What is trauma? The author of “The Body Keeps the Score” explains | Bessel van der Kolk | Big Think

What is trauma? The author of “The Body Keeps the Score” explains, with Bessel van der Kolk

Contrary to popular belief, trauma is extremely common. We all have jobs, life events, and unpleasant situations causing us daily stress. But when your body continues to re-live that stress for days, weeks, months, or even years, that stress changes your brain, creating trauma inside your mind, and that trauma can eventually manifest in your physical body.

As you can see, trauma isn’t what happens to you, but how you respond to the traumatic situation. Something that is traumatic to one person may be no big deal to the next. Whether something becomes traumatic or not has a great deal to do with who’s around you while you experience this event. Were you alone and scared, were you comforted by friends and family?

The problem with trauma is that it starts when something happens to us, but that’s not where it stops - it changes your brain. Once your brain changes and you’re in constant fight or flight mode, it can be hard to stay focused, feel joy, or experience pleasure until this trauma is healed. Luckily, modern psychological practices are developing innovative ways to heal from trauma that actually work.

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About Bessel van der Kolk:
Bessel van der Kolk is a psychiatrist noted for his research in the area of post-traumatic stress since the 1970s. His work focuses on the interaction of attachment, neurobiology, and developmental aspects of trauma’s effects on people. His major publication, Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society, talks about how the role of trauma in psychiatric illness has changed over the past 20 years.

Dr. van der Kolk is past President of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, Professor of Psychiatry at Boston University Medical School, and Medical Director of the Trauma Center at JRI in Brookline, Massachusetts. He has taught at universities and hospitals across the United States and around the world, including Europe, Africa, Russia, Australia, Israel, and China.

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Read more of our stories on trauma:

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[bismuth]

The worst part of being traumatized is that people expect you to behave as if you aren't.

[AutumnHaunts]

Trauma isn’t always something so obvious either (rape, assault, traumatic accident, near death experience, etc…) it can be subtle but equally as harmful on our mind and body.
For example, I grew up with an absent father and an emotionally unavailable mother. That had more of an impact on me than the sexual abuse I experienced at the age of 21 ever did.
I constantly felt like a burden to everyone and like it wasn’t safe to trust anyone or to share my feelings with anyone. I experienced severe social anxiety, anorexia binge/purge subtype (almost died from that) and alcoholism.
The body keeps score and sometimes it’s as simple as our parents not giving us the care and attention we needed as children.

[dtheengineer]

I had a violent childhood. My mom shot my dad, and my step dad went to prison for murdering a man in a bar. My brother was 16 years older than me and a violent alcoholic.
People like this man have changed my life for the better. I don't let my past control my present and future any more

[FrankWade-nper]

I could remember several years ago I suffered severe Trauma & depression and mental disorder. Was actually addicted to cigarettes and alcohol. Not until my wife recommended me to psilocybin mushrooms treatment. Psilocybin treatment saved my life honestly. 11 years totally clean. Shrooms are God- sents.

[elizabethwilliams]

Psilocybin saved my life. I was addicted to heroin for 15 years and after Psilocybin treatment I will be 3 years clean in September. I have zero cravings. This is something that truly needs to be more broadly used in addiction treatment.

[advocate]

This man quite literally saved my life. I found a mind-body modality, did the work, and live the most peaceful and happiest of lives. It all started with The Body Keeps the Score. Thank you dr van der kolk for your work.

[newglowgurl]

Let's all unite here not by our differences in traumatic events, but by the strength and hope we all carry inside us for better days !

[watchingthebees]

As a child, I’ve been through a lot of emotional, verbal and physical abuse. Now I’m 19 and in a constant state of survival, I have no idea how I can live normally and healthily

[NhanVa]

Been wishing for healing all through these years, it's truly very crippling many people won't understand.

[itskeagan]

“The Body Keeps The Score” started my journey from a jail cell into recovery and a life free of drugs! I thank Dr Bessel for his work on trauma!

[aidandurkan]

I teared up listening to this. I study biology and have always been interested in how the brain works. At a young age I watched my dad die in a work accident and I never received any mental help. It has consumed my emotions and destroyed many years of my life. Those moments always come back to me when ever I face adversity and they make me want to crumble, just to let my life shatter and remove all the progress. It's hard not to allow that to happen.

People don't even try to see other points of view and it's very sad. I don't experience racism but I try to understand how that would effect ones life.
Our society has no sense of others worth. It lacks the ability to do so. Because it's built that way.

[tomsisson]

The worst part of trauma (for me, for my own part) is that you never feel safe and secure no matter how much others you know say that they love you. Worse than that, is that every day, you feel unsafe and unsecure because the traumatic event keeps getting relived in your mind.

Tom Sisson

[petor]

"The trauma is not the event that happens, it is how you respond to it."

[Becky_Cal]

“What may be traumatic for you, many not be traumatic for me based on our personalities and prior experiences.” No truer statement could have been said. I come from a family where both my parents were heroin addicts, both were in and out of jail from the time I was 10, my brothers were 8 and 6. My dad was also an alcoholic and used to beat the living crap out of my mom…almost killing her at one point. My dad died of an overdose when I was 14 & my mom lost it, couldn’t cope and abandoned my middle brother and I and took my youngest brother with her (aged 9 at the time). Each one of us, the siblings, were affected very differently by this horrible childhood and situation. In fact, while my youngest brother and I cut our ties with our mother completely, my middle brother maintained a relationship with her in the later years when she’d gotten off heroin & was on a lifetime of methadone treatment. She also died fairly young, aged 54. My middle brother was somewhat shielded from the trauma of an absent mother bc I stepped in as a surrogate mother until he turned 18. That put a lot of pressure on my (at 15 years old) and I resented her for it, among all the other sh!t she’d done. My youngest brother, however, got the worst aspect of it bc she dragged him around w/her and he witnessed her shooting up & she’d leave him with random people and he was molested by an older man at age 10 (a so called friend of my mothers). I ended up a single mom at 18, worked my way through college and ended up with a successful career as an exec in a Fortune 200 company. My middle brother ended up in prison serving a 25 to life sentence and my youngest brother is a shut-in. He was able to hold a job for many years & then trauma got the best of him. He’s now on perm disability. Insanity…but yes, we are all affected very differently even when we’re from the same family and experience the same type of trauma!

[Nightdrives]

It’s weird that we can understand whats going on in our brain, we know what is wrong but we can’t change it by just thinking about this

[bigtimber]

I was hit by a truck 8 years ago and lost my arm and leg. While laying on the side of the road I thought, "thankfully I'm Canadian" and I knew I was going to be well cared for.

[timepass]

Workplace bullying also is a traumàtic experience.

[nriqueog]

Reading his book currently. Also read, CPTSD: From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker. Another informative read if you suffer from Trauma experienced in Childhood.

[wisdomtoknowthedifference]

All I can say that this man gets us trauma survivors. When he said, something upsets you that it's overwhelming, I couldn't agree more. That's trauma right there. I remember going out of control and actually thought I was going crazy!

[DamsonIdris-rhsx]

I suffered the borderline disorder for over 23 years.
With so much anxiety Not until I came across psilocybin mushrooms treatmentPsilocybin treatment actually saved my life honestly. 6 years totally clean.
Never thought I would be saying this about mushrooms