Book Review: The Body Keeps The Score

As someone who loves a good self-help book, The Body Keeps The Score has been on my radar for quite some time. You'd think that I'd be more comfortable with learning about the effects of trauma on the body, but I just wasn't ready. I was afraid to acknowledge the biological damage I might have caused myself. After years of healing intense emotions, persistent stress, and always feeling on edge, I decided to conquer my fears and finally read this book. 

​Distress can be defined as the discrepancy between the body and the mind. When your body and mind are at war with each other, it can lead to the fragmentation of the self. When you aren't completely present and in alignment with yourself, it can make you feel as if you've disassociated from reality. Even though your mind is trying to forget, your body is doing everything that it can to get you to remember.

I vividly recall experiencing some of my worst panic attacks towards the end of high school. My body felt like it was locked in a state of perpetual tension, and I was always on edge. Whether it was walking in the halls between classes, sitting at my desk, or driving to school, my body was always in panic mode. Perhaps years of suppressed emotions wanted to make them themselves known; they couldn't go on any longer living in denial and disassociation. My body was desperate for my attention, and it did everything in its power for me to see that something wasn't right. It didn't ask for my attention, it demanded it. It's kind of poetic to think that our body calls for us in that way. Our body can't speak to us, so it uses the only form of communication that it knows, which is through sensation - a good headache, panic attack, or shiver should get our attention, but how many of us would (consciously) choose to live in such eternal discomfort? 

The book brings up how some of us choose to live in our suffering as an attempt to regain control. If I recreate my trauma, then maybe I can fix it this time. All this emotional time traveling is exhausting. Rumination and obsession don't really solve anything, they just keep you stuck in your pain longer, which for some people might actually feel safer than not having any pain at all. So many of us identify with our trauma that it becomes a part of us, and letting it go can be scary, especially when it means having to re-tell the story of ourselves. Maybe, in a strange way, I felt comfort in my panic attacks and identifying with them because they gave me a story that I could keep telling myself. It gave me an excuse for why I was the way that I was, and why I went through all the challenges that I did. 

One of the ways in which we can move past our trauma is to ground ourselves in the moment. The past is all the way back there, and it needs to stay there. We need to separate ourselves from our trauma, and then be able to hold it in our hands and look at it as if it were a separate entity. If we allow it to consume us, then we're not really living in or for the present moment - we are living in a non-existent realm, stuck and afraid as we keep replaying our own suffering.

When trauma is resolved, does it rise to the top of our heads and float away? Does it simply disappear? Or does it become dormant inside of us as it loses its grip? Whatever the case may be, unresolved trauma shouldn't be trapped inside of our bodies. It should be set free, allowing each and every one of us the chance to be our greatest and fullest selves. 

Some quotes that deeply resonated with me:

• "We have learned that trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on mind, brain, and body. This imprint has ongoing consequences for how the human organism manages to survive in the present."
  
  
• "Traumatized people become stuck, stopped in their growth because they can't integrate new experiences into their lives...being traumatized means continuing to organize your life as if the trauma were still going on - unchanged and immutable - as every new encounter or event is contaminated by the past."
  
  
• "When you can't be fully here, you go to the places where you did feel alive - even if those places are filled with horror and misery."
  
  
• "We now know that panic symptoms are maintained largely because the individual develops a fear of the bodily sensations associated with panic attacks. The attack may be triggered by something he or she knows is irrational, but fear of the sensations keeps them escalating into a full-body emergency."
  
  
• "As long as you keep secrets and suppress information, you are fundamentally at war with yourself. Hiding your core feeling takes an enormous amount of energy, it saps your motivation to pursue worthwhile goals, and it leaves you feelings bored and shut down. Only after you identify the source of these responses can you start using your feelings as signals of problems that require your urgent attention."