A review by mallorymontenegro
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk

challenging dark hopeful sad slow-paced

4.5

Informative and very insightful for anyone who wants to understand a person with PTSD. There are many real life experiences told of PTSD patients, which entails many disturbing accounts of the unspeakable events that traumatized them. For this reason, I didn’t particularly enjoy this book. Even if you don’t have any specific triggers… this stuff is heavy. I had to be in the right frame of mind before I could read it. That said, I believe it is important for these stories to be told. Hopefully it will help those without PTSD to be more understanding and compassionate, and those with PTSD to know they are not alone and that it is possible for them to overcome their trauma. 

Being a new parent, I found this excerpt to be especially striking:
As long as we feel safely held in the hearts and minds of the people who love us, we will climb mountains and cross deserts and stay up all night to finish projects.
Children and adults will do anything for people they trust, and whose opinion they value. 

But if we feel abandoned, worthless, or invisible, nothing seems to matter. Fear destroys curiosity and playfulness. In order to have a healthy society, we must raise children who can safely play and learn. 
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