Reviews tagging 'Stalking'

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

9 reviews

akvolcano's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative reflective sad tense fast-paced

4.75

Loved reading this book! Trauma is always spoken in the context of war veterans, but the intricacies are never fully connected. This book well develops the connection. It actually goes further by not separating citizen trauma from war trauma, but speaks of them on the same level. When I began this reading I was skeptical if there would be any new concepts or material. I am happy to say that there was in fact exploration in areas that have not been fed into mainstream media! As a survivor myself, I enjoy that throughout the book there is consistently stories of people being shared. I would like to read a book like this one that takes its central concepts and goes a bit further. Overall, excellent well researched and articulated book!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Body horror, Cancer, Child abuse, Child death, Chronic illness, Confinement, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Gun violence, Incest, Mass/school shootings, Lesbophobia, Medical trauma, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Sexual harassment, Abandonment, Addiction, Alcohol, Body shaming, Car accident, Cursing, Death, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Eating disorder, Dysphoria, Fatphobia, Fire/Fire injury, Forced institutionalization, Grief, Gore, Infidelity, Medical content, Mental illness, Misogyny, Murder, Pedophilia, Police brutality, Racism, Pregnancy, Rape, Self harm, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Stalking, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Suicide attempt, Terminal illness, Torture, Toxic relationship, Trafficking, War, and Violence

jussery's review against another edition

challenging informative medium-paced

4.0

This book was really useful to me in how it summarized a lot of research findings in an interesting and succinct way (not to say this book wasn't long, it definitely was). Halfway into this book I found out that the author is not really a great guy, which definetely soured anything I read from his perspective. I found some of his descriptions of women kinda gross. I thought he went too far describing some patient's trauma. This book has so many triggers and I read it as someone without PTSD (I have a depersonalization disorder though, and was hoping to uncover more about that through this book) - so a big warning to anyone considering reading it! Overall though, I still gave this book 4 stars just because I think it really captured a lot of research studies on trauma in a digestible way (could do without the authors excessive descriptions though). And it really helped me contextualize some of my symptoms and how they are biologically based, which helped me put less blame on myself for them.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Police brutality, Suicide attempt, Alcohol, Fatphobia, Kidnapping, Physical abuse, Toxic relationship, Violence, Car accident, Child abuse, Drug abuse, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Sexual assault, Sexual harassment, War, Chronic illness, Incest, Panic attacks/disorders, Pedophilia, Trafficking, Sexism, Alcoholism, Child death, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Slavery, Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty, Suicidal thoughts, Abandonment, Rape, Death, Death of parent, Drug use, Eating disorder, Murder, Self harm, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Stalking, Suicide, Torture, Domestic abuse, and Medical trauma

emsemaroo's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative slow-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Incest, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Violence, Death, Domestic abuse, Medical content, Mental illness, Medical trauma, Panic attacks/disorders, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Emotional abuse, Rape, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, and War

Moderate: Forced institutionalization, Infidelity, Body shaming, Car accident, Fatphobia, Fire/Fire injury, Mass/school shootings, Murder, Stalking, Trafficking, Vomit, Gore, Terminal illness, Drug abuse, Genocide, Ableism, Blood, Body horror, and Kidnapping

amyalwaysbooked's review against another edition

challenging dark informative reflective slow-paced

2.0

This one was difficult to review. I found the start of the book to be quite strong. There was some information about the brain and how it functions and how it responds to trauma that I found genuinely interesting. However, the book is repetitive. Van der Kolk would repeat anecdotal stories in different points in the book as if he had not already brought it up before. I found that jarring. And the stories themselves...

I know this is a book about trauma, but I did not expect him to go into such details of the personal traumas of multiple people. It felt gratuitous to me how often he would delve into the nitty gritty of a person's experienced trauma. I was expecting a book on the science of the brain and body's response to trauma, and while that was part of what I read, it was not the whole. I imagine this book would be especially upsetting for people who have experienced any extensive trauma. I also didn't love the ways in which can der Kolk often wrote about the people whose stories he shared. Women were often described physically, and the men were given a lot of slack for some of the horrible things they did because of their trauma. Except for one exception it often felt like he saw women as only victims of spousal or sexual abuse while men were only victims of military PTSD.

