"The Body Keeps the Score" Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D.

We are back to TRAUMA. Why?! Well, cause if we want to understand other people or ourselves, we need to understand background AKA trauma too.

Remember that "The greatest sources of our suffering are lies we tell ourselves.", So we should face our pasts and make our present and a better place for us to live in.

It's not easy to read this book, not even close, that's why I was reading it for more than one year (mostly when I was going to Poland, I would grab this book with me, read it in trains, planes or buses:))

As you already know one of my love languages is sharing a knowledge (books, movies, stories.. ) and that's why I am sharing it with you too :)

Let's start :)

What is Trauma?

When you hear the word "Trauma", what kind of actions do you consider as one?

Do you think that facing trauma is an easy thing to do?

"One in five Americans was sexually molested as a child; one in four was beaten by a parent to the point of a mark being left on their body; and one in three couples engages in physical violence. A quarter of us grew up with alcoholic relatives, and one out of eight witnessed their mother being beaten or hit."

"The children of depressed mothers are at risk of growing up insecure and anxious. Having been exposed to family violence as a child often makes it difficult to establish stable, trusting relationships as an adult."

"It takes tremendous energy to keep functioning while carrying the memory of terror, and the shame of utter weakness and vulnerability."

"It takes enormous trust and courage to allow yourself to remember."

Lessons From Vietnam Veterans

For some people war not come to an end...and that happens from the traumatic experiences (what was done to him; what he had done..).

Tom (Vietnam veteran):

"When he got upset he was afraid to be around his family because he behaved like a monster."

"I realized that if I take the pills and the nightmares go away; I will have abandoned my friends, and their deaths will have been in vain. I need to be a living memorial to my friend who died in Vietnam."

"He felt emotionally distant from everybody, as though his heart were frozen and he were living behind a glass wall." "He couldn't really feel anything except for his momentary rages and his shame."

But also we shouldn't assume that War is not the only traumatic experience.. "war is not the only calamity that leaves human lives in ruins." "For many people the war begins at home."

Alexithymia: No Words For feelings

"I pray you believe what I have said. I reported what I saw and heard, but only part of it. For most of it I have no words."

In my case sharing my emotions really helps, I often talk about my feelings and experiences, but I also understand that for some people it's not as comfortable as for me. But we should remember that in nontraumatic emotional state sharing or not sharing is a choice, but there are moments, when a person is so traumatized that they are just unable to share it; they just don't have words for their feelings. "Many traumatized children and adults simply cannot describe what they are feeling because they cannot identify what their physical sensations mean"

A patient who suffers from alexithymia: "I don't know what I feel, it's like my head and body aren't connected. I'm living in a tunnel, a fog, no matter what happens it's the same reaction- numbness, nothing. Having a bubble bath and being burned or raped is the same feeling. My brain doesn't feel."

For alexithymic people, it's crucial to reconnect with their body and mind. Building that connection can help them avoid feeling depersonalized and like a stranger in this world.

"All grown-ups were once children... but only a few of them remember it," writes Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in The Little Prince. And there can be many reasons for that. But since this blog is all about trauma, let’s not stray too far—sometimes, we don’t remember simply because we don’t want to.

As we all come from childhood, we carry a lot of knowledge from those early years. "As we grow up, we gradually learn to take care of ourselves, both physically and emotionally, but we get our first lessons in self-care from the way we were cared for."

Is that fair? Not really. But it is what it is.

Our childhood shapes so much of who we are, including our attachment styles:

"Securely attached children learn what makes them feel good; they discover what makes them (and others) feel bad, and they acquire a sense of agency: that their actions can change how they feel and how others respond. Securely attached kids learn the difference between situations they can control and situations where they need help..."

On the other hand, "children with histories of abuse and neglect learn that their terror, pleading, and crying do not register with their caregiver. Nothing they can do or say stops the beating or brings attention and help. In effect, they're being conditioned to give up when they face challenges later in life."

We often unconsciously mirror the behaviors of those around us, especially our family members. For the longest time, I believed I was just an anxious, pessimistic person. But now I see that I was really just reflecting my mother’s actions.

I can’t say I’ve completely stopped doing it, but at least now I recognize that my reactions might not actually be mine. They just feel normal because that’s what I grew up seeing.

Trapped in Relationships

"We accept the love we think we deserve"—this quote from The Perks of Being a Wallflower is one I often remind myself of, and I even share it with others. It’s such a powerful reminder that our relationships have so much to do with how we see ourselves.

And, of course, all of this has a huge impact on our relationships—whether it’s with our partners, friends, or even coworkers. The way we learned to connect (or disconnect) as kids tends to follow us into adulthood, shaping how we handle intimacy, conflict, and trust.

Sometimes, we think we’re just "bad at relationships," but in reality, we’re just replaying patterns we didn’t even choose in the first place.

Do we really "look for love in all the wrong places," or are we just more comfortable in these wrong places because they feel familiar? And what about emotions like distrust, shame, and rage? Are they just normal? Or are they more about what we've been through in the past?

Well, most of the answers we’re looking for are hidden in our past—that’s definitely how it was for Marilyn, her past shaped her view of every relationship:

"She was convinced that men didn't give a damn about others people's feelings and that they got away with whatever they wanted. Women couldn't be trusted either. They were too weak to stand up for themselves, and they'd sell their bodies to get men to take care of them. If you were in trouble, they wouldn't lift a finger to help you..." "As for herself: she was a bad seed, a fundamentally toxic person who made bad things happen to those around her."

If you ask me, the first step toward a healthy relationship is being self-aware. And to truly be self-aware, we need to learn to remember—remember who we are, where we’ve been, and what we’ve experienced.

And then maybe, we'll be able to see a vivid picture of the world around us: why are we self-destructive? why we choose emotionally unavailable people? why we have no self-worth?.. Maybe, just maybe with the answers we'll have, we can have a better life <3

The Unbearable Heaviness of Remembering

Yeah, the solution sounds simple—just remember, be self-aware, and heal. But… there’s a big but. Can we actually handle the truth once we remember it?

Because let’s be honest—some memories aren’t just old stories; they’re wounds. And digging them up means facing pain, anger, shame, or even realizing that we’ve been lying to ourselves for years. It’s one thing to remember, but it’s another to sit with those memories without running away, numbing ourselves, or pretending they don’t matter.

So maybe the real question isn’t just Can we remember? but Can we make peace with what we find?

And to actually go through with it, we need help- we have to ask for help and find a professional therapist (some of you can say that it sounds like an impossible task and I agree with you, it sounds like that, but actually it's possible).

Language: Miracle and Tyranny

"What Good is to talk about your trauma?":

"Activists in the early campaign for AIDS awareness crated a powerful slogan: "Silence= Death". Silence about trauma also leads to death- the death of the soul. Silence reinforces the godforsaken isolation of trauma. Being able to say aloud to another human being, " I was raped".." "is a sign that healing can begin".

we have to remember that if we keep secrets to ourselves and suppress our emotions, we are at war with ourselves. We deserve to be listened, to not tell only public stories, but our inner experiences too, and first of all we deserve to tell this to ourselves: "No, she did not deserve that, she should have been supported; somebody should have looked after her.."

In the second part of the book, the author explores different ways to deal with trauma-The one that resonates with me the most is getting to know my internal landscape: Figuring out the tone of my inner voice—whether it’s kind, critical, or just plain exhausting; Which parts of me are too loud, and which ones are just quietly sitting in the corner, waiting to be heard.. Realizing that we all have our own "managers" and "firefighters" inside us—parts that carry a huge weight, trying their best to protect us but most of the time burning us out in the process—was an eye-opening for me.