Summary Station - The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma / Summary

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First Printing, 2015

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Table ofContents

Bessel Van der Kolk M.D. is the author ofThe Body Keeps the Score. In this book Bessel examines the waysthat trauma can affect people and how they can recover from pastdramatic events. When a person experiences trauma it will changethe wiring in their brain and this will cause a change in the waythat a person views their life and everyday situations. Trauma hasa negative effect on both the body and mind in a way that willprevent a person affected by trauma from enjoying the presentmoment.

Bessel and his colleagues have beenresearching trauma and the people affected by it for almost 50years. This journey began for Dr. Bessel when he met with VietnamWar veterans who were suffering from the trauma they experienced inthe war. This trauma caused these veterans to struggle with thetransition of coming back home and resuming a normal life. Thesetrauma suffers all had certain symptoms that they shared. Thetraumatic events that were experienced at war were constantly beingreplayed in the brains of the veterans. In addition to this, theveterans also appeared to be numb or indifferent to everyday lifeand they would become angry very easily. Dr. Bessel is consideredto be the very first Dr. to diagnose and recognize posttraumaticstress disorder which is also known as PTSD. He was also one of thefirst doctors to identify cures and methods for assisting thepeople who were affected by PTSD so that they could once again livea normal life.

After spending some time studying PTSD,Bessel came to the conclusion that war veterans were not the onlypeople who suffered from this disease. Millions of people all overthe world show symptoms of PTSD and many of these people becomeaffected with this disease when they are only children. Traumaticevents happen to many children, especially in America. Children whohave alcoholic parents or who were molested are most likely to havePTSD. Many doctors believe that about 25% of the Americanpopulation is suffering from PTSD which was brought on by traumaticchildhood events.

Dr. Bessel has found distinctions in the waythat trauma affects children differently from the way it affectswar veterans. This is why he came to recognize that there wasanother traumatic disorder which he called Developmental TraumaDisorder and this is also known as DTD. One of Bessels primaryreasons for writing The Body Keeps Score is to includeDevelopmental Trauma Disorder (DTD) as a recognized disorder in thescientific and medical community by including it in the list ofdisorders covered in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual ofMental Disorders. Before Dr. Bessel changed the way that traumaticorders were diagnosed and treated, the main treatments fortraumatic disorders were prescribing pharmaceutical drugs, and talktherapy sessions. The combination of researching trauma victims andtechnological improvements in brain imaging allowed Dr. Bessel tofind more effective treatments for traumatic disorders. Hediscovered that reprocessing events, eye movement desensitization,performing arts, and yoga are some of the best treatments forpeople suffering from dramatic disorders.

Before Dr. Bessel identified PTSD and itssymptoms there was no effective way to treat the disorder. After hemade his discovery, Dr. Bessel paved the way for new treatmentsthat dealt with the root cause of PTSD instead of the symptoms. TheVietnam War veterans from the 70s experienced similar symptoms ofPTSD. These symptoms included psychotic episodes, alcohol and drugabuse, and dramatic nightmares. Doctors across America wereproviding treatment for the specific symptoms that the veterans whohad PTSD experienced, but they did not know how to deal with thetrauma these veterans frequently relived. These early treatmentsdid slightly relieved the symptoms of PTSD, but without dealingwith the trauma, the symptoms would keep coming back.

Now that doctors across the world have arealistic understanding of PTSD and its many symptoms, they areable to provide better care and treatment for sufferers oftraumatic stress disorders. Before Dr. Bessels time,traumaticdisorders were so misunderstood that the Veterans Administrationhad no common knowledge in regards to traumatic disorders so theydid not even realize that the returning veterans symptoms werecaused by trauma. New veteran services like the Patriot SupportProgram have been created to specifically deal with veterans whosuffer from PTSD. These new support programs teach veterans how tocope with PTSD and deal with the associated symptoms like psychoticbehavior and addiction.These programs have created locations whereveterans can go and receive help from doctors who are educated ondealing with PTSD and its symptoms.

By treating veterans who suffer from PTSDdoctors have been able to learn more about the disease and how tocure it. One popular method of research is conducted by studyingthe brains of people who suffered from PTSD. There is a Departmentof Veterans Affairs and this organization has encouraged traumasuffers to donate their brains after death for the purpose ofscience. The brains of PTSD sufferers are compared to the brains ofnormal people to discover differences. The goal of this study wasto find out how a persons brain changes when they fight in a war.Brain scans are also used to research traumatic disorders, but theydo not provide as much information as a real brain. Many peoplebelieve that if it were not for Dr. Bessels discovery of traumaticdisorders, none of these helpful organizations would have beenformed.

When an event happens in a persons life,memory is created to store that event. Research has discovered thattraumatic events bring on memories that are very different from thememories that are created by regular events. Memories fromtraumatic events are much more detailed and when a person sufferingfrom PTSD experiences these traumatic memories it is very similarto experiencing the traumatic event over again.

A regular memory is similar to a story thathas a beginning and ending. When a person replays a regular memoryin their minds eye they know that it is something from the pastwhich has already ended. The memory structure that is created byordinary events is done in a way that allows the personexperiencing memory to move forward in life. Traumatic memories arevery graphic and sensational so the person experiencing thesememories finds it difficult to let these traumatic events go andmove forward. Even though these traumatic memories are stored inthe brain they are so vivid that changes to a persons physicalbody will take place when these memories are experienced. Atraumatic memory feels like it is happening in real time when it isbeing experienced, so people experiencing these memories havetrouble differentiating the past and the present. This makes itextremely difficult for people suffering from traumatic disordersto live in and experience the present moment. Living in the presentmoment is a very important part of moving forward in life.

It is clear that trauma does affect apersons memory, but it is not completely understood. Manydifferent scientists have been studying this phenomenon and theyhave all created slightly different theories. Dr. Bessel recalls astudy that was done on patients suffering from traumatic disorderswhich applies to memory. Over 300 patients were part of this studyand it was ran by doctors Stephen Porter and Angela Britt. Thesedoctors discovered that traumatic memories are different fromnormal memories in two big ways. A traumatic memory is moredetailed than a regular memory and it is also viewed from adifferent vantage point. These two differences also make traumaticmemories more difficult to forget. When a traumatic memory istriggered in someone who suffers from a traumatic disorder theywill feel like they are repeating the traumatic moment over againin the present moment.