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Bessel van der Kolk: How eye movements heal old trauma

Psychiatrist behind The Body Keeps the Score on why talk therapy stalls; how EMDR, yoga, and psychedelic sessions reach trauma the body still relives.

Bessel van der KolkguestSteven Bartletthost
Dec 23, 20242h 2mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 2:17

    Intro

    1. BK

      I've proven how helpful EMDR can be for PTSD and depression.

    2. SB

      Why and how?

    3. BK

      Well, trauma is reliving, and whatever you're feeling is real, as opposed to feeling like a memory. But in our research, we discovered that if you move your eyes back and forth as you recall a traumatic experience, your brain is able to say, "This is what happened to me in the past." And 78% of the people we studied who had adult onset trauma were completely cured.

    4. SB

      Can you do it on me?

    5. BK

      I could.

    6. SB

      Ssh. (camera shutter clicks)

    7. BK

      What do you see?

    8. SB

      Bessel van der Kolk has been described as maybe the most influential psychiatrists of the 21st century. And for over 40 years, his clinical research has revolutionized how we understand trauma and its impact on our brain and body.

    9. BK

      Your early childhood experiences create who you are.

    10. SB

      How many of the people that you treated in your practice have childhood trauma?

    11. BK

      About 90%, and it's very difficult to change.

    12. SB

      Are they changeable?

    13. BK

      Yes. That is the great news. But the problem is the focus is not on helping people. The focus is on running successful finished organizations. And even though I was the first person who studied yoga for PTSD, it was very effective, and then there's psychodrama and neurofeedback where our results were stunning. People are so conformist. We already know the answers. Let's not explore anything new. But let's do the science and see how well it works and for whom.

    14. SB

      And what about psychedelic therapy?

    15. BK

      It's very effective.

    16. SB

      Have you ever done a psychedelic drug?

    17. BK

      Yeah. Of course.

    18. SB

      What did you learn?

    19. BK

      That my quest for understanding trauma had to do with my own childhood trauma, all the pain, the suffering.

    20. SB

      Earlier when I asked if people could heal from their trauma, have you healed from yours? This has always blown my mind a little bit, 53% of you that listen to this show regularly haven't yet subscribed to this show. So could I ask you for a favor before we start? If you like this show and you like what we do here and you wanna support us, the free simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the subscribe button. And my commitment to you is if you do that, then I'll do everything in my power, me and my team, to make sure that this show is better for you every single week. We'll listen to your feedback. We'll find the guests that you want me to speak to. And we'll continue to do what we do. Thank you so much. (upbeat music) Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, you've been described as maybe the most influential psychiatrist of the 21st century by the Financial Times. What is the mission

  2. 2:17 – 2:54

    Bessel's Mission

    1. SB

      you've spent your life pursuing?

    2. BK

      I have been interested in how people survive extreme situations, how people can, uh, overcome the history of people doing terrible things to each other, and how we can create a better world in that regard actually. So it... so the, the mission has been about social, but the investigation has been very much based on what we're learning about brain science, what we're learning about psychological functioning, et cetera, et cetera.

    3. SB

      And this word trauma seems

  3. 2:54 – 4:22

    What Is Trauma?

    1. SB

      to be central to your work. And when I looked before this conversation-

    2. BK

      Yeah.

    3. SB

      ... at the rise in the use of this word online and people searching this word, it's pretty staggering what I found.

    4. BK

      Yeah.

    5. SB

      There's this graph that shows a huge drop, jump-

    6. BK

      Yeah.

    7. SB

      ... in people using the word trauma. What is your view on this subject matter of trauma, specifically how we've misunderstood what it is?

    8. BK

      Well, there has been an evolution, which is quite striking. And when I f- when I first started to study trauma, I was on the research floor at Harvard. Um, and my colleagues said, "Why are you studying trauma, Bessel? When you croak, nobody will ever talk about trauma again." Like it was a completely alien subject. Um, and now everybody talks, everything's a trauma. And so from being nonexistent has become a total explanatory mode. And so we have gone, as we always do, from one extreme to the other. And my primary interest these days is not so much into tr- trauma. Trauma started it, but somewhere along the line, I got to realize that trauma is to a large degree a breakdown of connection between human beings and synchronicity between other pe- human beings. And these days, I'm much more focused on how we can help people establish a relationship to themselves and to the people around them.

