Hello all,
A paper published in Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience came to my attention recently called, “The Body Does Not Keep the Score”, which was referenced in another article called “Does the Body Keep the Score?” in Psychology Today.
Both caught my attention because of the obvious reference to the book called, The Body Keeps the Score” by Bessel van der Kolk, which came out in 2014 and was a best seller for many years. The book puts forth his theory that trauma is stored in the body, in the cells, even when our minds have “forgotten” it. He says many things, with many stories, in the book, of course, but this is one of the key points.
I read the book. I even met the author at an event in Vermont at some point [he had a home there for a while, I think?], where he was treated, with bated breath, as a celebrity by most of the people there.
I remember many things about the book, but the thing I remember most after my first read is that I felt a bit, I don’t know, hopeless, or something. I didn’t have the words for it at the time. But when I read it a second time, I did get it. In the ways he lays out his theories, there is a great deal of stigmatizing people with trauma.
That, because trauma is stored in the body, that it will always be there. It also suggests that violence happens outside of cultural violence, in a way that I feel further isolates people who work with traumatic experiences in their lives.
There is a “those poor people who have trauma” vibe to the whole book.
I remember thinking, after my first read, “I will always be tainted by my trauma. And I will never be truly whole.”
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There are a few things here for me that feel relevant to our conversation about the difficulty of facing into possibilities. In our next article, I am going to explore more what the new paper suggests about trauma and the body – including the mind.
But, first, I want to explore some of the prejudices around trauma and the process/healing around trauma in the mainstream conversation. Because I do feel that the tone and assumptions in “The Body Keeps the Score” are not new or unique to this particular author or his theories.
![Dancing Girl Wearing a Sword, Sunayama Gosei, Japanese [18th-19th Century]](https://anetymologyofdreaming.com/wp-content/uploads/elementor/thumbs/Dancing-Girl-Wearing-a-Sword-Sunayama-Gosei-Japanese-18th-19th-Century-rrftqfxb3x4afr4vl4u8mynlgcntwpjr51slp3u47a.jpg "Dancing Girl Wearing a Sword, Sunayama Gosei, Japanese [18th-19th Century]")
As a culture, meaning the many variations of Western cultures, there is and has been an assumption around what is possible for people who have experienced trauma. Not really that a person can integrate and alchemize traumatic experiences but more, that once trauma has been experienced, a person is somehow broken and will continue to make terrible choices. The best one can do, with this set of assumptions, is to try to learn to be more normal or become a “functioning member of society” in some pre-determined way.
[I remember many of the “success” stories in the book ended with the “patient” getting married in a straight marriage and even having kids. As if this is the goal for everyone.]
Being a functional member of society, however, for many people who have suffered traumatic experiences means many things – such as taking the blame for the experiences [talk to any person who has suffered sexual violence about this one] or keeping silent about the experiences or keeping the experiences only in the private context rather than in the large contexts of culture and cultural traumas.
What I mean by this last one is that trauma is often spoken about without the context of issue of racism, sexism, ablism, homo/transphobia, violence experienced because of religious beliefs, etc. Many – maybe most – trauma experiences are in some kind of greater context based on cultural beliefs. A woman’s experience of sexual violence is not just about her singular experience but about how the culture encourages, fuels, justifies violence against women. A Black person’s experience of any kind of violence, harassment or oppression is not just about her/their/his singular experience but about the violent oppression of racism in the culture and as a basis of the culture.
If we feel that our experiences are singular to us, then we feel more isolated and helpless and maybe even “broken”. But when we realize we are not alone in our experiences and that many of them are fueled by violent beliefs and actions woven in the culture, it changes what is possible.
When we are alone, possibility may feel impossible and completely not “for” someone like us.
But when we are not alone, it does change things. Including opening the possibility of possibility and transformation.
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Sometimes I feel that the idea of “once traumatized, always broken” is part of the culture because it may be a little scary to the culture that this could not be true. Part of a culture that is founded on and still functions by oppression of others based on race, gender, sexuality, ablism, etc. is that the oppression and violence maintain the power of the mainstream and engenders hopelessness. If people are “broken”, then they are broken, not the culture and the culture never has to change or be questioned.
And if people move toward possibility who once believed that possibility was not possible, then it could and does change the balance of power in a culture. Power that does not want to be changed.
Books that come from the mainstream and carry assumptions like “The Body Keeps the Score”, also carry the fear of the mainstream around people who not just experience trauma but speak about it and want to heal and change.
In other words, I have been speaking of how, as individuals, we may have fear arise around change and possibility. Well, this is true as a culture, as well.