The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk

An overview of cutting-edge research in the treatment of trauma. It is much more than a practitioner’s manual – it offers a profound vision of the connection between our physical and psychological wellbeing, with extensive social and political consequences.

For trauma survivors, the “fight or flight” defense that is triggered to keep them safe in dangerous moments ultimately begins to work against them if not calmed down in due course.
The emotional and social consequences of trauma - anger, frustration, violence or, alternatively, closing off and shutting down – are rooted in physical parts of the brain that have to be coaxed back into calm regulation – we have to turn off the “fight or flight” alarm system, and learn to feel safe in our own bodies again.
Social attunement – being connected and in sync with others - is critical to this process of healing.
Many of our contemporary political problems, like poverty and crime, can be traced back to untreated trauma – individuals who are not capable of socially attuned functioning because they are trapped in a “fight or flight” response that has made them cognitively disorganized. As a society, we have largely responded to this by writing prescriptions for drugs.
Yet the key to long term wellbeing lies in our capacity to forge meaningful connections with others – to feel pleasure in social situations rather than anxiety, to get solace from a warm embrace or a sympathetic look, rather than feel threatened. Prescription drugs cannot develop those capacities. Van der Kolk offers alternative treatments that hold immense promise in treating trauma, provided we can direct resources away from big pharma to study them.

If social attunement is achieved through experiences where we feel in sync with others, the modern trend of social atomization is worrying. As we increasingly rely on technology to connect at a distance, and shun the institutions and groups that once brought us together, we diminish our opportunities to achieve wellbeing.

This book is far reaching. I highly recommend it.