The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
By: Bessel A. van der Kolk / Narrated By: Sean Pratt
Length: 16 hrs and 15 mins
BEYOND Enlightening… just? Oh my, Trigger Warning? You betcha…
I got The Body Keeps the Score, like, eeeeons ago. I’d thought it’d come in handy what with working with teenagers who’d, by their age, were sporting a vaaaast variety of Complexes and Disorders. Cuz you see, as prevalent as Trauma is in the general population, individuals with impairments? Oh good cow, the plethora of insults and abuse they experienced? Yikes, and oh no, ya know?
That said, I’d avoided the book, preferring to rely on training and common sense arising from m’ own experiences and m’ own therapy results.
Okay, so here comes OpusPeace.org’s “Soul Injury Leadership Summit” coming up this April of 2023. As I’m hellbent on working with Vietnam Veterans and Veterans of All Stripes in my End of Life Doula work, I signed up to be part of the Summit. Part of the prep for it? Reading The Body Keeps the Score (Reeeeading?! Oh no, there’s Listening!!!).
Now here’s the thing: As one can surmise given the title, the entirety of this book is about Trauma of all Ilks.
Stunning!
Informative!
Enlightening!
And dude! despite the yeeeears of therapy I’ve had? Man, this was written with such depth, with such a wide variety of traumas covered, that I dissociated the beJESus outta m’self by the time I’d finished the final minutes of the 16+ hours this tome was.
It starts engagingly enough as this is super-informative, super-far reaching. It begins with the experiences of trauma held by Vietnam Veterans, and of COURSE that caught and held my interest, wishing to learn as much as possible about My Guys. The Nightmares. The sense that one feels Dead Inside. The Flashbacks. The terror that one will Harm Others, Loved Ones.
And it’s early on enough in Psychotherapy that author Bessel A. van der Kolk staunchly believes in better living through chemistry. When a disheveled drunken Vietnam Veteran storms into his office, terrified and simply Done with the chaos that his life has become, it’s a prescription that van der Kolk offers. Later, he’s somewhat disgruntled when the Veteran comes back, and he’d been unable to take the meds prescribed: He can’t. Anything that’ll keep him from that gossamer, that leaden connection to his dead friends killed in Nam is unwished for. The man is out of control, but his life has become a memorial to dead comrades. Trauma has transformed everything.
This serves as the basis, the guiding question for van der Kolk in his following years, his research, his studies, his newly-forming ideas.
And it ain’t just Veterans.
Trauma in its myriad varieties, its visitation upon children brought up with alcoholic parents, child abuse, neglect, shame, all the developmental trauma, is delved into as well (And by the time I’d gotten to the ACE checklist, Adverse Childhood Experiences, I’d started mentally checking out, emotionally disengaging).
Attachment disorders? Check.
Memories? Check (-AND- Checking Out, ooooh floating somewhere above my body as I continued to Listen).
It wasn’t until van der Kolk began getting into possibilities for healing and putting pieces back together, that I started tentatively, oh so tentatively, re-inhabiting my body. But then? Oh my, this is one powerful, informative book!
And thank good golly gosh, I’d paid attention at least a tad when my current therapist was talking so that I could completely relate to van der Kolk as he discussed the importance of language and trauma. The words we use when we contemplate our own trauma, or the trauma of those we seek to assist, are so very important. We can guide, we can help others as they shape the reality of their experiences into stories that are far more palatable, far easier pills to swallow. The stories we tell are of utmost importance.
Plus there are some AWEsome success stories. Veterans, youngsters who learn to create and craft plays made for audiences find success, find a certain peace, find a certain “sanity” and sense of normalcy. It empowers them, and one example, a man who’s early attempts at acting his pain are fraught with stammering, profuse sweating, panic attacks, slowly, with patience and encouragement, morphs into courage and determination—this is beYONd wonderful.
Sean Pratt is a veteran narrator of Nonfiction, and here as in, say the 9/11 story Fall and Rise, he again shines. Both of these endeavors are deceptively low-key but pack emotional punches out the wazoo. Pratt stints not an iota when it comes to relaying the horrors individuals experience, be they kids stuck in a grossly dysfunctional foster care system or Veterans who hold memories of civilian children dead and piled up like cordwood. I always know I’m in for a competent narration when I see Pratt will be at the helm; I always know I’m bound to be shedding tears when it comes to the gut slugs in the writing.
Expect horrific situations, dire symptoms, lives out of control, suffering that is just shy of unendurable.
But do expect Hope, glorious Hope, and a wide variety of techniques that have been shown to work effectively. It made me wanna look for an EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapist close by; it made me wanna get on my exercise mat and try yoga, stretching and breathing my way back into my body… after getting stuck in that danged ACE checklist.
Opus Peace offers that it’s unethical to promote techniques that the individuals doing the promoting have not used on themselves. After dissociating so completely whilst listening to this work, I’m kinda sorta shuddering as the dates of the Summit get closer as it’ll all be self-work and sharing, a very interactive workshop/Summit.
But at least? Well, I’ve a friend who’s a yoga expert, and I do b’lieve I’ll be asking for a few poses, some guidance on breathing before the days of the Summit roll around.
I believe I can work with Veterans experiencing PTSD at the end of their lives, I KNOW I can. And now? After that Checking Out O’ My Body Bit? Well, I’m glad I listened all the way through this audiobook, and took a lot of it to heart.
Totally worth the Listen.
Totally worth hitting again.
And again…
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