12/11/2025
I highly recommend this book for anyone who has endured trauma and now, even years later, are having health issues!
I collaborate often with therapists who are EMDR or brainspotting certified, so we can heal the client together from different angles. We are all mind-body-spirit, so in Functional Medicine, we address the “whole” person for healing to truly take place.
For years, I lived in a state of quiet internal dissonance. I had survived, but I carried an invisible, humming alarm in my nerves—a jump at slamming doors, a freeze in conflict, a mind that could dissociate from a room on command. I had talked about my past until the words felt worn smooth, yet my body remained unconvinced. When I found Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score, it wasn’t an act of reading; it was an act of translation. This monumental book decodes the silent, somatic language of trauma, explaining with breathtaking clarity why the past isn’t just remembered, but is physiologically re-lived in the present. Van der Kolk, a pioneering psychiatrist and neuroscientist, doesn’t just describe trauma; he maps its imprint on the brain, its echo in the body, and charts the pathways back to integration and safety.
Van der Kolk’s narrative is a powerful blend of the scientific and the deeply human. He moves seamlessly from PET scans and neurobiology to the harrowing, intimate stories of veterans, abuse survivors, and his own patients. He explains how trauma literally rewires the brain, locking survivors in a state of fight, flight, or freeze, and hijacking the body’s stress-response system. The revolutionary, and profoundly hopeful, thesis is that because trauma is held in the body’s physiology, the path to healing must also be somatic. Talking alone is not enough. Reading this book, the disparate pieces of my own experience—the anxiety that seemed to have no thought, the physical ailments with no clear cause—clicked into a devastating, validating coherence. It was the first time I understood my reactions not as personal failings, but as the intelligent, biological legacy of survival. This book gave me back the dignity of my own body’s responses and, crucially, a map toward healing that finally felt comprehensive and true.
Ten Foundational Truths from the Frontier of Trauma Healing
1. Trauma is a Physiological Injury, Not a Mental Flaw.
Trauma fundamentally disrupts the brain's alarm system and stress hormones, altering the body’s baseline state of being. It is less a “mental illness” and more a complex biological and psychological injury to the entire organism.
2. The Survivor’s Brain is Structurally Different.
Neuroimaging shows how trauma can shrink the hippocampus (responsible for memory) and hyper-activate the amygdala (the fear center), while impeding the function of the prefrontal cortex (the seat of reason and regulation). This creates a brain locked in survival mode.
3. The Body Literally Holds the Score.
Unprocessed trauma lives on as chronic physical tension, autoimmune disorders, chronic pain, gastrointestinal issues, and a pervasive sense of being unsafe in one’s own skin. The body is the archive of unspoken experience.
4. The Past is Always a Present Tense in Trauma.
For the traumatized brain, there is no “it’s over.” Triggers—a smell, a tone of voice, a sensation—can instantly catapult the nervous system back into the original, overwhelming event, a phenomenon known as a trauma re-enactment.
5. Language Fails Where Trauma Begins.
Traumatic memories are often stored not as coherent narratives, but as fragmented sensory imprints—images, sounds, and physical sensations. This is why talk therapy that relies solely on linear storytelling can hit a wall.
6. Healing Requires Re-establishing a Sense of Safety in the Body.
The first and most crucial step is not processing the trauma, but helping the body learn it is no longer under siege. Techniques for self-regulation and grounding are foundational before any deep exploration can occur.
7. Top-Down and Bottom-Up Approaches Are Both Essential.
“Top-down” approaches involve talking, meditation, and reframing thoughts. “Bottom-up” approaches involve the body directly through yoga, EMDR, neurofeedback, sensorimotor psychotherapy, and theater to release trapped survival energy.
8. Relationship is the Crucial Agent of Change.
Safe, attuned relationships—with a therapist, a partner, a community—can rewire the brain’s capacity for trust and connection, offering a corrective emotional experience to the isolation of trauma.
9. Creative Expression and Play Are Neurological Medicine.
Activities like singing, dancing, drawing, and role-playing engage different brain pathways than language, allowing for new forms of expression and integration that bypass the trauma’s verbal blockade.
10. Empowerment is the Antidote to Helplessness.
At its core, trauma is about powerlessness. Healing, therefore, must involve reclaiming a sense of agency—over one’s body, one’s choices, and one’s story. The survivor must move from being a passive victim of the past to an active author of the present.
The Body Keeps the Score is more than a book; it is a paradigm shift. It is essential reading for survivors, for therapists, for loved ones, and for anyone seeking to understand the profound interplay between our lived experiences and our physical being. Van der Kolk synthesizes decades of research with profound compassion, offering not just an explanation for suffering, but a science-backed roadmap to reclaiming a life of vitality and connection. This book validates the deepest pain while illuminating the most resilient hope. It is a heavy, transformative, and ultimately liberating masterpiece that has changed countless lives by teaching a simple, revolutionary truth: to heal the mind, you must honor the body.
BOOK: https://amzn.to/4pOZVhP
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