More from Bessel van der Kolk’s wonderful book. If you want to know more about trauma and its healing, this is an essential buy.
‘We are fundamentally social creatures – our brains are wired to foster working and playing together.
Trauma devastates the social-engagement system and interferes with cooperation, nurturing, and the ability to function as a productive member of the clan.
In this book, we have seen how many mental health problems, from drug addiction to self-injurious behavior, start off as attempts to cope with emotions that become unbearable because of a lack of adequate human contact and support.
Yet institutions that deal with traumatized children and adults are all too often bypass the emotional-engagement system that is the foundation of who we are and instead focus narrowly on correcting “faulty thinking” and on suppressing unpleasant emotions and troublesome behaviors.
People can learn to control and change their behavior, but only if they feel safe enough to experiment with new solutions.
The body keeps the score: If trauma is encoded in heartbreaking and gut-wrenching sensations, then our first priority is to help people move out of fight-or-flight states, reorganize their perception of danger, and manage relationships.
Where traumatized children are concerned, the last things we should be cutting from school schedules are the activities that can do precisely that: chorus, physical education, recess, and anything that involves movement, play, and other forms of joyful engagement.
As we’ve seen, my own profession often compounds, rather than alleviates the problem.
Many psychiatrists today work in assembly-line offices where they see patients they hardly know for fifteen minutes and then dole out pills to relieve pain, anxiety, or depression.
Their message seems to be “Leave it to us to fix you; just be compliant and take these drugs and come back in three months – but be sure not to use alcohol or (illegal) drugs to relieve your problems.”
Such shortcuts in treatment make it impossible to develop self-care and self-leadership. One tragic example of this orientation is the rampant prescription of painkillers, which now kill more people each year in the United States than guns or car accidents.
Our increasing use of drugs to treat these conditions doesn’t address the real issues: What are these patients trying to cope with? What are their internal or external resources? How do they calm themselves down?
Do they have caring relationships with their bodies, and what do they do to cultivate a physical sense of power, vitality and relaxation?
Do they have dynamic interactions with other people? Who really knows them, loves them, and cares about them? Whom can they count on when they’re scared, when their babies are ill, or when they are sick themselves?
Are they members of a community, and do they play vital roles in the lives of people around them?
What specific skills do they need to focus, pay attention, and make choices? Do they have a sense of purpose? What are they good at? How can we help them feel in charge of their lives?’
