
The Body Keeps the Score: Book Summary - jger15
https://praxis.fortelabs.co/the-body-keeps-the-score-summary/
======
tomhoward
I could be seen as a living case study for these theories.

I started experiencing a complex combination of physiological symptoms in
early adulthood (actually in childhood in some ways), that gradually got worse
into my 30s.

All kinds of treatments were suggested and tried over several years, but
nothing really moved the needle until I started regular practice of
subconscious emotional healing techniques. I've been doing this type of work
for about 7 years now.

There is improvement in a lot of areas, though the process is not complete. I
still have some anxiety and muscle tension/pain, and evidence of inflammation
in my body. But it's not nearly as bad as it was before I started the
emotional work. And I keep finding new emotional baggage to heal. So it's a
long journey, but the results are clear.

It's hard to talk about with peers, as there's a general attitude among
scientifically-minded people that the notion of a link between
emotions/thoughts and physiology is absurd.

Yet the very same people will generally insist that there is no mind-body
distinction, and that consciousness is obviously just an emergent phenomenon
of brain matter/chemistry.

Apparently it doesn't occur to a lot of people that if mind and body are one
and the same, mind activity must surely be deeply interconnected to
physiology.

Anyway, that's a little of my story.

AMA.

~~~
veganjay
Thanks for sharing your experience. Could please describe more about
subconscious emotional healing techniques? How did you learn about it and is
it a solitary practice or one that is guided by a professional?

~~~
tomhoward
Everyone curious about this is welcome to email me (address in profile).

If you don't hear from me, hit me up again; I'm intending to prepare a doc
that explains the approach I've used. I don't want it to be too long, but I
just need to find the time to do make it adequate.

But if you can't wait for me to do that, reading/watching content by Bruce
Lipton is a good start.

~~~
circlefavshape
Uurgh, dude - it's not the emotional healing that puts scientifically-minded
people off, it's Bruce Lipton's language.

"The subconscious mind is operating at a vibrational frequency of theta".
What? That's the kind of nonsense I get from the stoners down in my local pub.

If his techniques work, they work, and I'm happy for you that you have
improved your life. I, however, find such language so off-putting that I can't
imagine ever trying anything like this

~~~
tomhoward
Are you actually in need of this kind of help in the first place? If not, why
not just ignore it and move on, rather than posting drive-by bile like this as
your one-and-only contribution to the entire thread?

His presentation style is not for everyone, sure. Nobody’s is. He talks in
pictures and metaphors, which for many people is the most effective way to
receive information.

Not you? No worries!

But consider that you’re only talking about persuasiveness of
language/presentation for yourself, not science.

The very quote you picked out to mock is perfectly valid science.

~~~
donkeyd
I feel like I'm in need of this kind of help. I have a lot of physical and
emotional issues, which I'm pretty sure are related. However, that kind of
language does put me off. I'd prefer if someone just uses normal language to
communicate.

So if you know someone who communicates the same ideas in a different way, I'd
really appreciate it.

~~~
tomhoward
You're welcome to contact me for my own doc once I prepare it. I'd welcome
your feedback and help in making it valuable to you.

For what it's worth, I come from a mainstream scientific background, and my
own view on this subject is not heavily based on Lipton's.

------
djaychela
I'm 48, and suffered from debilitating back pain until the last few years; it
started when I was badly beaten up when I was 19, and got worse as the years
went on - each episode would become worse and longer-lasting until around 7-8
years ago it was so bad I was in constant pain all day, every day, but with
episodes of pain so bad I can't really describe it every couple of months or
so. I've never been overweight or had any other issues, and people couldn't
understand why my back was so bad or the pain so intense. (me included)

It was only learning to relax (and starting meditation) and stopping seeing my
body as the enemy (thanks to the kind encouragement of my girlfriend as well
as working with Alexander technique teachers) that I started to make any
improvement, and this combined with appropriate physical exercises has meant
that I've been fortunate to have nearly 2 years of normal life (which to me in
the past would have just been a dream) - no spasms, no 'episodes', and now I
can do normal things like go for a walk and not worry if I'll make it back,
etc.

