Quotessence
Home / Books / The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

Book by Bessel A. van der Kolk · 8 quotes · Trauma, Psychology, Healing

Filter quotes by topic

AllTraumaPsychologyHealingPtsdMental HealthBodyComplex PtsdComplex TraumaDepressionFearFeelingsPainTraumatizedAbuseAbuse SurvivorsChild AbuseCommunityDissociationDissociative Identity DisorderDrama

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma Quotes

“BEFRIENDING THE BODY Trauma victims cannot recover until they become familiar with and befriend the sensations in their bodies. Being frightened means that you live in a body that is always on guard. Angry people live in angry bodies. The bodies of child-abuse victims are tense and defensive until they find a way to relax and feel safe. In order to change, people need to become aware of their sensations and the way that their bodies interact with the world around them. Physical self-awareness is the first step in releasing the tyranny of the past. In my practice I begin the process by helping my patients to first notice and then describe the feelings in their bodies—not emotions such as anger or anxiety or fear but the physical sensations beneath the emotions: pressure, heat, muscular tension, tingling, caving in, feeling hollow, and so on. I also work on identifying the sensations associated with relaxation or pleasure. I help them become aware of their breath, their gestures and movements. All too often, however, drugs such as Abilify, Zyprexa, and Seroquel, are prescribed instead of teaching people the skills to deal with such distressing physical reactions. Of course, medications only blunt sensations and do nothing to resolve them or transform them from toxic agents into allies. The mind needs to be reeducated to feel physical sensations, and the body needs to be helped to tolerate and enjoy the comforts of touch. Individuals who lack emotional awareness are able, with practice, to connect their physical sensations to psychological events. Then they can slowly reconnect with themselves.”

MindBodyFearPsychologyAwarenessEmotionsTraumaRecoveryPtsdMind Body SpiritTouchVictimsAngerangerMindfulnessmindfulness
Book:The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
Create image

“If your parents’ faces never lit up when they looked at you, it’s hard to know what it feels like to be loved and cherished. If you come from an incomprehensible world filled with secrecy and fear, it’s almost impossible to find the words to express what you have endured. If you grew up unwanted and ignored, it is a major challenge to develop a visceral sense of agency and self-worth.”

LoveFearSelf EsteemAbuseParentingTraumaNeglectPtsdSecrecyParental Abuse
Book:The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
Create image

“The brain-disease model overlooks four fundamental truths: (1) our capacity to destroy one another is matched by our capacity to heal one another. Restoring relationships and community is central to restoring well-being; (2) language gives us the power to change ourselves and others by communicating our experiences, helping us to define what we know, and finding a common sense of meaning; (3) we have the ability to regulate our own physiology, including some of the so-called involuntary functions of the body and brain, through such basic activities as breathing, moving, and touching; and (4) we can change social conditions to create environments in which children and adults can feel safe and where they can thrive. When we ignore these quintessential dimensions of humanity, we deprive people of ways to heal from trauma and restore their autonomy. Being a patient, rather than a participant in one’s healing process, separates suffering people from their community and alienates them from an inner sense of self.”

CommunityHealingHealthMedicineMental HealthTraumaPtsd
Book:The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
Create image

“When something reminds traumatized people of the past, their right brain reacts as if the traumatic event were happening in the present. But because their left brain is not working very well, they may not be aware that they are re-experiencing and reenacting the past - they are just furious, terrified, enraged, ashamed, or frozen.”

HealthTraumaPtsd
Book:The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
Create image

“When people are unable to integrate their traumatic memories, they seem to lose their capacity to assimilate new experiences as well. It is as if their personality stops at a certain points and cannot enlarge any more by the addition or assimilation of new elements. Unless they become aware of the split off elements and integrate them into a story that had happened in the past but was now over, they would experience a slow decline in their personal and professional functioning.”

PsychologyTraumaPtsdDissociation
Book:The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
Create image

“Eighty two percent of the traumatized children seen in the National Child Traumatic Stress Network do not meet diagnostic criteria for PTSD.15 Because they often are shut down, suspicious, or aggressive they now receive pseudoscientific diagnoses such as “oppositional defiant disorder,” meaning “This kid hates my guts and won’t do anything I tell him to do,” or “disruptive mood dysregulation disorder,” meaning he has temper tantrums. Having as many problems as they do, these kids accumulate numerous diagnoses over time. Before they reach their twenties, many patients have been given four, five, six, or more of these impressive but meaningless labels. If they receive treatment at all, they get whatever is being promulgated as the method of management du jour: medications, behavioral modification, or exposure therapy. These rarely work and often cause more damage.”

AggressiveChild AbusePtsdDisruptiveTraumatizedMisdiagnosisChild Abuse SurvivorsComplex TraumaTraumatic StressMental Health BiasTemper TantrumsChild TraumaPsuedoscience
Book:The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
Create image

“The disappearance of medial prefrontal activation could explain why so many traumatized people lose their sense of purpose and direction. I used to be surprised by how often my patients asked me for advice about the most ordinary things, and then by how rarely they followed it. Now I understood that their relationship with their own inner reality was impaired. How could they make decisions, or put any plan into action, if they couldn't define what they wanted or, to be more precise, what the sensations in their bodies, the basis of all emotions, were trying to tell them?”

PsychologyDepressionTraumaApathyPtsdNeuroscience
Book:The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
Create image