🧠Book Review 🧠: The Body Keeps The Score: Brain, Mind, and Body In The Healing of Trauma by Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D. (✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶)

Hello everyone! It's been a while since I've last posted a book review. I just finished this lovely book and am on to the next one so I'll be going over what my thoughts were for this one, enjoy!

Synopsis Of The Book: 

Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Dr. Bessel van der kolk, one of the world's foremost experts on trauma, has spent over three decades working with survivors. In The body keeps the score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers' capacities for pleasure, engagement, self control, and trust. He explores innovative treatments --- from neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga -- that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain's natural neuroplasticity. Based on Dr. van der kolk's own research and that of other leading specialists, The body keeps the score exposes the tremendous power of our relationships both to hurt and to heal -- and offers new hope for reclaiming lives. 

About The Book: 

This book talks a lot about trauma and how it shapes us from childhood to adulthood. It brings up many interesting details of the research that Dr. Ver der kolk has presented in regards to the trauma that has formed from war veterans to 911 victims. This book deals a lot more than just trauma but the main focus of this book is to see how many areas trauma does affect not only emotionally but physically throughout our bodies. 

Favorite Part Of The Book: 

My favorite parts of the book had to have been when we get to see the actual case studies being done on people who have experienced trauma and just getting to know their perspectives and motives. We also get to go on the same journey that they went through and we get to see the individual's improvement with the trauma related recovery. 

Con:

Some areas of the book did feel a bit repetitive, almost seemed as though the book could have been condensed. Also some areas of the book were just slow and it was hard to keep up with some of the language that is said throughout the book. 

Mental Health Tie-ins:  

This book mainly dealt with trauma so here are some articles that best explain both emotional and physical trauma

Emotional and Psychological Trauma

Trauma and Shock

Videos: 

Annotations: 

" In other words, for every soldier who serves in a war zone abroad, there are ten children who are endangered in their own homes"

- I couldn't believe this point.. almost seems to sad to think about 

" The mere opportunity to escape does not necessarily make traumatized people, animals, take the road to freedom" 

- we see this a lot, it's pretty common to know that a lot of people end up in the same trauma they had just faced 

" The challenge is not so much learning to accept the terrible things that have happened but learning how to gain mastery over one's internal sensations and emotions" 

- I think this is so correct, being able to master your own emotions is a step in the right direction for recovery 

" This is a particular problem with traumatized children. The acting-out kids tend to get attention; the blanked-out ones don't bother anybody and are left to lose their future bit by bit" 

- this stuck out to me because I felt as though I could related to this a lot 

Thank you guys so much for reading this post, I hope you all have been safe, times are getting crazier and crazier but we will all get through this. Please take care of yourselves and I'll make another post soon.