Reviews with content warning for Child abuse - The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

This book represents the life’s work of a Psychiatrist trying to unravel and heal trauma. It unfolds the experience of trauma in a way that makes it accessible to people who have not lived in a traumatised body. This book would be quintessential in my opinion to any health professional working with trauma patients. Very glad i’ve read it although it could feel a bit slow at times.

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danitza's review

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Felt too technical and I kept not paying attention.

Also wasn’t a fan of the authors writing , especially at the beginning. The whole structure of the book seemed sporadic. At the beginning, when he’s talking about the history of psychiatry, every time he mentions how messed up or backwards a practice was, he always absolves himself by adding something like “I always thought that was a bad practice” or “I always knew that was a bad way of treating patients.” That very well might be true, but the amount of times he says it made me suspicious. And I thought it was odd.

I did learn a few really interesting things, just wish I could have gotten into it more

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edenfaulkner's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful informative reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

I think trauma is an important topic for everyone to understand, at least to some extent, especially since our current systems often fail to acknowledge or address its long term effects. Odds are we’ve all either experienced trauma or know someone who has. I found this book helpful because Dr. van der Kolk describes trauma and its effects on the body in a way that’s easy to understand and provides in-depth examples of various treatments methods (other than medication) that have proven effective for many patients. My big takeaway from this book is that the road to recovery and healing isn’t always a straight path. Some things work for some people that don’t work for others. It’s important to find what treatment works for you. I also learned a lot about how trauma can affect behavior, how medication is often overprescribed, and much more. Very fascinating and informative read.

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