    9. SB

      When people are suffering from-

  4. 4:22 – 5:48

    What Trauma Treatments Do You Disagree With?

    1. SB

    2. BK

      Yeah.

    3. SB

      ... some kind of psychological disorder-

    4. BK

      Yeah.

    5. SB

      ... whether it's depression, anxiety-

    6. BK

      Mm-hmm.

    7. SB

      ... um, PTSD, what is it that you disagree with with the traditional view of how to treat them?

    8. BK

      People are being taught methods that they say can cure people in eight sessions, which they can't. (laughs) And so there still is this... what people learn in school these days, although no good clinician I know actually practices that, is to help people's thinking out, to straighten out people's thinking and to make them not think these crazy thoughts like... (laughs) And, um, there really is no evidence that we can do that.

    9. SB

      Is that cognitive behavioral therapy?

    10. BK

      Yeah, yeah, yeah, cognitive restructuring sort of thing, or that you get people better by blasting them with trauma and then before too long they get desensitized to the trauma. And I think both of these methods are just... they don't get it. It completely doesn't get the issue at hand actually. Um-

    11. SB

      Why?

    12. BK

      I cannot talk you into being a reasonable person. People are not reasonable people. And trauma is as unreasonable as you can be. That's really at the core of... if you understand trauma is that your brain and perceptual system gets rewired so you see things almost entirely through the light of the past experience rather than current experience.

    13. SB

      Okay.

    14. BK

      Mm-hmm.

    15. SB

      So if I've, if I'm traumatized-

  5. 5:48 – 6:47

    Does Rationalising Your Trauma Help?

    1. SB

    2. BK

      Yeah.

    3. SB

      ... talking about my trauma doesn't necessarily fix my trauma?

    4. BK

      Trauma is a speechless experience. So we did the first neuroimaging study about people reliving their trauma, and we saw that the entire cognitive part of their brain disappears.... that when you're in your trauma, you're just one ball of emotion, and there's no thinking. So you're, you're confused. You're befuddled. It is, uh, as Shakespeare says, "You, you suffer from speechless terror." You become dumbfounded. And so the whole traumatic experience is just beyond belief, and so you stay in a state of confusion and agitation. And then finding language for yourself at this point is terribly important to help you to begin to organize your relationship to yourself. It's not enough, but it's a v- but language and defining your inex- inexperience is terribly important.

    5. SB

      The word trauma, as you say, has been thrown around a lot.

  6. 6:47 – 9:26

    What Is Considered Trauma?

    1. BK

      Mm-hmm.

    2. SB

      Um, and it's become a bit of a cultural joke to some people when you say, you know-

    3. BK

      Yeah.

    4. SB

      ... something happens to you, you go, "Oh, I, I feel triggered."

    5. BK

      Yeah.

    6. SB

      "Um, I'm traumatized," et cetera. What actually does count as trauma?

    7. BK

      Trauma really is an overwhelming experience of, oh my god, huh? When something happens and you're completely helpless and there's nothing in you that knows how to deal with it.

    8. SB

      People talk a lot about small T trauma and big T trauma.

    9. BK

      Yeah, I'm not a fan of that.

    10. SB

      Okay. 'Cause s- so-

    11. BK

      Yeah, yeah.

    12. SB

      ... explain why not.

    13. BK

      Uh, well, there's, uh, w- w- you need to be more accurate. The, but, but the small T trauma is, is a very real trauma, when your environment around you doesn't acknowledge your existence. Most people, for example, after natural disasters, do very well because people get together after natural disasters. I've seen it where we have a cabin in Northern Vermont, we have had terrible floods, the neighbors get together, they help each other-

    14. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    15. BK

      ... and you get a sense of cohesion actually and a sense of meaning, "We're doing this together." The small T traumas have to do with, um, not acknowledging that what's going on with you. Um, uh, saying to kids, uh, "Stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about. No, you don't matter. No, actually, your dad is a drunk because you are such a difficult kid, that your father was doing okay until you came into the family and you must have been too much for him and you caused him to be the person that he is." As I said, eh, the, I think that people being, uh, small T trauma, it's relational trauma, which is a very big deal for most of the people I get to see in my practice. Most people come in not because of big T traumas, it is because, "Nobody saw me. Nobody heard me. Um, I was irrelevant. Um, we always had to take care of my mom or my dad, uh, but there was no room for us."

