THE BODY KEEPS THE SCORE - BESSEL VAN DER KOLK

I’ll be honest, this one took a while to read. I work with traumatized children as my job and some of the stuff in this book was pretty hard to get through, especially when I do my best to leave the trauma stuff at work. But, I heard about this book because a number of coworker raved about it and since I wanted a deep “theoretical” background in the work I was doing (my “academic training” is in sociology, not trauma-informed psychology) I picked it up. I would say the book confirms basic suspicions I had about these sorts of cases of trauma. I could imagine people complaining that Van Der Kolk endorses everything and seems to think all sorts of stuff works. There stuff about hypnosis and yoga and EMDR, which is this intense eye-movement based therapy, and this technique I once saw a video of Jorodowsky doing where you move people and objects around a room to represent your family and memories (in the Jorordowsky documentary the subject, the camera man, breaks down in tears) and Van Der Kolk has stories about how all these things lead to amazing breakthroughs in only a few number of sessions. I can see how one would be doubtful but, I don’t know,I believe him, at least generally. The trauma stuff is weird and deep and I do think basically boils down to an inability to feel present since you’re sense of safety and you internal regulation is all fucked up from this/these traumatizing situation(s). Trauma fucks up your ability to feel a baseline level of safety and to communicate your needs in a healthy way. I think it’s smart to get outside of the pills and talk-therapy hamster wheel. Van der Kolk and I share a similar mistrust/suspicion of psychiatric drugs, the kids I work with are, often, heavily medicated and it certainly helps curtail the more extreme violence but you can often feel a distance inside of them. I like taking drugs, so I know exactly what the feeling is, but I doesn’t seem like a good state to be in if you’re trying to take on trauma long-term. Fascinating stuff, psychiatrists are so arrogant it’s hard to imagine this changing anything (I understand I sound like a Scientologist) but one can hope. 7 big white pills.