The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

These new paths to recovery activate the brain’s natural neuroplasticity to rewire disturbed functioning and rebuild step by step the ability to “know what you know and feel what you feel.” They also offer experiences that directly counteract the helplessness and invisibility associated with trauma, enabling both adults and children to reclaim ownership of their bodies and their lives.

Drawing on more than thirty years at the forefront of research and clinical practice, Bessel van der Kolk shows that the terror and isolation at the core of trauma literally reshape both brain and body. New insights into our survival instincts explain why traumatized people experience incomprehensible anxiety and numbing and intolerable rage, and how trauma affects their capacity to concentrate, to remember, to form trusting relationships, and even to feel at home in their own bodies. Having lost the sense of control of themselves and frustrated by failed therapies, they often fear that they are damaged beyond repair.

Readers will come away from this book with awe at human resilience and at the power of our relationships—whether in the intimacy of home or in our wider communities—to both hurt and heal.

“Essential reading for anyone interested in understanding and treating traumatic stress and the scope of its impact on society.” — Alexander McFarlane, Director of the Centre for Traumatic Stress Studies