    16. SB

      So if you get fired from your job and it's a traumatic event-

    17. BK

      Yep.

    18. SB

      ... um, for you because you, you get, I don't know, you get, you lose your friends-

    19. BK

      Yep.

    20. SB

      ... you lose the job, your parents-

    21. BK

      Yep.

    22. SB

      ... are embarrassed about you, can that become trauma? Something like that?

    23. BK

      Yes, you could, depending on how you d- define it. And for some people it does and for some people it doesn't. You know, um, depends again on the context. Uh, for some people, you get fired, you go like, "Well, I didn't like those assholes anyway." Or-

    24. SB

      Yeah.

    25. BK

      ... um... Yeah.

    26. SB

      I, I ask this because I'm won- I'm wondering-

    27. BK

      Yeah.

    28. SB

      ... if there's a lot of people listening

  7. 9:26 – 10:05

    Can Small Events Lead to Trauma?

    1. SB

      now that I'm trying to understand if their small experience, which other people think is trivial, actually could have resulted in some kind of deeper trauma response.

    2. BK

      Absolutely. At the end, the issue is the perception. The i-

    3. SB

      Your perception?

    4. BK

      Your perception. The issue is not the event itself. You and I may have had the same events happening, and for me, it reminds me about my brother torturing me or it reminds me about my mom being sick and not paying attention to me or whatever, and for me, it becomes a very big deal. And for you, it goes like, "Yeah, you know, but I have so many talents. Why not try something else?"

    5. SB

      And can you give me an overview of the work you've done in your

  8. 10:05 – 12:29

    Bessel's Experience as a Psychiatrist

    1. SB

      life-

    2. BK

      Yeah.

    3. SB

      ... that have fed into all of the knowledge and in- information that you have? Just for anyone that might not know who you are.

    4. BK

      Yeah.

    5. SB

      What is that sort of body of work?

    6. BK

      I had a very good psychiatric training, um, in one of the Harvard hospitals, and then I, I was, I went in the last state mental hospital in Boston, which was also interesting. Um, I, it was a sanctuary for very disturbed people. And so that institution gets closed. I go work at the Veterans Administration Hospital. Um, I met these guys who were people who I looked up to. They were good athletes, competent people, helicopter pilots, all my age, and these guys had broken apart and just fallen apart. I go, "Oh." And they reminded me of some of my relatives who I grew up with who also had been concentration camp survivors and Japanese camp survivors. And then I learned much else after that. But that really opened up my eyes to that, that people can be broken by life experiences, and that really intrigued me tremendously.

    7. SB

      This is-

    8. BK

      Yeah.

    9. SB

      ... central to your story is this early experience. You said earlier that you, you were born in 1943?

    10. BK

      In 1943. Very important. When you're born has a huge impacts on who you become. So my earliest imprint is of my father at some point was detained by the Germans. He was not in concentration camp, but, uh, he was supposed to go off there. My mom is by herself, uh, raising small kids in hiding right next to the place where the Nazis are launching their rockets to go to London, so half of the rockets fell into our backyard. And, you know, I have no conscious imprint of that, but, uh, I grew up like a kid growing up in Ukraine today. Um, and a, a lot of kids my age died. I was a very sickly child. There was a lot of hunger and misery. Half my generation died of starvation. And so I grew up with the incredible pre-conscious...... imprint of what kids in Ukraine and Gaza are going through right now. Um, and that must have left a trace in my curiosity and my being, including a trace of having a body that's very sickly.

    11. SB

      You were born in 1943-

    12. BK

      Yeah.

