cryptidaddy 's review for:

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

2.0

emotional informative reflective medium-paced

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This book was… okay. I started to check out with this author when they spent more time sharing details about veterans than traumatized Black and nbpoc. Personally, it’s wild to me to write a book about trauma and victims of trauma and actively choose to not only include veterans but provide more detailed information about a group of people who perpetrate violence and enact & enable white supremacy (usually towards Black and nbpoc) who aren’t victims of trauma but have ptsd from their own actions and the violence they themselves perpetrated than actual victims. My probably unpopular opinion? veterans should sit in those uncomfortable emotions and what they did to people instead of using therapy (which, in the US, also has a tendency to uphold systemic racism and fail to acknowledge the impact of white supremacy on marginalized people), which tells them they are somehow victims and allows them to remove themselves from the consequences of their actions. That, to me, is something different from victims of trauma and difficult to conflate with veterans' ptsd. But I can understand how a white person wouldn't be aware of and make this connection because of their perceived right to objectivity that allows them the comfort of removing themselves from the impact of systemic oppression and being oblivious to anything and everything that doesn't directly impact them.