The Body Keeps The Score
Bessel van der Kolk
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Bessel van der Kolk
Author of the Book
The Body Keeps The Score is one of the most eye opening books I've ever read.
Thoughts
When I first read The Body Keeps The Score it was validating and overwhelming. I think it was the first book I read on any kind of abuse, and so much of it was lost on me. I barely had any understanding of emotional abuse, even though I had been accusing my parents of it for year. I hadn't even come close to processing my childhood rape, I was still just referring to it as "the rape" or "I was raped" but not really thinking about what happened. I tried to use it as a guilt trip to emotionally abuse my parents, not knowing they had no idea what I was talking about and thought I was just exaggerating the past in a "rage". No one recognized that I was having panic attacks, they were just considered part of my Bipolar mood swings and got dismissed. No one dug deeper, not even me. In fact, while reading this the first time, I thought I had "gotten past" my molestation.
Now, almost 2 years later, after thinking Asperger's explains my problems better, and coming to learn through hospitalization from anxiety and panic attacks during my divorce... I have PTSD. More specifically Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. But as The Body Keeps The Score describes, it has been notoriously difficult to get that term and its definition into the DSM for formal diagnosis. So officially I have PTSD. My psychiatrist of 20 years never knew about my molestation and immediately recommended that I seek EMDR treatment. Something that is talked about repeatedly in this book that I didn't notice before. I thought EMDR was bunk until he recommended it, he said he did too at first. And I'm surprised to read that Attachment Theory is also talked about repeatedly in the book, something that I didn't notice before, and yet another thing I "decided" was bunk between reading the book the first time and now. I'm starting to notice that some deep part of my brain was diligently trying to prevent me from exploring anything that might help me address my Trauma.
I'm not surprised at how this 16 hour long audiobook is still amazingly easy to read, I can sit for 1, 2, 3 hour chunks like it's nothing.
I'm not surprised at how this 16 hour long audiobook is still amazingly easy to read, I can sit for 1, 2, 3 hour chunks like it's nothing. And after almost a dozen EMDR treatments, and a lot of progress addressing and releasing that molestation, I'm able to see so many things that I don't remember when reading it the first time. Like how mood swings can be caused by trauma and misdiagnosed as Bipolar, which isn't the case for me most likely, I was diagnosed with Bipolar before the molestation. But it is quite possible that the emotional abuse I experienced for over a decade before that was enough for me to have necessary trauma to get a misdiagnosis. I do know that the mood swings have only gotten worse since the molestation, and the eating myself into oblivion started immediately after getting released from that residential school that it happened in.
This second read through, combined with the EMDR treatments, is helping me see how far my dissociation really has engulfed my life. How it has desensitized me to emotional, verbal, and sexual abuse, to the point where I have had almost no ability to empathize with others about how distressing many behaviors that I do and want from others actually are. Reading it this time has shown me why I have leaned on others for moral guidance, and why when I trusted myself for my own moral choices things went horribly wrong. Through more and more EMDR treatments my dissociation feels in hindsight like there is a barrier between me and the world, "protecting" me from what others are "too weak" to handle. Either due to their moral sentiments, or lack of mental health tools, or cowardice, or some other lack of skills, knowledge, or experience that I had and they didn't.
I have had almost no ability to empathize with others about how distressing many behaviors that I do and want from others actually are.
During my marriage, I got more and more confidence for a long time. I started believing in myself, believing that I actually knew what I was doing in more and more areas of life. I started to go from know-it-all to convincing authoritarian like those I had rebelled against in the beginning of my rise in confidence. Worst of all it was hurting the people that were most desperate, vulnerable, and hurting. And it especially hurt my wife, who had more reason to post-rationalize than anyone. More and more I became isolated, people were pushing me away when they started to notice I may have something to do with their life getting worse, or because I ripped into them during a bout of frustration at their "disobedience" to my "wisdom".
Now I'm so glad they all pushed me away, especially my wife, soon to be ex-wife at the time of writing this. Who deserves to live her life on her own terms, and have her full autonomy back, even at the cost of my best friend and my reputation. I both deserve it completely and don't deserve it, but from her perspective and my newly learned respect for her, I totally deserve everything she has done and said to me and about me. Her reality, and feelings, are just as valid as mine, and when the topic is her experiences it is more valid and possibly the only valid perspective. Surely it is the perspective that matters the most, and this goes for anyone from my past that was hurt by me and my hurt.
