Van Der Kolk writes “ when we ignore these quintessential dimensions of humanity, we deprive people of ways to heal from trauma and restore their autonomy”. We move from easily acquired prozac prescriptions to understanding “ the ecology of a persons life”. The perspective then changes - we move from the disease model of understanding illness, to thinking of mental illnesses as normal adaptations and responses to ones environment.
Children in these families don’t just happen to be neurobiologically vulnerable to mental illness - but traumas compounded over time have a direct and proportional effect on your mental and physical well-being. Another study showed that nearly 12.4% of children in foster care received antipsychotics compared to 1.4% in privately insured children - and the implications are endless. The data to support this is rampant - children from low-income families are four times as likely as privately insured children to receive antipsychotic medication. It follows then, that trauma isn’t necessarily a one-off incident, but perhaps compounding experiences over the course of an individuals life. We now know that more than half the people that seek help for psychiatric care in their adulthood have been assaulted as children, or witnessed violence in their families. The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study fittingly tried to study the relationship between early developmental trauma and well-being in adult life. For every soldier that serves in war, there are ten children who are endangered in the safety of their own homes. “ As we now know, war is not the only calamity that leaves human lives in ruins. For a lot of people, all that remains are splintered off fragments of the experience, and sensations that have “ no context other than fear and panic”.īut perhaps one of the biggest takeaways from this was the need to amend our understanding of trauma. Unlike memories that have an identifiable beginning, middle or end - flashbacks, or responses to trauma lack the luxury of a coherent understanding, one is never able to say “that was then, and this is now”. This veteran was triggered in response to an inkblot. Upon seeing one of the cards, said veteran had a trauma flashback comparing the inkblot to a child he saw dying in Vietnam. Van Der Kolk recalls giving a war veteran a Rorschach test, essentially inkblots on a paper, meant to help understand how an individual constructs mental images. From years spent in a treatment centre for veterans, Dr. There is a need for a constant reminder that trauma is not registered as a consistent narrative - that one is essentially “stuck” in the moment(s) of this inescapable shock. “ While we all want to move beyond trauma, the part of our brain that is devoted to ensuring our survival is not very good at denial” he writes. Traditionally, trauma has been perceived as something solely in the mind and the psyche, but increasingly (and optimistically) we’re gravitating as a society to understand that trauma is also held in the body, in the muscles, in the viscera, in our very cells. The title gives away the punchline - the body truly keeps the score. There are good books, and there are books that fundamentally change the way you navigate the internal and external worlds - this is the latter. Van Der Kolk - glimpses of which we see in this book.
I have really taken my sweet time pondering over this, and reveling in the genius of Dr.
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