM-5, and the National Institute of Mental Health removed its support (p. 167). But with the release of Prozac in 1988, psychiatry was revolutionized, as its leaders increasingly turned to drugs to treat distressed patients (pp. 34-36). While the author acknowledged limited value of drug therapy; at best it does not address the underlying causes (pp. 36-38, 103, 128, 159, 351). Antidepressants are particularly ineffective. He writes: “Over the past three decades psychiatric medications have become a mainstay in our culture, with dubious consequences. Consider the case of antidepressants. If they were indeed as effective as we have been led to believe, depression should by now have become a minor issue in our society. Instead, even as antidepressant use continues to increase, it has not made a dent in hospital admissions for depression. The number of people treated for depression has tripled over the past two decades, and one in ten Americans now take antidepressants” (p. 37).Van der Kolk recognized the ineffectiveness of chemical treatments, and the limited value of talk therapy, (pp. 47, 72, 184, 222-224, 233) and began searching for a better way (p. 38). He believes he found it in neuroscience. He goes into extensive detail to demonstrate that trauma changes the central nervous system (p. 82), including the brain (p. 248). He separates the emotional brain from the rational brain, which is why traumatized people cannot be reasoned into change (pp. 57ff, 207), and he blames losing one’s temper on the frontal lobes of the brain (pp. 62-64). Because the brain itself is malfunctioning, methods to “rewire” it need to be implemented. Van der Kolk believes drug and talk therapy are of little value, re-exposure to past trauma does not work (pp. 72, 206), tracing genetic patterns have not proven valid (pp. 153-159), and memories are unreliable (pp. 177, 185, 193, 257). Therefore, other methods must be explored. Psychiatry, he claims, adopted a chemical model, and pushed aside other approaches, but he champions applied neuroscience (pp. 311-330). The specific recommended methods include:• Mindfulness practices: learning to keep one’s mind alive while allowing the body to feel dreaded feelings (pp. 9, 133). It is self-awareness, being in touch with one’s feelings (pp. 210-212, 272).• Yoga, breathing exercises, meditation, and similar methods (pp. 208-209, 217-218, 226-228).• Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) (pp. 250-261).• PBSP psychomotor therapy or role playing (pp. 299, 310).• Theater (pp. 332-348).• Development of better relationships (p. 212).• Virtually anything that will get you back in touch with your body, your self (p. 249).The title of the book actually springs from a secondary theme, that is, van der Kolk believes that numerous health issues result from mishandling stress (including trauma). Conditions such as migraines, asthma, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, stroke, RA, and fibromyalgia (pp. 46, 53, 99-100, 149, 242, 293, 351, 353), and many ...