    13. SB

      ... in

  9. 12:29 – 15:17

    Bessel's Parents

    1. SB

      Nazi-occupied-

    2. BK

      Netherlands. Yeah, yeah.

    3. SB

      ... Netherlands. Okay. And you're the middle children of five?

    4. BK

      That's right, yep.

    5. SB

      You were very sick as a child?

    6. BK

      Yeah.

    7. SB

      What were your parents like in terms of love, affection, all those kinds of things?

    8. BK

      My mother was more or less broken by the pandemic of 1919 in, in which her father developed, um, Parkinsonism and became one of those Oliver Sacks type people. So my mother was a very frozen person, um, which had a great impact on me. Uh, my father, he was very conscientious, loving.

    9. SB

      You described your mother as being a frozen person.

    10. BK

      Yeah.

    11. SB

      And it had an impact on you.

    12. BK

      Yeah. Having a frozen mother has an impact on you. (laughs)

    13. SB

      What was that impact?

    14. BK

      The impact is that, uh, if you have a mother who is not available to love you and care for you, that, that becomes part of your perception of the world. And that means that, uh, there's a lot of work to be done about learning about affection and intimacy and, uh, closeness and vulnerability and all those other things. Um, yeah.

    15. SB

      Your mother would faint whenever Bessel would ask her what her life was like when she was a little girl.

    16. BK

      No, no, I asked her only once. Um, I was already a junior professor at Harvard, had two kids, and my parents came to visit me. And here's an example of the sort of parents I had. I left at age 18 for the US because I wanted some distance between me and my parents. Then 15 years later, quite a few years later, I wrote to my parents and said, "It's customary for parents to come and visit their children sometimes. Would you be interested in coming to visit me?" That never crossed their mind. (laughs) And so they came, and we actually had a very pleasant time, very civilized. And so on the last day that my parents were visiting us, I said to my parents, "Now you probably don't really know what I do for a living, but a lot of my work has to do with incest, and I wonder where does that come from?" And I turned towards my mom and I said, "You know, I wonder if something happened to you that I've picked up, if that you were, were you ever sexually abused?" And my mom fainted, fell off her chair, and my father said, "Look what you did to your mother." And my then wife, uh, my father carried my mother into her bed. So I don't know if my mother was sexually abused. She just fainted when I asked her the question. (laughs) Yeah? But that's how it goes, huh? You rarely get a straight answer to any of these things.

    17. SB

      You said that child abuse and neglect is the single most

  10. 15:17 – 15:53

    Consequences of Child Abuse

    1. SB

      preventable cause of mental illness, the single most common cause of drug and alcohol abuse, and a significant contributor to leading causes of death such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer, stroke, and suicide.

    2. BK

      That's true.

    3. SB

      And in your book you say that eradicating child abuse in America would reduce the overall rate of depression by more than half, alcoholism by two-thirds, and suicide, drug use, and domestic violence by three-quarters.

    4. BK

      Yeah, that doesn't come from me, huh? There's data from this very big CDC study, uh, done by Vincent Felitti, and so this is data on 25, 25,000 people, yeah, yeah.

    5. SB

      People have got increasingly interested in their early

  11. 15:53 – 16:28

    Is It Important to Understand Childhood Experiences?

    1. SB

      childhood experiences as a lens to understand who they are as adults.

    2. BK

      Yeah.

    3. SB

      Is that overblown, or is it important to understand?

    4. BK

      It's not overblown to be curious about h- how you became who you became and what the in- internal ingredients of your cake are. (laughs)

    5. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    6. BK

      I think that's, uh, very good for people to be aware of, uh, how they be, how they have come, uh, uh, become the creatures who they are. I think being curious about yourself is very necessary, uh, also to be curious, in order to be curious of other people.

    7. SB

      When you said about your mother-

    8. BK

      Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    9. SB

      ... and the incest thing-

  12. 16:28 – 17:17

    Was Your Mother an Incest Victim?

    1. BK

      Yeah.

    2. SB

      ... y- y- y- you'd realized as an adult much of your work focused on incest, and then you turned to your mother and asked her if there was an experience she had had and she fainted.

