Trauma doesn’t vanish when danger does. According to psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, the body acts as an archive, holding fear, pain, and survival instincts long after the moment passes.

Van der Kolk explains why conventional treatments for trauma fall short, and the promising new pathways to healing that science is revealing.

0:00 Chapter 1: Trauma, explained

1:21 PTSD in veterans

2:09 Connecting with others after trauma

4:28 The prevalence of trauma

5:35 What is trauma?

8:19 The greatest protector of trauma

9:37 Trauma in the brain

11:46 Automatic responses

14:56 The brain and our experiences

16:52 Re-experiencing trauma

19:58 Brain development and trauma

27:29 Chapter 2: Shaping childhood trauma

28:27 Reenacting trauma in relationships

31:41 Understanding each other’s trauma

34:59 Long term effects of child abuse

36:34 Chapter 3: How to treat trauma

36:57 “A post-alcoholic culture”

37:27 Zoloft, Prozac, and other PTSD drugs

39:15 The Adverse Childhood Experiences study

40:48 Drug addiction

43:02 Eye movement desensitization

and reprocessing (EMDR)

45:48 Unconventional trauma treatments

46:30 The brain-body connection

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About Bessel van der Kolk:

Bessel van der Kolk MD spends his career studying how children and adults adapt to traumatic experiences and has translated emerging findings from neuroscience and attachment research to develop and study a range of treatments for traumatic stress in children and adults.

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