How Trauma Affects Your Life Bessel van der Kolk ~ Chris Williamson

the body keeping the score. What do you mean? How does the body actually register this? What is the mechanism? How does it manifest?

The brain registers it, but your body experiences it and your body lives it out. So what happens is that you don't remember the trauma so much as you continue to react as if you're being traumatized. So let's say you have been sexually assaulted and you go on with your life and say, oh, it was just one incident. I'm really stupid for getting involved in it. It's not happening. And then you get excited about somebody who you want to be with. And then that person touches you and your body freezes. Or you start crying. Or you become really angry. And... Your body reacts as if you're getting assaulted. You don't make that connection, say, oh, I really like this guy and I'd like to be involved with him, but my memory of the time interferes. It's an automatic mind process that gets in the way of your letting go at that point.

Yeah, you say that trauma robs you of the feeling that you are in charge of yourself. That's a harrowing but accurate statement, I think.

Yeah. And so, you know, people defend themselves against that and say, oh, it is because he did something wrong or because he talked to me the wrong way. But at the end, just writing our new book, finished last chapter of our new book, and I started off with a quote from Marcel Proust. In order to change, you need to see the world with new eyes. So at the end, if you really want to recover from trauma, you need to, we need to help people to change their perceptions of the world. We're not going to change the world out there, but we're going to change what they see and how they experience themselves and the people around them.

Well, ultimately we are not in control of what is going to happen to us in life. We really only have control over our reactions.

Well, we don't even have control of our reactions. At some point, you need to go to the bathroom. At some point, you need to not hold your breath. At some point, you need to go to sleep. Some people will make you angry, and other people will make you feel all warm inside. You don't have much control over your reactions. You have some control over... how you behave, and that's really the difference between little kids and adults. Little kids do whatever happens to them, and they react to it. As adults, we get a prefrontal cortex, and hopefully, most of the time, we can make decisions about how we react, even though our body still tells us, don't trust this guy. You can still talk to that person as if you trust them. You know what I mean. Got it.

This is something I really want to dig into. And I think a lot of people listening will resonate with this. They are thoughtful, inquisitive, reflective people. They like their cerebral horsepower and their cognitive ability. They understand that something can occur and they can control their behavior. And yet at the same time, they have a degree of control over their behavior, even if they don't have a degree of control over their reaction and the way it makes them feel. At the same time, we also need to be aware and give respect and integrate and become noticing of the