Trauma by nature drives us to the edge of comprehension, cutting us off from language based on common experience or an imaginable past.
Catalog
Bessel Van Der Kolk
AllYour Brain On Trauma (27)PTSD (26)Trauma (25)Aftermath of Trauma (24)The Body Keeps The Score (24)Complex Trauma (23)Hypervigilance (17)Trauma Response (16)Effects of Trauma (15)Past In The Present (11)Effects of Chronic Violence (9)Childhood Trauma (7)Toxic Stress (7)Childhood Emotional Neglect (7)Toxic Stress In Childhood (6)
Adrenaline is one of the hormones that are critical to help us fight back or flee in the face of danger. Increased adrenaline was responsible for our participants’ dramatic rise in heart rate and blood pressure while listening to their trauma narrative.
When people are forced to submit to overwhelming power, as is true for most abused children, women trapped in domestic violence, and incarcerated men and women, they often survive with resigned compliance.
Mindfulness has been shown to have a positive effect on numerous psychiatric, psychosomatic, and stress-related symptoms, including depression and chronic pain.
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” or “I was battered by my husband” or “My parents called it discipline, but it was abuse” or “I’m not making it since I…
The best way to overcome ingrained patterns of submission is to restore a physical capacity to engage and defend.
When something reminds traumatized people of the past, their right brain reacts as if the traumatic event were happening in the present.
Long after a traumatic experience is over, it may be reactivated at the slightest hint of danger and mobilize disturbed brain circuits and secrete massive amounts of stress hormones. This precipitates unpleasant emotions intense physical sensations, and impulsive and aggressive actions. These…
Dissociation is the essence of trauma. The overwhelming experience is split off and fragmented, so that the emotions, sounds, images, thoughts, and physical sensations related to the trauma take on a life of their own.
It is enormously difficult to organize one’s traumatic experiences into a coherent account—a narrative with a beginning, a middle, and an end.