The Body Knows the Score

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel A. van der Kolk
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The latest in trauma treatment

Van Der Kolk, a leading researcher, and treater, of PTSD and other mental traumas, summarizes the latest findings on what works to help treat trauma, whether from the clinical lab with examination of the brain, treatment protocols with groups of patients, or actual individual and group therapy sessions.

If you're still struggling, you may have some new ideas here to either bring to a counselor or to try on your self at home if you're in the right conditions. (I see some things that could be adapted for journaling, more conscious self-talk, etc.)


View all my reviews

One idea he talks about is Internal Family Systems Therapy, something I'd never heard of before. Here's a website that's the home for IFS counseling training.

IFS, like Family Systems Therapy, talks about family structures, but in terms of we trauma victims having a "family" inside. This family is made up of one or more of:
Exiles — the hurt ones;
Managers — the ones that present smiley faces not just to the public but to the Exiles to quietly keep them in place; and
Firefighters — the ones that do ANYTHING to shut down an Exile when it's threatening to blow up.