I was physically abused by my father when I was a child (fortunately he died
when I was 8), and I really didn't think it had effected me much, but I now
realise I spend most of my time out in public assessing who poses a physical
attack risk to me, and it's only since talking my my girlfriend about it
(she's training to be a counsellor and has this book by her bed) that I've
realised that this is -not- normal!

My life is unrecognisably better since taking this sort of thinking on board.
I'm definitely a 'science' person - lifelong atheist, try to be as rational as
possible, etc - but we still don't know everything, particularly of how
incredibly complex the human brain is, and how it can control so much of not
only our experience, but our existence.

~~~
eurekin
Can you elaborate on the specific techniques you used (Alexander technique,
meditating)?

~~~
djaychela
In terms of meditation, I've been using Sam Harris' "Waking Up" app as it's
chimed with me greatly; I was originally using Headspace, but it didn't click
with me in the same way (plus I'm a fan of Harris and have listened to his
podcast since it began).

Alexander Technique lessons have been a revelation in terms of understanding
how I move, and how much tension I was carrying in my body all the time, plus
learning to use the 'right' muscles in the body for posture. There is also an
element of meditative mindset present with both my teachers, which has helped
with my default 'judgemental' mind-state. I think that Alexander Technique is
hugely important, but it's subtle and difficult to describe - I think it's a
case of going for a few lessons and seeing if it works for/with you, as it
sounds like "woo" to a lot of people - it did to me until I tried it.

I think the combination of all these things has helped greatly to move me in
the right direction towards a better way of living, and not fighting myself
all the time.

~~~
myth_drannon
As an alternative to Alexander Technique if it's difficult to find
practitioners, you can try Feldenkrais method.

------
eindiran
I don't understand how "trauma is universal" is a reasonable interpretation of
the facts that are related there. I'm always wary of an argument that hinges
on the meaning of a word being changed (the subtle expansion of "trauma"; the
standard definition being called "acute trauma" instead), but in this case I
don't think even the expanded definition of trauma supports the conclusion
that trauma is a "near universal human experience".

The ACE study mentioned ([0]) suggests that about 2/3 of people have 1 or more
ACE, but after looking at the definition of ACE they used, it appears to use a
significantly weaker definition of trauma than even the expanded one given
explicitly in the article: it includes having a parent with a mental health
issue, having a chronic health condition while young, or being chronically
separated from a parent (due to eg divorce).

Further, it looks like there is quite a bit of clustering: people with ACEs
that qualify as classic traumas tend to have several.

Perhaps trauma is much more pervasive than I thought, but it looks to me like
the definition of trauma was changed quite significantly to make the claim
hold.

[0] [https://www.aap.org/en-
us/Documents/ttb_aces_consequences.pd...](https://www.aap.org/en-
us/Documents/ttb_aces_consequences.pdf)

There is more info on the wiki page here as well:

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_Childhood_Experience...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_Childhood_Experiences_Study)

~~~
tomhoward
I agree with that, and held back from including it in my original comment to
avoid letting it be too long.

Through the subconscious healing work I've done, few of the events/issues I've
processed are ones that I would characterise as _trauma_. Little of it
involves abuse, violence, separation or anything else that fits the
conventional definition of _trauma_.

