141: The Body Keeps The Score with Dr. Bessel van der Kolk

How does trauma affect us?

Yes, we feel it in our brains - we get scared, frustrated, and angry - often for reasons we don’t fully understand.

But even if our brains have managed to cover up the trauma; to paper a veneer over it so everything seems fine, that doesn’t mean everything actually is fine - because as our guest in this episode, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk says: The Body Keeps The Score.

What he means is that the effects of the trauma you’ve experienced don’t just go away, and can’t just be papered over.  Your body will still hold the evidence in tension, headaches, irritability (of minds and bowels), insomnia...and all of this may come out when your child does something you wish they wouldn’t.

Perhaps it’s something your parent always used to resent doing, and made it super clear to you every time they did it for you.

Perhaps it was something you did as a child and were punished for doing (maybe you were even hit for it...your body is literally remembering this trauma when your child reproduces the behavior).

Lack of manners, talking back, making a mess, not doing as you were told, being silly...even if logically you now know that these are relatively small things, when your child does them it brings back your body’s memories of what happened to you.

Dr. van der Kolk helps us to understand more about how this shows up for us.  Sometimes understanding can be really helpful.  But sometimes you also need new tools, and support as you learn them, and accountability.

If you’re struggling with your reactions to your child’s difficult behavior - whether you’re going into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn mode, the Taming Your Triggers workshop can help. Join the waitlist to be notified when doors reopen.

Dr. van der Kolk's Book:

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (Affiliate link).

Jump to highlights:

(01:00) Introducing Dr. van der Kolk

(01:58) Invitation to the Taming Your Triggers Workshop

(02:56) A note on some technical difficulties we had while recording this episode

(03:14) People often want easy answers: Talking about why we feel like we need pills and alcohol to deal with trauma and not make use of other methods which seem more beneficial

(08:16) "We become who we are based on the experiences we had and these early experiences really set your expectations"

(11:53) Dr. van der Kolk’s ongoing research on touch and trauma that looks into the virtually unstudied field of touch

(14:42) To effectively deal with trauma, people need to discover who they are and find the words for their internal...