Bessel van der Kolk: Trauma, the Brain & the Body

Bessel van der Kolk in Australia, 2019

Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane:
March — April 2019

In my practice I begin the process by helping my patients to first notice and then describe the feelings in their bodies—not emotions such as anger or anxiety or fear but the physical sensations beneath the emotions: pressure, heat, muscular tension, tingling, caving in, feeling hollow, and so on. I also work on identifying the sensations associated with relaxation or pleasure. I help them become aware of their breath, their gestures and movements.

The mind needs to be reeducated to feel physical sensations, and the body needs to be helped to tolerate and enjoy the comforts of touch. Individuals who lack emotional awareness are able, with practice, to connect their physical sensations to psychological events. Then they can slowly reconnect with themselves.

Bessel van der Kolk

Author, The Body Keeps the Score

Bessel van der Kolk

Bessel van der Kolk, MD, is a clinical psychiatrist whose work integrates mind, brain, body, and social connections to understand and treat trauma. His research ranges from the impact of trauma on development and brain imaging, to the use of yoga, neurofeedback, EMDR, and theater for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder.

He is a professor of psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine, medical director of the Trauma Center in Boston, and co-director of the Complex Trauma Treatment Network, NCTSN.

He is the author of more than 150 peer reviewed scientific articles and several books including the New York Times best-seller The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, Brain, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.

The Body Keeps the Score:
Mind, Brain, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

by Bessel van der Kolk

The Body Keeps the Score is clear, fascinating, hard to put down, and filled with powerful case histories. Van der Kolk, the eminent impresario of trauma treatment, who has spent a career bringing together diverse trauma scientists and clinicians and their ideas, while making his own pivotal contributions, describes what is arguably the most important series of breakthroughs in mental health in the last thirty years.

We’ve known that psychological trauma fragments the mind. Here we see not only how psychological trauma also breaks connections within the brain, but also between mind and body, and learn about the exciting new approaches that allow people with the severest forms of trauma to put all the parts back together again.

Norman Doidge

Author, The Brain That Changes Itself

Latest News

Bessel van der Kolk: A Personal Invitation
Trauma is an inability to inhabit one’s body without being possessed by its defenses and the emotional numbing that shuts down all experience, including pleasure and satisfaction. […]
Carl Rogers and the Person-Centred Approach
In this broadcast from BBC Radio 4, Claudia Hammond examines the work of Carl Rogers' revolutionary approach to psychotherapy. […]
Eating Disorders and Motivational Interviewing
Eating disorder clients show higher treatment completion rate with Motivational Interviewing (more than double). Motivational Interviewing (MI) can be a useful intervention to engage individuals with severe eating disorders prior to participation in intensive treatment. […]
Depression in Patients with Coronary Heart Disease
The prevalence of depression is high in patients with coronary heart disease and it has a significant impact on the patient’s quality of life, adherence to therapy, and an independent effect on prognosis. The National Heart Foundation of Australia offer a practical easy to use 9 item tool for screening. […]
The Link between Sleep and Alzheimer’s: it’s a Vicious Cycle
A build-up of beta-amyloid on the brain, thought to be essential in the development of Alzheimer’s disease, can prevent deep sleep. This in turn leads to an impaired ability to expel this toxic protein. […]
Weight gain… important treatment implications
After a night of bad sleep, the hormone that controls appetite is adversely affected, and emotional stress is heightened. […]
Hallucinogens Treating Alcohol Dependence: A Proof-of-Concept Study
There has also been a renewed interest from researchers into the so-called ‘classic hallucinogens’ – LSD, mescalin, DMT and especially psilocybin - for use in a range of treatment applications of late. […]
Methamphetamine Dependence Treated with ADHD Medication
A 2015 study published in the DARU Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences from the Faculty of Sciences presented a random, double blind, placebo-controlled analysis of the treatment process involving participants with a methamphetamine dependency and sustained-release methylphenidate (MPH-SR). […]
Motivational Interviewing: hypertensive patients’ self-care agency
Motivational Interviewing & hypertensive patients' lifestyle changes. […]
Motivational Interviewing: helping smokers quit
Motivational Interviewing and smoking behaviour. […]
Are you Stressed and Hooked on Sugar?
The connection between increased sugar consumption and stress. […]