But it is a snowballing history of unpleasant life experiences, which all
compounds and steadily amplifies one's underlying sense of anxiety, fear and
distrust of themselves and the world, along with the severity of physiological
symptoms.

~~~
kqr
> But it is a snowballing history of unpleasant life experiences, which all
> compounds and steadily amplifies one's underlying sense of anxiety, fear and
> distrust of themselves and the world

This fits in so much better with my understanding of how humans learn other
things as well: through many tiny increments, not in one sudden dramatic
event.

------
meesterdude
Great book, by the father (to most at least) of PTSD and CPTSD. Has revealed
for me the role of trauma in my life, and those of basically everyone around
me.

But after reading it, i felt a little... lost. I knew a lot about the problem
space, and some solutions outlined, but it wasn't integrated within me, and
all i had was a few therapies I could try out and hope the best for.

Luckily, the next book I picked up was Mindsight by Dr. Daniel Siegel, and
that has helped _immensely_ in applying the knowledge of The Body Keeps Score,
to bring about a shift in focus and presence in our bodies.

One thing he talked about that i found of interest is a column of neurons,
only 6 deep, that make up our perceptions of reality. the top 3, take on a top
down approach from the cortex downwards; while the bottom 3 come up from the
limbic area of our sensory inputs - and it is in the middle of space of the
column that reality appears - a mix of our past perceptions and preferences,
with what we are observing in the here and now.

So, What happens with PTSD? There is a shift towards the top-down thinking,
and a muting (or overriding) of limbic signals. In the tug of war of 6
neurons, the top down wins out over our perceptions - allowing people to
experience and truly relive flashbacks of traumas like war in their bedroom -
they are detached from their limbic signaling.

Which is why - mindfulness, meditation, and being more present in your body
matter so much. What you pay attention to matters - and allows us to
hone/reshape firing patterns.

[https://www.amazon.com/Mindsight-New-Science-Personal-
Transf...](https://www.amazon.com/Mindsight-New-Science-Personal-
Transformation/dp/0553386395)

------
bloopernova
Ironic that the pain clinic doctor who recommended this book to me was also
the most abusive doctor I've ever met. They caused trauma through emotional
abuse and gaslighting to multiple patients before they were fired.

~~~
christefano
I’m so sorry that happened to you.

For what it’s worth, Bessel Van der Kolk is not without issue himself. Here’s
a partial transcript that I wrote up (so any mistakes are my own) when
listening to a podcast episode about trauma and abuse. The relevant part is
around time code 30:00.

[https://www.probablypoly.com/post/episode-25-interviewing-
sa...](https://www.probablypoly.com/post/episode-25-interviewing-samantha-
manewitz-from-polyamory-s-me-too-survivor-pod)

Trigger warning: trauma, gaslighting, and abuse

Mandee Conant: Well, I think it’s important not to discount the book, More
Than Two, because we know that Eve had a lot of input into this book, but as a
whole, just because someone writes a book about something does not make them
an expert in it, and I think we kind of… as a community we kind of took that
because their book was one of first how-to manual what to do, what not to do
resources fo us, so he must be an expert. And we just took that, we took that
too easily, and we need to learn to not do that.

Samantha Manewitz: And sometimes even when when people are experts they can
still be terrible people. For example, Bessel Van der Kolk, who founded The
Trauma Center in Brooklyn, which is my back yard. He wrote wrote the book, The
Body Keeps the Score, which is required reading in any grunt school and
required reading for anyone who ever wants to go into trauma work. Period,
full stop.

I was initially applying for a job at The Trauma Center, and then it came out
in The Globe that his co-writer and co-founder and CEO was horrifically
abusive and he created a toxic work environment, and the way he responded was
just textbook gaslighting, and then sort of [wrote this letter] why these
people didn’t come tell him to his face. Yes, why would someone with 1 or 2
years under their belt make ever make a criticism about this person who the
luminary of trauma work. If anyone should know better, it’s Bessel Van der
Kolk.

~~~
jeancasimir
"The Globe that his co-writer and co-founder and CEO was horrifically abusive
and he created a toxic work environment, and the way he responded was just
textbook gaslighting" Not very helpful to throw somebody under the bus for
having a bad work partner...

