The Body Keeps the Score
Bessel van der Kolk, 2014
A psychiatrist's account of how terror lodges in the body, and what actually helps: breath, movement, other people. Part neuroscience, part fifty years of patients.
Bessel van der Kolk
Van der Kolk grew up in postwar Holland, playing in bombed-out buildings; his father, an outspoken opponent of the Nazis, had been sent to an internment camp.
Feels like hope, unease and tenderness.
The look on a parent's face is a child's first mirror.
If your parents’ faces never lit up when they looked at you, it’s hard to know what it feels like to be loved and cherished. If you come from an incomprehensible world filled with secrecy and fear, it’s almost impossible to find the words to express what you have endured. If you grew up unwanted and ignored, it is a major challenge to develop a visceral sense of agency and self-worth. Books by Bessel van der Kolk
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