    3. BK

      Yeah.

    4. SB

      Do you believe that there's a part of you that knew?

    5. BK

      No, but I don't know if my mother was incestuous. I know that my mother was very uptight about sex, and I wonder what happened to her. And her fainting in response to that means that I triggered something, but I don't know what I triggered. I would not jump to conclusions that my mother was an incident victim. Something happened to her, but I don't know what it is.

    6. SB

      Okay, but the indicator-

    7. BK

      Yeah.

    8. SB

      ... was that she was always uptight about sex. It wasn't that you-

    9. BK

      Unbelievably uptight about sex. Terrified about sex. Yeah.

    10. SB

      How many of the people that you treated in your practice have,

  13. 17:17 – 17:46

    How Many Patients Trace Issues to Childhood Experiences?

    1. SB

      y- could you trace their adult dysfunction back to an early ch- childhood experience?

    2. BK

      Pretty much 90%, let's say. Yeah.

    3. SB

      N- 90%?

    4. BK

      But, you know, that, that's me, huh? The, uh, I mean, people with autism or people with OCD don't come to see me.

    5. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    6. BK

      And so I have, I have a very narrow filter in the way of who comes to see me.

    7. SB

      And what's the crux of what happened to them as a child,

  14. 17:46 – 19:03

    Examples of Child Abuse

    1. SB

      if you had to simplify it?

    2. BK

      The crux is, uh, not being acknowledged and honored and, for who they were as kids. That's the big thing is, y- uh, they were unseen and people did terrible things to them and nobody seemed to bother to protect 'em.

    3. SB

      When you say terrible things-

    4. BK

      Terrible things is being beaten up, being sexually molested, having their bones broken.

    5. SB

      What if it was just words?

    6. BK

      ... also words. Uh, one of my patients' mother had said to her all the time, "Oh, you'll never have friends. If people really get to know you, they will all reject you because you're such a terrible person."

    7. SB

      Who said-

    8. BK

      That's pretty, that's pretty good.

    9. SB

      ... who said that?

    10. BK

      Oh, yeah. Well, mother of one of the people I'm treating, but it would not be an unusual thing to say. People do terrible things to kids.

    11. SB

      Intentionally and un- unintentionally?

    12. BK

      Um, automatically.

    13. SB

      Automatically?

    14. BK

      Yeah.

    15. SB

      Is that hurt people hurting people?

    16. BK

      Yeah. No, you see it in supermarkets and parking lots and stuff like that. Yeah.

    17. SB

      What do you see?

    18. BK

      You see people abusing their kids, saying terrible things to their kids.

    19. SB

      I guess it's difficult for parents because they sometimes

  15. 19:03 – 21:37

    How Culture Influences Parenting

    1. SB

      think, "Well, I've gotta raise a, a child that's not dysfunctional, so I'm gonna have to punish them and I'm gonna have to discipline them as a way to make sure that they grow up to be healthy and rou- well-rounded."

    2. BK

      Yeah. That's an interesting cultural issue, uh, that, um, that is sort of how my parents' and grandparents' generation saw their kids, and then people who grew up in Northern Europe completely changed their attitude. Now, you go to jail if you hit your kids in, in Sweden, for example. I think me in Holland also. Not in the US. So, people have really changed their mind. But in the US, when I talk about the, uh, the downside of, of physical punishment of the kids, oftentimes particularly Black people will say, "I want to raise my children knowing about right and wrong, and the Bible says I need to punish my children, and that's what I'm doing, and you should not subvert the teachings of my church." And I don't argue with that because, um, at least not straight on.

    3. SB

      I grew up in a household where I was punished physically-

    4. BK

      Yeah.

    5. SB

      ... in pretty significant ways.

    6. BK

      Yeah.

    7. SB

      Ways that I probably couldn't share-

    8. BK

      Mm-hmm.

    9. SB

      ... because it's just quite, you know, significant.

    10. BK

      Quite horrendous. (laughs)

    11. SB

      Yeah, yeah, and w- you know what I mean?

    12. BK

      And they are horrendous stories, actually. Yeah.

