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

hopeful informative

5.0

I think this book is supposed to just be a review of Dr. van der Kolk's research on trauma, with an overview of the physiological effects of trauma and discussions of the various therapies he's tried with traumatized patients and the biology and neuroscience of how they helped or didn't. However, all of these points are made with stories of Bessel and his patients, and I found it to be a combination of the science of trauma, insights about my own trauma, and hope that there are effective therapies out there that might help me. 

Like all good books that make me recontextualize my past, I could only read this book in small doses. But that may not be a bad way to read this book - it is absolutely packed with information and you'll need time to absorb it. From the history of trauma being recognized as an actual problem to the biological and neurological underpinnings of the symptoms of being traumatized to the different therapies he has found to be effective and the neuroscience and psychology of why they work, it's thirty years of trauma research condensed to less than 500 pages. One read doesn't feel like it's enough to grasp all the information and possibilities here. 

To my non-medical-trained ears, some of the problems caused by trauma and some of the miraculous healing from trauma described in this book seemed nothing short of outlandish. However, Bessel van der Kolk is one of the world's top researchers in trauma studies and is partially responsible for the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (a Congressionally mandated initiative for helping traumatized children) and for PTSD being considered an actual diagnosis in the first place. So he probably knows what he's talking about. 

The main drawback to this book is that the people who most need to read it - i.e. people who are dealing with the long-lasting effects of trauma - are the ones most likely to be triggered by the graphic descriptions of abuse and neglect. It does make for much less boring reading than facts and statistics and I recognize that knowing about the specific traumas is integral to most stories of how the patients recovered, but I found myself wondering if the graphic details couldn't have been toned down just a bit for the sake of traumatized non-doctors reading about this research on their own behalf. Bessel does mention in one anecdote that an instructor in one of the therapies he was learning criticized him for "voyeuristic tendencies" and wanting to know everything about his patients' traumas, and I wonder if the graphic descriptions in these anecdotes were an unintentional expression of his own interest in other people's traumas. 

This book is very thorough and very intense. If you're in the medical field, it's absolutely worth reading. If you're traumatized yourself, it's also worth reading, but take it slow and be aware that it's full of descriptions of abuse that might be triggering. But it's also full of hope that we don't have to be defined by our trauma forever. 
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