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A review by merholley
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk
3.0
This book was super okay. I think the title should be changed to, "PTSD for Treatment Professionals: An academic and anecdotal exploration of trauma treatments." So, that was not what I signed up for. I'll say, if you have PTSD, probably don't read this book because it has these very graphic descriptions of patient trauma experiences. I think therapists are the target audience for this book, and it provides an interesting overview of the treatment modalities available for PTSD and the research about them.
One thing I will say about all of the PTSD books I've read lately is that people HATE the DSM. I kind of get it, and I can see how it fucks everything up, especially with kids, but also I kind of think the rage should be turned more to the insurance industry than the DSM. Like the DSM seems more like a symptom of the overall problem where we are more into classifying people than helping them.
My other takeaway is that Bessel A. van der Kolk is super badass. He is one of the early researchers on PTSD, and he describes working in the old mental hospitals and seeing people sprayed down with hoses to clean them. So, that's an example of the type of story he tells that made this book a slow read for me. I will say, I listen to people's trauma stories all day long, but the stories he told in this book were really heavy to me. I had to take a lot of breaks.
In the chapter on EMDR, he talks about his EMDR training. He was in a group training class and was partnered with a person who did not want to talk about his trauma experience during the EMDR. (In EMDR, the way van der Kolk did it, you basically wave your fingers in front of someone's face as they re-experience a trauma memory, and the eye movements process the trauma memory into the regular stream of memory in the brain. It's super magic and also evidence-based.) Van der Kolk was mad that the person didn't want to talk and complained to the instructor. The instructor told him to question whether there was a voyeuristic element to why he became a therapist.
So, that seemed like an insightful perspective, and I thought it made sense with this book. A lot of the stories he told had a voyeuristic element to them in my view. I don't really feel critical about that, but I did not enjoy that aspect of the book.
I appreciated the overview of trauma treatments, though. So far, from everything I've read somatic experiencing and EMDR are the ones I'm most impressed with.
One thing I will say about all of the PTSD books I've read lately is that people HATE the DSM. I kind of get it, and I can see how it fucks everything up, especially with kids, but also I kind of think the rage should be turned more to the insurance industry than the DSM. Like the DSM seems more like a symptom of the overall problem where we are more into classifying people than helping them.
My other takeaway is that Bessel A. van der Kolk is super badass. He is one of the early researchers on PTSD, and he describes working in the old mental hospitals and seeing people sprayed down with hoses to clean them. So, that's an example of the type of story he tells that made this book a slow read for me. I will say, I listen to people's trauma stories all day long, but the stories he told in this book were really heavy to me. I had to take a lot of breaks.
In the chapter on EMDR, he talks about his EMDR training. He was in a group training class and was partnered with a person who did not want to talk about his trauma experience during the EMDR. (In EMDR, the way van der Kolk did it, you basically wave your fingers in front of someone's face as they re-experience a trauma memory, and the eye movements process the trauma memory into the regular stream of memory in the brain. It's super magic and also evidence-based.) Van der Kolk was mad that the person didn't want to talk and complained to the instructor. The instructor told him to question whether there was a voyeuristic element to why he became a therapist.
So, that seemed like an insightful perspective, and I thought it made sense with this book. A lot of the stories he told had a voyeuristic element to them in my view. I don't really feel critical about that, but I did not enjoy that aspect of the book.
I appreciated the overview of trauma treatments, though. So far, from everything I've read somatic experiencing and EMDR are the ones I'm most impressed with.