    13. SB

      I was born in Africa-

    14. BK

      Yeah.

    15. SB

      ... so I've got a African mother-

    16. BK

      Yeah.

    17. SB

      ... and an English father.

    18. BK

      Yeah.

    19. SB

      Um, it's funny 'cause I look back on it, and I go, and this is just me rationalizing in hindsight-

    20. BK

      Yeah. Yeah.

    21. SB

      ... I go, "I'm happy that I had a home where there was discipline-"

    22. BK

      Yeah.

    23. SB

      "... because if I didn't have that home, then I wouldn't maybe have left the city." We're one of the few families that actually left the city, the small, fairly small town-

    24. BK

      Yeah.

    25. SB

      ... relatively small town to some of the towns I live in now, and went and did a lot of things with my life, and I was, I didn't get caught up in drugs like some of my friends. I, I wasn't-

    26. BK

      Yeah.

    27. SB

      ... dysfunctional, and my mother couldn't read or write as well. So, I feel somewhat thankful. But I'm doing, I'm like rationalizing in hindsight because it somewhat ended up okay-

    28. BK

      Yeah.

    29. SB

      ... in certain measures of my life.

    30. BK

      But, but-

  16. 21:37 – 23:49

    Disciplining Children

    1. SB

      there was, I was physically punished a lot-

    2. BK

      Yeah.

    3. SB

      ... um, it was predictable.

    4. BK

      Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    5. SB

      So I knew that if I, and I understood why-

    6. BK

      Yeah.

    7. SB

      ... I was being punished.

    8. BK

      Yeah.

    9. SB

      So, I kicked the, I was playing football in the house-

    10. BK

      Yeah.

    11. SB

      ... and broke ornaments-

    12. BK

      Yeah.

    13. SB

      ... or something like that.

    14. BK

      Yeah.

    15. SB

      It was never unpredictable.

    16. BK

      Right. But, uh, uh, som- something comes to my mind as you're talking, is that same visit that my parents finally came, um, I had a three-year-old daughter at the time. We were staying at a house and put my parents on the first floor right next to the main bathroom. And then my three-year-old daughter went to that bathroom that was next to my parents' bedroom, and my mother came out and yelled at me and said, "How dare she use our bathroom? You should punish her." And I almost did. I had an immediate impulse, "Mom said I should punish my, my three-year-old for doing it," and I started to walk towards her and go like, "Oh, my God. I'm about..." Actually, I feel like crying saying it. "Oh, my God. I feel I'm about to reenact what my parents did to me." And I made the decision, "No, Mom. She is allowed to use this bathroom," and I set a limit on my mom, which was quite a transformative experience for me to actually realize that I'm about to repeat what was done to me, which people do routinely, and I was about to beat my daughter. And I said... that's the end of the story. Yeah.

    17. SB

      It still causes you a lot of emotion?

    18. BK

      It's actually, I'm surprised how much emotion comes up talking about it. Yeah, yeah.

    19. SB

      Why do you think it, it's, so em- so much emotion comes up when you talk about that?

    20. BK

      Good, good question. Um... it's an interesting question. Um, 'cause it allowed me to have a life. Look, much of life is automatic, but we can make a choice to do things differently. You start owning yourself, and that's the moment I started to own, "I'm responsible for my kids. I'm going to do, follow what I think is right." It's really a moment of liberation but

  17. 23:49 – 25:29

    Liberation Equals Separation

    1. BK

      also a moment of separation. Like, "I will not be like you."

    2. SB

      It's tremendously hard to do that because it's going against your-

    3. BK

      Y- right.

    4. SB

      ... your labels.

    5. BK

      And I, I think that's a big thing for all of us, uh, to, 'cause we want to belong, we want to be a member of a tribe, and if you do things differently, you lose your tribe, and you become a lonely traveler. So, it's, uh, this is incredibly complex because, uh, people want to be part of a tribe. "We cannot do without a tribe." And so the act of actually leaving your tribe-... is a, is a very, very major pilgrimage to make. Yeah.

    6. SB

      There's parts of me that manifest sometimes, and I s- understand that this is the behavior that I w- learnt.

