The Body Keeps the Score

Van der Kolk argues that trauma is one of the West’s most urgent public health issues. The trauma caused by childhood neglect, sexual or domestic abuse, and war wreaks havoc on our bodies.

Over time, traumatic stress is associated with lasting functional and chemical changes in the brain. But healing is still possible.

I found this book inspiring because it takes a different perspective on treating trauma, which is the basis of so many mental health problems. The author draws on his decades of experience treating people who are haunted by their stressful experiences. I love his clear explanation that when people are deeply traumatized by war, disaster, or abuse, their reality is distinctly different from those around them, and it’s like they live on another planet.

He uses stories and case studies to explain his view that the most powerful way to treat psychological trauma is not through the mind but through… show more.

I recommend this book because it is a deep dive into trauma and how it can impact all of our lives. This book helps the reader understand the consequences of trauma and how to ultimately heal from the trauma. In my personal and professional opinion, everyone should read this book to better learn about themselves.

The key to growing and becoming better daily is to have self-awareness. This book helped me develop self-awareness about others and my clients as well. I have learned how to be more empathetic towards others by reading this book.

I am a trauma therapist, and this is the best book written about how trauma not only affects our minds but also affects our bodies.

The author has transformed my understanding of traumatic stress, revealing how it literally rearranges the brain’s wiring—specifically areas dedicated to pleasure, engagement, control, and trust.

This book is my somatic therapy bible.

This is an amazing book and, after many years, continues to make its rounds among my colleagues and other social workers who are working with youth. They appreciate having read it, and it really helps workers think deeply about what trauma-informed ways of working actually mean.

The book helps clarify how people cope with trauma and how such behaviours are more to do with fear, coping, and trying to make sense of an unsafe world. This book is full of powerful comments and quotes that will stick with you. People with trauma do not act out due to being morally… show more.

This book helped me understand why I could never talk myself out of my self-sabotage, especially the inability to stand up for myself and set boundaries.

I learned that my trauma responses are stored in my body (the nervous system) and that’s why logic and reason don’t heal them. Positive self-talk and behavior modification are nothing in the face of an unhealed nervous system.

I absolutely love books that combine intellectual rigor, genuine compassion, and an engaging writing style—and van der Kolk’s book ticks all three boxes.

Not only is it a helpful guide for understanding how trauma works and how it can be healed, it also helped me understand the significance of having a body.

Many of us tend to take this for granted, but our flesh and blood is what makes us uniquely human. Once we embrace this reality, it can benefit us in so many ways.

In The Body Keeps the Score, van der Kolk explains the lifelong impact of trauma on the mind and body, then introduces various therapeutic approaches to help survivors carry the crushing weight of their past. This book is a lifeline for survivors, validating their fragmented memories and reassuring them that their trauma responses are biological necessities rather than personal failures. As a writer, I love that many of the therapeutic approaches described in the book harness the power of imagination to reprocess traumatic memories—a transformative process of healing that’s nothing short of magical.

This widely popular book is paving the way for a revolution in awareness of how emotional energy manifests in the physical body. Finally, a medical doctor with traditional authority presents research that analytically substantiates this connection that we all have personal experience with.  I am grateful that this message is reaching so many people and helping them ask questions about how they can make connections in their own bodies to get their own healing answers. The next step is to do the work directly. ;-)

The Body Keeps the Score is well worth reading. I like how the book presented many cases to show how the brain processes information in traumas, or how it sometimes fails to process traumatic experiences. The author details in an easy-to-understand explanation how this failure can lead to PTSD. The book isn’t only about soldiers suffering from PTSD, but goes deeper into many real cases to show different reasons someone may have PTSD. I used the book for my research and learned about PTSD resulting from assault, adverse childhood traumas, and adult ordeals.