The Body Trauma Expert: Medicating Kids Can Harm Brain Development! Eye Movement Trick That Fixes Trauma! The Secret To EMDR Therapy! - Bessel van Der Kolk
Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, a leading psychiatrist, discusses his revolutionary work on trauma, its impact on the brain and body, and unconventional healing methods like EMDR, yoga, neurofeedback, psychodrama, and psychedelic therapy. He emphasizes connection and body-based approaches.
Deep Dive Analysis
21 Topic Outline
Bessel van der Kolk's Mission and Trauma Definition
Critique of Traditional Trauma Treatments
Understanding Trauma: Big T vs. Relational Trauma
Bessel's Childhood Experiences and Their Impact
Consequences of Child Abuse and Neglect
Parenting, Discipline, and Breaking Generational Patterns
Importance of Secure Attachment and Healing Childhood Trauma
The Body Keeps the Score: Trauma as a Visceral Experience
Somatic Approaches to Healing and Trauma's Link to Creativity
Trauma's Impact on Brain Activity and Perception
EMDR Therapy: Mechanism, Efficacy, and Demonstration
Breathwork and Yoga for Body-Mind Connection
The Role of Physical Activity and Community in Healing
Challenges of Individualistic Societies and Social Connection
Three Broad Approaches to Reversing Trauma Damage
Neurofeedback and Brainwave Regulation
Psychedelic Therapy: MDMA and Psilocybin
Bessel's Personal Psychedelic Experience and Insights
Psychodrama as a Therapeutic Tool
ADHD: Diagnosis, Causes, and Over-diagnosis
Raising Untraumatized Children and Bystander Intervention
11 Key Concepts
Trauma as a breakdown of connection
Trauma is fundamentally a breakdown of connection and synchronicity between human beings. It shifts the focus from the event itself to the disruption of relationships with oneself and others.
Trauma as a speechless experience
When a person is reliving trauma, the cognitive part of their brain often shuts down, making it difficult to articulate or rationalize the experience. It becomes a 'speechless terror' where one is overwhelmed by emotion without clear thought.
Relational Trauma (Small T trauma)
This type of trauma stems from environments where an individual's existence is not acknowledged, or they are made to feel irrelevant. It's about being unseen or unheard, contrasting with 'big T' traumas like natural disasters where community often forms.
Trauma as a perception
The impact of an event is not solely determined by the event itself, but by an individual's perception and internal adaptation to it. Early experiences create a deep internal map of the world, influencing how future events are interpreted.
The Body Keeps the Score
This concept highlights that trauma is a visceral experience, stored in the body, manifesting as physical sensations like heartbreak, gut-wrenching feelings, or stiffening. Healing requires addressing these bodily imprints, not just mental narratives.
Somatic Approach to Healing
This approach focuses on experiencing what the body feels and allowing it to do things it has been afraid to do, exploring how the body moves in the world. It aims to reconnect individuals with their physical sensations and body awareness.
Insula (brain region)
The insula is a part of the brain responsible for connecting physical sensations with body awareness. Trauma can dampen its activity, leading to feelings of numbness, disconnection, or hypersensitivity as a defensive mechanism against overwhelming visceral experiences.
Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex
This brain region acts as the 'timekeeper' of the brain, providing a sense of perspective and distinguishing between past and present. During trauma reliving, it goes offline, causing the individual to feel as if the past traumatic event is happening in the present moment.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)
EMDR is a therapy that involves moving the eyes back and forth while recalling a traumatic experience. This process helps the brain activate specific pathways that enable it to distinguish between past events and the present, effectively re-processing the memory.
Neurofeedback
Neurofeedback is a technique where electrodes are attached to the skull to harvest underlying brainwaves. Individuals can then project their brain activity onto a screen and learn to play computer games using their own brainwaves to organize them for better focus and attention.
Psychodrama
Psychodrama is a therapeutic method where individuals act out past experiences in three-dimensional space. This physical enactment makes feelings towards people or situations very vivid, allowing for emotional release and the creation of new, reparative virtual realities.
15 Questions Answered
Trauma is an overwhelming experience where one feels completely helpless and unable to cope, often leading to a breakdown of connection between human beings and a rewiring of the brain and perceptual system.
Rationalizing trauma is often ineffective because trauma is a 'speechless experience' where the cognitive part of the brain shuts down, making it difficult to process through thought alone.
Yes, small events can lead to trauma, especially relational traumas where a person's existence is not acknowledged, or they are made to feel irrelevant, which can be a very big deal for development.
Yes, childhood trauma is changeable, and with the right chance and resources, something can be done for almost everyone, though it is more complex to treat than adult-onset trauma due to its deep imprints on identity.
Trauma can cause the 'cockroach center' (peri-aqueductal gray) to fire constantly, creating a subliminal sense of dread, and can make the amygdala hypersensitive. It also shuts down the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, leading to a loss of time perspective and reliving of past events.
The most radical improvement is seeing people 'come to life' and declare their trauma is over, such as a woman who recovered from a severe car accident trauma in just three EMDR sessions.
Yoga does not 'treat' trauma directly, but it helps treat one's relationship to their body, which is often distorted by trauma. It can reactivate brain areas like the insula, helping individuals reconnect with and feel safe in their bodies.
A child becomes who people see them as; if parents or caregivers consistently convey love and care, that becomes the child's reality and identity. Without secure attachment, children develop an identity based on neglect or abuse, which is difficult to change later.
Community and social connection are critical for trauma healing because humans are interconnected creatures meant to live in groups. Bonding with others, especially in shared physical experiences, helps people survive trauma and feel safe and supported.
The three broad ways are: a top-down approach (talk therapy for understanding/insight), taking medications (to shut down the body's alarms), and a bottom-up approach (allowing the body to have experiences that contradict helplessness or rage).