There were some excellent points made about the way the medical system in the US works, or rather, how it doesn't work. I appreciated how the lack of universal health care and better care for veterans and mothers only enables a vicious cycle of trauma. Unfortunately this also meant that a lot of what he was saying was "well here are some great ideas of what we could try, but there's no strong study behind any of it so maybe someday???"

I found the personal stories and van der Kolk's treatment of them to be far too distracting for any of the positives I found to be worthwhile. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Car accident, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Self harm, Sexual violence, Stalking, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, Injury/Injury detail, Medical trauma, Violence, Alcoholism, Drug abuse, Drug use, Eating disorder, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, Sexual harassment, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Suicide, Pedophilia, Rape, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis

tmickey's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative reflective medium-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Trafficking, Child abuse, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Violence, Physical abuse, Infidelity, Gun violence, Incest, Domestic abuse, Stalking, Kidnapping, Car accident, Medical trauma, Sexual violence, War, Sexual harassment, Rape, Forced institutionalization, Drug abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Mental illness, Grief, Emotional abuse, Adult/minor relationship, Toxic relationship, Suicide attempt, Self harm, Pedophilia, Death of parent, Death, Child death, and Abandonment

Moderate: Alcoholism, Addiction, Alcohol, Bullying, and Eating disorder

tetedump's review

hopeful informative sad slow-paced

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abandonment, Ableism, Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Animal death, Antisemitism, Bullying, Cancer, Car accident, Child abuse, Chronic illness, Colonisation, Confinement, Suicide, Terminal illness, Torture, Toxic relationship, Trafficking, Violence, War, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Genocide, Forced institutionalization, Grief, Gun violence, Hate crime, Incest, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Mass/school shootings, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Misogyny, Murder, Panic attacks/disorders, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Police brutality, Racism, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Stalking, and Xenophobia

katiebartmess's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

5.0

This book was very hard to read. It took me about 8 months to read a few chapters at a time and sit with them. Not because of a lack in quality writing or teaching (which was excellent) or because of poor content. The content is unfortunately very interesting, but also very, very real. It was an incredible source of information and perspective. The book is very academic and so hugely informative, I could easily see this being used as educational material or a selected work for university classes, etc., but it did a great job of explaining things in simple terms that individuals who are not psychology scholars could still understand. It was also deeply compassionate, encouraging, and hopeful, and it could certainly be considered "a self-help" book too. Certainly, this book is not for everyone, and it was not ~written~ for everyone. The topics covered are uncomfortable, scary, dark, and unsettling, but to the 70% of adults who have experience with trauma, it can be a step towards a lifeline. Hopefully, the title alone is enough to warn of trigger warnings in this book. Plenty of the content is deeply upsetting (It is a book that is explicitly about physical, emotional, and sexual trauma and abuse), so be sure to pace yourself and look up trigger summaries if you are worried about something like that. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Sexual violence, Alcoholism, Emotional abuse, Forced institutionalization, Physical abuse, Stalking, Suicidal thoughts, Domestic abuse, Child abuse, Police brutality, Sexual assault, Sexual harassment, Drug abuse, and Mental illness

alsoapples's review against another edition

emotional hopeful informative fast-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Car accident, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Incest, Medical trauma, and Panic attacks/disorders

Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Adult/minor relationship, Antisemitism, Blood, Car accident, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Death, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Forced institutionalization, Grief, Incest, Infidelity, Kidnapping, Mass/school shootings, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Misogyny, Murder, Panic attacks/disorders, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexism, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Stalking, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Suicide attempt, Toxic relationship, Trafficking, and Violence

downsophialane's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative sad slow-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Domestic abuse, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Gore, Grief, Incest, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Panic attacks/disorders, Pregnancy, Rape, Self harm, Violence, Suicide attempt, Suicide, Stalking, Suicidal thoughts, Sexual violence, and Sexual assault