    7. BK

      Yeah.

    8. SB

      And I, I think there's part of me that's worried actually, because I learnt, I grew up in a home where physic- you know, physical discipline was the response to-

    9. BK

      Mm-hmm.

    10. SB

      ... most kind of forms of unwanted behavior, that I'm worried that if I become a dad, that'll be my natural...

    11. BK

      Probably will be.

    12. SB

      Yeah. I w- I don't want it to be.

    13. BK

      But you don't have to follow it.

    14. SB

      Yeah.

    15. BK

      Your kid will drive you crazy, 'cause kids do. (laughs)

    16. SB

      Yeah.

    17. BK

      And at that point, I think having kids is one of the great learning experience in life, you know? (laughs)

    18. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    19. BK

      Uh, we all ... bein- none of us knows what, what we're doing, and then the kids teach us how to, to be a... very important teachers for how do you deal with this, because it's very challenging. Yeah.

    20. SB

      What did you learn from your children?

    21. BK

      Oh,

  18. 25:29 – 26:46

    What Did You Learn for Your Children?

    1. BK

      I learned a lot from my kids. Uh, for one thing, so my, my firstborn was a, uh, is, uh, well, uh, just easy and loving and luminous and pretty and girly. Uh, and she now is gender ambiguous, and, uh, just divorced her husband to be with a woman. So that was completely transformed in her case. And to see it go through that journey with her, like, wow, wow, wow, wow. And my son was a neuro-atypical child, very out of control much of the time, um, many physical reactions, very bright but reactive, st- staying in bed, uh, only played computer games, and he's grown up to be one of the most loving, thoughtful, adult parents you can hope to meet. So both my kids have become, become very different p- people who I thought they weren't, but I have a very good relationship with both of them, even though I really don't quite understand either of them.

    2. SB

      When we see dysfunctional behavior

  19. 26:46 – 30:21

    Medical Treatment for Behavioural Dysfunctions in Children

    1. SB

      in children, I think one of the natural reactions is to give them some kind of medication or to attach some label to them-

    2. BK

      Yeah.

    3. SB

      ... and say that they're broken in this way.

    4. BK

      Yeah.

    5. SB

      How do you feel about that?

    6. BK

      Well, that is what saved my son. Because I am a ch- psychiatrist, and I know about how these labels are little crutches that never quite capture what somebody is suffering from, and people started, wanted to my, put my son on medications, because ... But I was a psychopharmacologist. I really studied drugs and what they can and cannot do, and it was very clear that they were not helping him, and I didn't have to submit to authority as most parents would do, and say, "Oh, my doctor says this and this and this." I'd say, "I'm a doctor." (laughs)

    7. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    8. BK

      "I know about brains and I know about kids, and I don't know what the hell's going on with my kids, but he doesn't have bipolar disorder and he is not respons- going to respond to lithium." And so my, both my kids were major inspirations for really exploring what was good for them. I'm, I'm particularly grateful for my son who was such a really very scary kid in many ways, that, uh, my wife, uh, whom I'm now divorced from, um, she was really great also in terms of exploring what might be helpful. And so, what they've really got to also be aware of is the issue of privilege, that I made enough money, um, that we could spend a lot of time trying to find things that would help my son. If we had lived in a housing project, my son would have been a terrible misfit. But because we had, were able to give him so much support and care by exploration, uh, that he actually found a way of rearranging his, his, his mental state, and...

    9. SB

      I mean, just on that point, there's a study where that children from-

    10. BK

      Yeah.

    11. SB

      ... low income families-

    12. BK

      Yeah.

    13. SB

      ... are four times more likely, as the privately insured, to receive anti-psychotic medicines.

    14. BK

      That's right. That's right. That's, that's, that's true.

    15. SB

      400% more likely-

    16. BK

      Yeah.

    17. SB

      ... to receive anti-psychotic medications if you are in a-

    18. BK

      And, yeah, and that's a very big issue. Now, it's not really my area f- of expertise, uh, but, you know, giving drugs to kids is potentially very dangerous, because you interfere with natural processes of brain growth.

