The results were a mixed bag, and I’m learning that this is one area in which I need to be patient and, more important, gentle with myself.ĭr. van der Kolk’s book because (as you can likely tell by the premise of this very column) I like to “troubleshoot” myself and take proactive action to fix whatever needs fixing. I had never felt safe in my body as a child and, as an adult, it had become a protective shell, shutting down during moments both innocuous and intimate, like massages or, perhaps obviously, sex. Thoughts of my childhood violations were previously mild interjections in my day, but now they hit me like hot flashes, making me cringe and hyperventilate at work then, alone at home in my room, cry for hours. The more I discussed my childhood experiences with Amy, the more I realized that being inappropriately touched - between the ages of 6 and 9 - had ruined me. Many people also experience dissociation, which can manifest as literal desensitization in parts of the body or the inability to describe physical sensations. In the present, survivors relive their traumas in the form of fragmented images, sounds and emotion that the brain can’t register as belonging to the past. For survivors of sexual assault and other traumas, the amygdala, which initiates the body’s fight or flight response system whenever it perceives danger, can remain activated long after the threat has subsided. Trauma produces “a re-calibration of the brain’s alarm system, an increase in stress hormone activity” and, also, “compromises the brain area that communicates the physical, embodied feeling of being alive,” Mr. “The Body Keeps the Score” hinges on his idea that trauma is stored in the body and that, for therapy to be effective, it needs to take the physiological changes that occur into account. van der Kolk is a Boston-based psychiatrist who specializes in post-traumatic stress disorder and has worked with a broad range of clients, from veterans to sexual assault survivors.
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