Bessel Van Der Kolk Trauma

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Everyone has their preconceived notions of mental illness in general. Some people view mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety as “in one’s head” or they may accuse those who suffer as attention seekers. While there are general attention seeking personality traits, it is foolish to believe that mental illness doesn’t cause significant debilitation in people’s lives. As these assumptions above exist, I too incorrectly believed that trauma and PTSD lied in the victim’s conscious and could be corrected by standard talk therapy. Through the course of this class so far this proved to be far from the truth. I will use Bessel Van Der Kolk’s book The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body In The Healing of Trauma as the basis for my claims …show more content…
For example, when I lie in bed trying to go to sleep I might think of a minor instance where I embarrassed myself socially and I feel then the way I did when it originally happened. I feel a knot in my stomach and my throat as I mulled over that embarrassing moment. The feeling subsides after temporary discomfort because my brain knows how to calm itself when it realizes that immediate danger is not present. I believe this is the same concept that Van Der Kolk clearly portrays in traumatized people except their brains cannot calm themselves down as their brain functioning has become inept at soothing. I am not comparing a simple embarrassing moment in everyday life to the debilitating experiences of trauma, rather trying to draw some connections so I can understand it better. It is hard to imagine being unable to move forward and experience life’s joys that are offered to us because of being in a constant state of distress. Moving forward I hope to learn more about the concept of how trauma affects the mind, body, and brain as a whole. It has become clear to me that trauma and PTSD are very complex issues and I hope to understand it better and learn to treat and care for these individuals as I hope to do so in my
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