By Lori Gottlieb — 2020
In addition to the tragic losses of life and health and jobs, we are grieving the losses of weddings, sports and the ability to buy eggs or get a haircut.
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CLEAR ALL
Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world’s foremost psychiatrists specializing in PTSD, explains the disorder’s many effects and symptoms.
In his book “The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma,” van der Kolk reveals how trauma rearranges the brain’s wiring, including areas dedicated to pleasure, engagement, control, and trust.
When a person experiences traumatic events, the aftermath can be extremely debilitating. Trauma not only affects the mind, but can have lifelong effects on the body.
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Most of us have poured out our hearts in angry, accusatory, plaintive, or sad letters after people have betrayed or abandoned us. Doing so almost always makes us feel better, even if we never send them.
Psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, founder of Brookline’s Trauma Center and author of a new book, believes options beyond drugs are crucial.
“The Body Keeps the Score” hinges on the idea that trauma is stored in the body and that, for therapy to be effective, it needs to take the physiological changes that occur into account.
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Nowhere is this relationship more essential yet more endangered than in our healing from trauma, and no one has provided a more illuminating, sympathetic, and constructive approach to such healing than Boston-based Dutch psychiatrist and pioneering PTSD researcher Bessel van der Kolk.