The Body Keeps The Score has started to show me that the years during my marriage and dating my wife that I was completely unmedicated both hurt and helped me immensely. I was no longer numbed so much that I couldn't see my moods, my hurt, and all the stuff that had been muted about me for the benefit of others; in my own ignorance of how it was benefitting me. Now that I am medicated again, I appreciate the medication in ways I never did. I also had to finally put to use all the tools I learned in a decade of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, so now I can self regulate and self soothe much better than before. The self soothing became nearly impossible after about the second year of my marriage, but now with meds it's getting easier and easier. But the unmedicated time also helped my Traumas rise to the surface, all the emotional abuse, verbal abuse, and childhood sexual abuse.
With 1 in 5 to 1 in 3 people experiencing different types of abuse, this book is one I cannot recommend enough. Either you or a loved one can surely benefit from you reading it. It is long, and often time difficult to read for many reasons. But the effort will benefit you for a lifetime.
This part of the book is really giving me hope that I can improve that with more trauma therapy
Cooking
Stress hormones of an unabused person are released in proper events, such as saving loved ones from a burning building, and then they stop being released. Other situations stress hormones are useful are taking someone to the hospital, or even pitching a tent, and cooking. Trauma survivors struggle with stress hormones being released correctly, interfering with such activities.
This helps me understand my extreme struggle with cooking and learning to cook, especially in stressful times of my life. The big problem with that is that I get stressed way more easily than others, so they end up carrying that burden of my incompetence, or whatever you want to call my inability to carry my own weight. I usually had some sort of excuse or guilt trip I would come up with, or a goto one that worked every time. This part of the book is really giving me hope that I can improve that with more trauma therapy, and prevent the same sort of problems that created so much stress and burden in my marriage for Sarah.
This is something that is an undeniable fact of my reality
Rewired Brain
The more I re-read The Body Keeps The Score, the more things stick out to me like I’m reading it for the first time. Especially how sexual abuse, particularly in childhood leads to certain types of thoughts.
For me it can be summed up into 1 phrase “I’m a worthless piece of human garbage”.
This isn’t something I believe, or think sometimes about myself when I’m insecure or make a mistake. This is something that is an undeniable fact of my reality, as absolute as the fact that the sun will rise tomorrow morning. It is neither good, nor, bad to me anymore, it simply is. This is the reality that my abuse has created for me. I’m trying to undo it with EMDR, but until I hit some unforeseen goal line… it is still an absolute fact for me.
I know this is what my trauma has created in my mind. Yet it is still true to me
Trauma Thinking
Let’s break this down, into all it’s granular components. What does it mean to me to be a worthless piece of human garbage.
- I am unlovable, and anyone who says they love me has an agenda and that agenda is to literally and metaphorically rape me. It is my prerogative to abuse them before they get a chance to abuse me, so they know what not to do to me.
- I am disgusting, and anyone who tries to tell me I’m attractive in any way is just taking pity on me and is further proof that I am unlovable.
- I am evil, I must be, or else I would not have been raped. And because of my evilness I deserve to be unloved and disgusting for the entirety of my existence.
- All the pain others feel around me is my fault, I hurt them with my very evilness, and my unlovable disgust. If I do not torture myself for their pain then I only fail to not hurt them more, I deserve all the pain others feel. It’s not my role to try and help them receive the pain, but inflict their pain on myself as punishment for my evil actions of being in their life at that moment.
- I am unclean, and thus unworthy of any affection, compliment, or pleasures others mistakenly waste on me. They either pity me, or are not yet aware of how evil and disgusting I really am to my very core.
- I am a failure, I failed at life, to exist without being abused. I failed to not deserve my abuse, and because of my evilness, deserved my abuse and all the failure that I can get. Any times in my life I don’t fail, is due to my evilness and I must pay for what I don’t deserve. I am unworthy of success, or having any of the goodness or success that others experience.
- I am a burden, and am unworthy of other peoples care. Others are supposed to use me, not care for me, and any failure for me to accept this is further proof that I am evil and a failure. I must remember my place, beneath everyone else.
- Anyone that shares anything with me, will eventually never want to share with me ever again. Whether it be love, friendship, or intimate connection, others will see I was undeserving and disgusting and vow to never share those things with me ever again.
- I deserve to be dead, but don’t deserve that relief. Anyone that gets too close to me, and makes the mistake of doing so, will want to kill themselves. This is the pain I cause to others that I must inflict on myself instead. I am the fault of anyones depression around me, I am the source of depression and pain in anyones life that knows me.
I know this is what my trauma has created in my mind. Yet it is still true to me, and maybe one day it won’t be true, but I can’t believe that will ever be the case... yet.
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