~~~
christefano
Well, I’m not throwing anyone under the bus. I’m literally quoting what others
are saying. Here are a few more articles:

[https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/03/08/meet-world-
rekn...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/03/08/meet-world-reknowned-
author-center-trauma-program-controversy/izjBaELj9iFgdLxPRGSdgI/story.html)

[https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/03/07/allegations-
emp...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/03/07/allegations-employee-
mistreatment-roil-renowned-trauma-center/sWW13agQDY9B9A1rt9eqnK/story.html)

[https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/famous-trauma-therapist-
fire...](https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/famous-trauma-therapist-fired-
allegedly-traumatizing-staff-214559444.html)

[https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/famed-trauma-therapist-
respo...](https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/famed-trauma-therapist-responds-
allegations-bullying-outrageous-story-213600039.html)

The reason I mentioned the controversy around Bessel van der Kolk and The
Trauma Center that he co-founded (and was fired from) is that his book is
basically required reading for many people entering the mental health field. I
strongly believe people deserve the right to know about what happened so they
can form their own opinions.

------
mindgam3
I cannot praise this book highly enough. Every single person who has ever
experienced depression or anxiety should read it.

------
abledon
_Bottom-up regulation involves recalibrating the autonomic nervous system
(ANS), which originates in the brain stem. We can access the ANS through
breath, movement, or touch._

sad as it is, the state of modern yoga, and the bullsh* * of lululemon, 500hr
certs, and instagram etc, people had it figured out so long ago, how to go
underneath the conscious layer and heal trauma through moving meditation.

I wonder how the future parents of this generation will reduce trauma being
carried in their bloodline or add to it?

------
Pick-A-Hill2019
I too found the book extremely helpful and informative. A therapist I know
recommended a companion book by Peter Levine called Healing Trauma (ISBN:
9781591796589), also available on YT as an audio book. It uses mental imagery
as a way of relieving the symptons of trauma without having to relive the
actual event(s). Although some of the imagery exercises are sometimes
brutal/exhausting it seems the basic under laying theory of the book is using
a form of exposure therapy reduces the impacts of flashbacks to the point of
ripples in a stream of consciousness rather than the usual roaring tidal wave.
YMMV.

------
kbos87
I had seen and passed this book over a number of times because I never
experienced what I thought was true trauma. It was only after evidence of past
trauma came out in some neuropsych testing I recently did to see if I had ADHD
that I reconsidered my past experiences and how they may have impacted who I
am today. I’m looking at some things differently and understanding how they
may have affected me - growing up LGBT and isolated as a result, with parents
who had a dysfunctional and often rocky relationship. I’m starting to see that
trauma doesn’t necessarily mean you were subjected to some sort of violence or
single life shattering event, especially as a child.

------
alpaca128
> The lawyer would get totally absorbed in devising a strategy for winning a
> case, and would stay up all night enmeshed in the details. “It was like
> being in combat,” he said. He felt fully alive, and like nothing else
> mattered. But when the case finished, win or lose, he would lose his energy
> and sense of purpose.

This sounds like me but with programming. It's the one thing I can always do
and focus on no matter how the rest of my life is going. But outside of it I
constantly need to push myself to do anything.

~~~
arandr0x
Find more exciting stuff to do outside of it. There's something of a
percentage of the population that are probably meant to be running on loads of
adrenaline all the time, and people are happy to capitalize on their
restlessness to make them produce things to sell at work and buy things to
feel better outside, like unhappy ever-moving little economic wheels.

------
twoquestions
> All of us, but especially children, need such confidence—confidence that
> others will know, affirm, and cherish us.

 _But they won 't._

I don't know what fantasy land the author and reviewer live in, but here in
America in 2019, the world is a dangerous, knife-edged, and pitiless place
where it's a constant fight of all against all. Anyone you meet, even
immediate family members, is your enemy by default, and usually an ally at
best. Everyone ruthlessly exploits everyone else to survive, everyone kills
and dies by inches to eat tomorrow.

I've no idea where these people come from saying people love and support one
another. Out here, others are either threats or exploitation targets, not
partners.

Very good article nevertheless, helps to sort out adaptive things from
maladaptive things.

