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| id: 13 | ||
| title: The Body Keeps The Score | ||
| img: 'feature-images/the_body_keeps_the_score-cover.png' | ||
| slug: the-body-keeps-the-score | ||
| date: September 2023 | ||
| tags: | ||
| - Wellbeing | ||
| - Physiology | ||
| - Fitness | ||
| --- | ||
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| *The Body Keeps The Score* was recommended to me by my physical therapist while I was recovering from a knee injury this last year. After hearing the title and a quick google search, I incorrectly assumed the book was solely about physical trauma. | ||
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| *The Body Keeps The Score* encompasses the history of our understanding of trauma in society. | ||
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| <!--more--> | ||
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| ### Who should read this book? | ||
| Anyone that doesn't understand the role of trauma or therapy in our everyday lives should read *The Body Keeps The Score*. | ||
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| **This is a must-read for:** Nobody, really. Though I would hope that people interested in psychology, more specifically therapy, give this a read. | ||
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| ## Notes | ||
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| ### The root of many mental health diagnoses is trauma | ||
| <small>One of the key takeaways of this book.</small> | ||
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| A.D.H.D, Depression, Bi-Polar Disorder, and several other mental health disorders are incorrectly diagnosed to people all too often when they are really suffering from trauma. | ||
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| ### Therapeutic activities that are effective in treating PTSD | ||
| - Meditation | ||
| - focused breathing | ||
| - Yoga | ||
| - Talking through the trauma (if possible) | ||
| - Drama/Theatre | ||
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| ### Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) | ||
| EMDR is a unique form of therapy that involves moving ones finger in front of the person suffering from PTSD. In layman's terms, the sufferer focuses on the traumatic event and staying calm while the therapist asks them to track their eyes on their moving finger and acknowledge their insufferable memories. | ||
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| - EMDR is quite effective. | ||
| - Research shows that after EMDR, people think of their trauma as a coherent event from the past, rather than dissociated sensations detached from any timeline. | ||
| - EMDR often provides the sufferer with an out-of-body experience. | ||
| - In essense: "Hold that image in your mind and just watch my fingers moving back and forth" | ||
| - May have similar effects to REM sleep (memory processing, emotion regulation) | ||
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| ### Yoga | ||
| While there is still limited research on the benefits of Yoga in regards to Trauma, the early studies have shown the action to be incredibly beneficial. | ||
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| Yoga: | ||
| - encourages a person to regulate their arousal and control their own physiology. | ||
| - helps a person become more in tune with both their body (sensations) and their emotions | ||
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| ### Meditation | ||
| Meditation has similar benefits to that of Yoga. | ||
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| --- | ||
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| ## Quotes | ||
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| ### Self-induced suffering | ||
| > Elvin Semrad taught us that most human suffering is related to love and loss and that the job of therapists is to help people "acknowledge, experience, and bear" the reality of life--with all its pleasures and heartbreak. "The greatest sources of our suffering are the lies we tell ourselves," he'd say. | ||
| > You can be fully in charge of your life only if you can acknowledge the reality of your body, in all its visceral dimensions. | ||
| ### The modern problem with medication | ||
| > Because drugs have become so profitable, major medical journals rarely publish studies on nondrug treatments of mental health problems. Practitioners who explore treatments are typically marginalized as "alternative." Studies of nondrug treatments are rarely funded unless they involve so-called manualized protocols, where patients and therapists go through narrowly prescribed sequences that allow little fine-tuning to individual patients needs. Mainstream medicine is firmly committed to a better life through chemistry, and the fact that we can actually change our own physiology and inner equilibrium by means other than drugs is rarely considered. | ||
| > Drugs can blunt the images and sensations of terror, but they remain embedded in the mind and body. | ||
| > Not having a diagnosis now confronts therapists with a serious dilemma: How do we treat people who are coping with the fall-out of abuse, betrayal and abandonment when we are forced to diagnose them with depression, panic disorder, bipolar illness, or borderline personality, which do not really address what they are coping with? | ||
| ### PTSD | ||
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| The storyline of someone with PTSD: | ||
| > A person is suddenly and unexpectedly devastated by an atrocious event and is never the same again. The trauma may be over, but it keeps being replayed in continually recycling memories and in a reorganized nervous system. | ||
| ### Yoga | ||
| > Changing the way one breathes can improve problems with anger, depression, and anxiety and yoga can positively affect such wide-ranging medical problems as high blood pressure, elevated stress hormone secretion, asthma, and low-back pain. | ||
| ### Therapy | ||
| > The role of therapists is to collaborate rather than to teach, confront, or fill holes in your psyche. | ||
| ### Miscellaneous | ||
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| > During disasters young children usually die their cues from their parents. As long as their caregivers remain calm and responsive to their needs, they often survive terrible incidents without serious psychological scars. | ||
| > Pavlov interpreted this as a sign of ongoing terror, which had obliterated any curiosity in their surroundings. We now know that physical immobility and loss of curiosity are also typical of frightened, traumatized children and adults. Some of the dogs sat shaking in the corner of their cages, while other, previously tame, animals struck out viciously at their handlers--again, behaviors well-known today in traumatized adults and children. | ||
| > "When the fear subsides I realize I can handle it, but a part of me doubts that I can. The pull to the past is strong; it is the dark side of my life; and I must dwel there from time to time. The struggle may also be a way to know that I survive--a re-playing of the fight to survive--which apparently I won, but cannot own." | ||
| > At least half of all traumatized people try to dull their intolerable inner world with drugs or alcohol. | ||
| > ### Controlling the Stress Response: The Watchtower | ||
| > If the amygdala is the smoke detector in the brain, think of the frontal lobes--and specifically the medial prefrontal cortex, located directly above our eyes--as the watchtower, offering a view of the scene from on high. Is that smoke you smell the sign that your house is on fire and you need to get out, fast--or is it coming from the steak you put over too high a flame? The amygdala doesn't make such judgements; it just gets you ready to fight back or escape, even before the frontal lobes get a chance to weigh in with their assessment. As long as you are not too upset, your frontal lobes can restore your balance by helping you realize that you are responding to a false alarm and abort the stress response. \ | ||
| > Ordinarily the executive capacities of the prefrontal cortex enable people to observe what is going on, predict what will happen if they take a certain action, and make a conscious choice. Being able to hover calmly and objectively over our thoughts, feelings, and emotions (an ability I'll call mindful ness throughout this book and then take our time to respond allows the executive brain to inhibit, organize, and modulate the hardwired automatic reactions preprogrammed into the emotional brain. This capacity is crucial for preserving our relationships with our fellow human beings. As long as our frontal lobes are working properly, we're unlikely to lose our temper every time a waiter is late with our order or an insurance company agent puts Is oriold (Our watchtower also tells us that other people's anger and threats are a function of their emotional state.) When that system breaks down, we become like conditioned animals: The moment we detect danger we automatically go into fight-or-flight mode. | ||
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