The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014) by

Bessel van der Kolk (10/06/23 -)

Today, I feel like reviewing this chapter of the book I’m reading, just to keep fresh the
important points, the interesting facets of the book, thoughts that strike me as I read the book,
which may be lost to me if I don’t record them as I find them.
The first chapter of the book highlights the trauma borne by veterans of the Vietnam war. The
author describes the veterans’ rage, what Anna Runkle (one of my favorite YouTubers and
who spoke of this book on her channel) calls dysregulation, though this is a dysregulation that
can potentially cause more extensive damage than the ones that I have had, which led me to
her channel in the first place.
“I was stunned: Tom’s loyalty to the dead was keeping him from living his own life, just as
his father’s devotion to his friends had kept him from living.”
This quote reflects the stagnancy that accompanies the circular thinking that comes
with guilt and shame. We are so often stuck in the past, whether it be grief or shame, and we
forget to live our lives. How easy it is, to wax poetic about the past being the past, or to
deliver speeches with powerful wordings. However, the burden of the past is hard to put
down, even if moving forward requires that the past and the lessons learned from it be the
fuel, not the leaden weight that arrests progress.
“The reason was that I felt perfectly confident that, with proper care, my kids would
gradually learn to deal with frustrations and disappointments, but I was skeptical that I
would be able to help my veterans reacquire the skills of self-control and self-regulation that
they had lost in the war.”
This reminds me of my observations of my own behavior, something that was further
cemented by Anna mentioning that CPTSD often pauses our natural psychological
development. I would mull over the fact that some of my reactions were rather child-like, and
while my refusal to let go of my childhood self has led me to find wonder in life, I think this
aspect of that self must be calmed and comforted by my own efforts. To expect others to take
care of me, is rather unfair and even unreasonable. That the author makes a side-by-side
remark on the veterans and his own children is telling; I feel that in our lives, we have periods
of adolescence and childhood, even well past our teenage/childhood years. For there are
things we have developed lesser in, whether it be on the physical, emotional, or spiritual
front, and when we decide to grow in those regions, we progress from childhood to adulthood
in the same way that we did, growing up. I’m only a few pages in, but I have already come by
the phrase “dead inside.” I think this phrase is very telling; trauma often gives birth to a new
aspect of your personality that you did now know existed. After Kannu passed away, I see
myself as being more aware of my own mortality, of questioning, constantly, if I was living
life to the fullest and if I was truly grateful for all the blessings that I have received. It gave
birth to a more aware person, an aspect that clashes sometimes with my more laidback
personality that, while I adore, often gives into addictive tendencies. You could question if it
is birth or simply uncovering; I consider it a bud that unfolds. I wonder if in every plant, there
is an imprint, of when each bud would form and grow, which ones would flourish, which
ones would die before its full bloom.
Returning to the point I was trying to make – I equate trauma to the pains of a pregnancy. The
event of a pregnancy changes the brain in such a way that the mother’s entire worldview
shifts following the event, a biological process, a natural byproduct of pregnancy, even. I
heard in a video the other day of a woman speaking of how she didn’t know how strong her
body was until she went through pregnancy. Pain is difficult, but in the case of childbirth, if
both baby and mother are healthy, is a source of great joy. Even in cases of miscarriage or
other unfortunate, traumatic instances, it is still an event that greatly changes our perceptions.
And while every day, we fall or bruise ourselves, there are some traumatic experiences that
are as monumental as the birth of a child; a milestone, after which you’re still the same
person, but with more aspects to yourself that you did not recognize before. And as a result of
that trauma, that aspect of our personality is a child, wanting to be nurtured. However, often,
following trauma, we are trying so hard to become who we were before, not realizing, in the
flurry of pain and grief, that things cannot be the same as they were once. Similar to how the
arrival of a child changes everything – priorities, the state of one’s home, thoughts – the birth
of this new self invariably changes these things. It is also often irreversible, and when this
fact is ignored, the emotions flow out as rage, much like the tantrums of a child who wishes
to be heard, but in the body of adults, the damage could be so much worse.
The Traumatic Neuroses of War (1941), by psychiatrist Abram Kardiner.
“What Kardiner called ‘traumatic neuroses,’ today we call posttraumatic stress disorder—
PTSD. Kardiner noted that sufferers from traumatic neuroses develop a chronic vigilance for
and sensitivity to threat. His summation especially caught my eye: ‘The nucleus of the
neurosis is a physioneurosis.’ In other words, posttraumatic stress isn’t ‘all in one’s head,’
as some people supposed, but has a physiological basis. Kardiner understood even then that
the symptoms have their origin in the entire body’s response to the original trauma.”
“The lack of literature on the topic was a handicap, but my great teacher, Elvin Semrad, had
taught us to be skeptical about textbooks. We had only one real textbook, he said: our
patients.”
Reminds me of when Dad mentioned to me how he had bought many books on
parenting, but then realized that each child is different and books can only teach you so much.
Beyond a doctor-patient relationship, I believe this is true for all – everyone and everything
around is, everywhere, all of it, are our textbooks for life.
“We don’t really want to know what soldiers go through in combat. We do not really want to
know how many children are being molested and abused in our own society or how many
couples—almost a third, as it turns out—engage in violence at some point during their
relationship. We want to think of families as safe havens in a heartless world and of our own
country as populated by enlightened, civilized people. We prefer to believe that cruelty
occurs only in faraway places like Darfur or the Congo. It is hard enough for observers to
bear witness to pain. Is it any wonder, then, that the traumatized individuals themselves
cannot tolerate remembering it and that they often resort to using drugs, alcohol, or self-
mutilation to block out their unbearable knowledge?”
This portion encapsulates the avoidance of life’s hardships, a tendency I observe in
myself, and to an extent, most humans. We prefer the illusions of comfort, reflected in
platitudes of family or love or wealth being pillars of a fulfilling life. It is easier to turn away
from the gritty realities. I empathize now, not only with trauma survivors, but also with their
avoidant family or friends; how much of it is their lack of love or concern, and more the
desire to avoid the realities of life, which we all do to some extent? Morality demands that we
move past such human natures, but which one of us can lecture others about doing this? Has
any of us truly moved past these deeply embedded codes of humanness? I doubt if it is
unique to humans, in fact; I think every living being is primed toward seeking comfort,
happiness.
“We learned from these Rorschach tests that traumatized people have a tendency to
superimpose their trauma on everything around them and have trouble deciphering whatever
is going on around them.”
These are the ink blot tests that were a rage at some point; I heard that the validity of
these tests was questionable, but I suppose it is still used. The author draws from his
experiences from decades ago, so perhaps now, they aren’t as commonly used. I tried the test
out for myself, and got a 4/10, which means 4 of my answers were similar to the answers
given by individuals with some cognitive disturbance. Four and above is considered worthy
of further inspection, but the standard of four was arbitrary and simply based off the fact that
a majority of the people tested did give four poor answers. But of course, it is in no way final,
and the test was meant mostly for entertainment purposes.
“When people are compulsively and constantly pulled back into the past, to the last time they
felt intense involvement and deep emotions, they suffer from a failure of imagination, a loss
of the mental flexibility. Without imagination there is no hope, no chance to envision a better
future, no place to go, no goal to reach.”
A beautiful, hopeful conclusion to this chapter.
“Our search to understand trauma has led us to think differently not only about the structure
of the mind but also about the processes by which it heals.”