Yes, touch is an elemental human comfort and can be healing. However, for those who have been beaten or molested, human touch can be complicated, and learning to live in a body that can be comforted by touch is an important part of healing.
Going to the gym, particularly weightlifting, can be extremely helpful for some individuals who have experienced trauma, as it provides a visceral experience of agency and power, helping to counteract feelings of helplessness.
He views psychedelic therapy as a true revolution, especially MDMA-assisted therapy, which he found stunningly effective. It helps people gain self-compassion, process traumatic experiences, and even develop compassion for perpetrators, opening the mind to new realities.
Bessel van der Kolk believes that ADHD, like many mental health diagnoses, is a fictitious entity and not a binary issue. He suggests that the diagnostic system is flawed and that many traumatized children meet ADHD criteria because trauma messes up focus and concentration.
Parents should ensure kids are raised within a supportive community, not just by themselves, so they can see multiple perspectives and learn that their parents are safe but also flawed. It's crucial for kids to have experiences where someone comes to their help when they are scared or unable to cope.
20 Actionable Insights
1. Heal From Childhood Trauma
Understand that healing from childhood trauma is absolutely possible for everyone, given the right chance and resources, as the brain and mind are capable of change.
2. Break Generational Trauma Cycles
Actively choose to not repeat harmful patterns from your past, especially in parenting, by making a conscious decision to respond differently than how you were treated.
3. Understand Trauma as Visceral
Recognize that trauma is primarily a physical, visceral experience stored in the body, manifesting as heartbreak, gut-wrenching feelings, or physical tension, rather than solely a mental one.
4. Embrace Somatic Healing Approaches
Engage in body-based therapies that help you experience what your body feels, allowing it to do things it has been afraid to do, and explore how your body moves in the world.
5. Utilize EMDR for Trauma
Consider Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy, which involves moving your eyes back and forth while recalling a traumatic experience, as it can help the brain reprocess the event as belonging to the past.
6. Consider Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy
Explore psychedelic-assisted therapy (with professional guidance) for profound mind-opening experiences that can foster self-awareness, self-compassion, and even compassion for perpetrators, drastically changing one’s relationship to trauma.
7. Engage in Psychodrama
Participate in psychodrama, which involves acting out past experiences in three-dimensional space, to create a visceral, physical new reality that can lead to deep emotional release and an imprint of what was missing.
8. Prioritize Community and Connection
Recognize that community and social connection are critical for healing trauma, as humans are interconnected creatures meant to band together and rely on each other for survival and well-being.
9. Raise Children with Community Support
Involve a diverse community in raising children, rather than doing it alone, to provide multiple perspectives and buffer against parental pathologies, fostering a healthier environment for the child.
10. Practice Yoga for Body Connection
Use yoga to reconnect with your senses and body, making it safe to feel what you feel, which can help reactivate brain areas dampened by trauma and restore body awareness.
11. Explore Martial Arts for Agency
Engage in martial arts to gain a visceral experience of your body’s ability to defend itself and take care of you, which can be particularly healing for those with memories of being victimized.
12. Consider Rolfing for Physical Habits
Explore intense bodywork like Rolfing, a deep form of massage, to release physical habits and frozen states in the body that may stem from past trauma, allowing you to live in a new, unfrozen body.
13. Use Neurofeedback for Brain Regulation
Utilize neurofeedback, a method that trains your brainwaves, to organize your brain activity for better focus, attention, and calm, especially if trauma has led to chronic agitation or inability to concentrate.
14. Start Healing with Self-Inquiry
Begin your healing journey by deeply exploring who you are, what you value, what works, and what gets in the way, rather than focusing solely on diagnoses or perceived sickness.
15. Define Experiences with Language
Even if trauma is a ‘speechless experience,’ finding language to define your experiences is terribly important for organizing your relationship to yourself and making sense of what happened.
16. Recognize Trauma as Perception
Understand that trauma is fundamentally a perception in your brain, an adaptation to an event, rather than the event itself, influencing how you interpret the world based on past experiences.
17. Challenge Medical Authority for Kids
Question medical advice, especially regarding medication for children, if it doesn’t align with your intuition or understanding, as drugs can interfere with natural brain growth and adaptation processes.
18. Seek Help When Feeling Helpless
Actively seek and allow others to come to your aid when you feel truly helpless or scared, as having the experience of being rescued can counteract the core traumatic imprint of being alone and unprotected.
19. Engage in Rhythmic, Synchronous Activities
Participate in activities that promote rhythmicity and synchronicity with others, such as making music, dancing, or team sports, as these are core to developing an internal sense of safety and belonging.
20. Be an Explorer in Healing Journey
Adopt a mindset of being an explorer in your healing journey, as finding what truly works often involves accidental discoveries of unconventional methods beyond mainstream approaches.
10 Key Quotes
Trauma is, to a large degree, a breakdown of connection between human beings and synchronicity between other human beings.
Bessel van der Kolk
Trauma is a speechless experience.
Bessel van der Kolk
The issue is not the event itself. The issue is the perception.
Bessel van der Kolk
You really become how people treat you early on in your life.
Bessel van der Kolk
Trauma is not a memory, it's a reliving.
Bessel van der Kolk
I found that the more traumas your patients have in their background, the more creative and successful they often become.
Bessel van der Kolk
I think the profit motive is killing good practice.
Bessel van der Kolk
You need to have the capacity for perspective and that perspective goes offline when you're in your trauma and you become a traumatized person.
Bessel van der Kolk
I became a much sadder but somewhat wiser man.
Bessel van der Kolk
The question is, where do I get the help I need?
Bessel van der Kolk