~~~
marmadukester39
This worldview you are trapped in will damage you in exactly the ways
enumerated above. I hope that you find a new story to live in.

~~~
viklove
I disagree, and if you go through life expecting everyone to constantly
support you, you won't make it very far once you start to face any real
adversity. You have to learn to rely on yourself, at least that's what my
experiences have shown me.

You may be living in a story, but the rest of us have to live in the real
world.

------
netfl0
It is really hard to determine what qualifies as trauma in this article.

It seems like a spectrum of course, but it is hard to tell what region of the
spectrum is being focused on.

~~~
Hnrobert42
One of his primary arguments in the book is that trauma is not always a
dramatic event like those usually associated with PTSD. Instead, trauma,
especially as experienced in childhood, can be sustained abuse, degradation,
neglect with a cumulative impact equal to that of a dramatic event.

------
alexandercrohde
I wanted to upvote this, but the more I read it the more it felt
unscientifically culty.

Claims pretty much every psychiatric inconvenience (distraction, laziness,
stress, restlessness) can be caused by "trauma." Proposes "trauma" is so
blanket that anyone/everyone can have it.

This would all be terribly interesting if there were links to scientific
studies _validating_ any of this. Let me know when there's a "cure" for trauma
that treats distraction/laziness and a double-blind study finds clinical
significance for it.

I'll let the FDA vet my panaceas for me, thank you very much.

------
numbers
Thanks for the summary, I will definitely be reading this!!

------
saaaaaam
How curious to see this here. I got talking to a guy on a train journey the
other day and he gave me this book. He said it had changed his life.

------
jeromebaek
It’s a great book.

------
mitchtbaum
[https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=lPVBrRd9wCo](https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=lPVBrRd9wCo)

------
peteretep
> Consider the case of antidepressants. If they were indeed a permanent, long-
> term solution, depression should by now have become a minor issue in
> society. Yet it has not made a dent in hospital admissions. The number of
> people treated for depression has tripled over the past two decades, and one
> in ten Americans now take antidepressants.

This is not how logic works.

~~~
jonfw
Would you care to support that statement?

~~~
peteretep
> If they were indeed a permanent, long-term solution, depression should by
> now have become a minor issue in society.

Chemotherapy is a permanent, long-term solution for cancer, and yet cancer has
not become a minor issue in society. Anti-depressants are life-saving
medication for many many people, but not everyone gets the right dose, not
everyone continues taking them, and in some people they plain don't work.

Claiming that they're somehow not a solution for depression because they don't
work for everyone, all the time, is logical fallacies all the way down.

> Yet it has not made a dent in hospital admissions

This is a stupid sentence. First, it's not sourced. Secondly, in the hospital
admissions of whom? New patients or admissions of patients on anti-
depressants? The first is an absolutely pointless statistic because -- who
knew?! -- medicine that hasn't been administered doesn't work.

If he's claiming that over the group of people taking anti-depressants, their
rates of admission post anti-depressants doesn't decline, that's still a
shitty statistic, for a whole range of what should be obvious reasons, but I
can spell out for you in a further comment if needed, but start with the fact
that most people _develop_ mental health issues as they get older, and almost
anyone who's hospitalized for a mental health issue will get medicated at that
point moving forward, and anyone who's been hospitalized once for depression
is dramatically more likely to be hospitalized again.

Unless the exact statistic being cited here is that there's no difference in
readmission rates for patients who have been hospitalized for depression
between those who took their medicine and those who didn't, it's absolutely
ridiculous to be using to support his argument. Did I mention he didn't cite
it?

> The number of people treated for depression has tripled over the past two
> decades

So? It seems like "common sense" that as a society we're better at talking
about mental health than we used to be, and referring (rather than simply
jailing) the mentally ill than we used to be. I bet his source (oh look, he
didn't fucking cite it again) attributes this to many many many other factors
rather than the non efficacy of anti-depressants

> and one in ten Americans now take antidepressants.

Again, this has nothing to do with his argument