    19. SB

      Brain growth?

    20. BK

      Yeah. Uh-huh. So if you give people medication that changes certain chemicals in their brain at the developmental phase, it may actually change the way that the brain gets formed, and may not allow ... As it happened with my son, who was able to compensate for many things, and his brain was able to learn how to react differently. If you suppress all that, your brain may not learn these new adaptations.

    21. SB

      You think we should be looking at social conditions before we look at...

    22. BK

      Social conditions, physical conditions, movement, touch, uh, synchrony, music. Um, we... A- so, s- so in our world, we got stuck in Western people are allowed to do things. They can do one thing, is they can, what I call take a swig. If you feel bad, you take alcohol, and that makes you feel better, so that's part of our respected tradition, is taking a chemical to change the way you feel. And anybody who says, "You shouldn't take that chemical," nobody ever say, "You're crazy." Yeah? And the other thing that Western

  20. 30:21 – 31:46

    Impact of Movement on Healing

    1. BK

      people are very good is yakking. So let's talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, and understand things. And then, I like to tell people a story that the first time I went to...... Beijing in 1992. And China was still very poor and deprived and miserable and coming back from this cultural revolution, and nobody could talk about anything. No, nothing happened on the Mao. No, nothing happened. No, Tiananmen Square didn't happen, it didn't happen. And China was filled with every park then as now is filled with people doing qigong and tai chi. And I go down into the park and do tai- qigong with the Chinese.

    2. SB

      What's that?

    3. BK

      Qigong is, uh, uh, the Chinese-

    4. SB

      It's like a dancing...

    5. BK

      ... Chinese movement stuff. And I do this and I go like, "Oh my God, that's how they survive, by making these qigong, tai chi movements," which if you do it in Boston, you, people say you're crazy. But in China, you cannot talk. You calm that body down by the way you move. And I became very interested in how cultures around the world actually have very different ways of helping people to regulate their physiology and their synchronicity.

    6. SB

      I want to talk about all of that, specifically-

    7. BK

      Yeah.

    8. SB

      ... this idea of movement and the role it plays in healing. Um, just to close off from the part-

    9. BK

      Yeah.

    10. SB

      ... about childhood trauma.

    11. BK

      Yeah.

    12. SB

      Wh- wh- why is it so important for a child

  21. 31:46 – 32:43

    Importance of Secure Attachment to a Caregiver

    1. SB

      to grow up with a secure attachment to a caregiver?

    2. BK

      You become how people see you.

    3. SB

      You become how people see you?

    4. BK

      Yeah. So if you're a kid, and most people, most kids, their parents find them cute or if it's the grandparents, they say, "Oh, you're cute. You're so lovely and so sweet." And no kid is able to say, "No, I'm just average. Now, look at the billion kids in the world and I'm not any cuter than anybody else." No. When the kids get told, "You're really cute," that is your reality. And if a kids gets told, "You're really ugly and nasty and mean," that is come their identity. And so you really become how people treat you early on in your life. And that's a very big legacy that I, as a, uh, as a therapist deal with, is these imprints of early experience which are very difficult to change.

    5. SB

      Imprints of early experience. Are they changeable?

  22. 32:43 – 34:18

    Can You Heal from Childhood Trauma?

    1. SB

    2. BK

      Yes. That is the great news. And also the amazing news that even though we know how to do s- some of that, we're not going there.

    3. SB

      So you can heal from your childhood trauma?

    4. BK

      Absolutely.

    5. SB

      Everyone?

    6. BK

      Um, that's my assumption when I see people.

    7. SB

      In your experience, you've, you've dealt with patients your whole life, um, your whole professional life, how many of those patients do you think were healable?

    8. BK

      I really think that if given a chance and given the resources, you can pretty much do something for everybody.

    9. SB

      One of the other-

    10. BK

      But, but, but the problem is, again, we go back to where we started before the microphone was on, is that our focus we, these days is on productivity and behavioral change and not in, how do we find out how to help you? All the things that I describe in my book, uh, almost most of the things that I describe in my book as being helpful, and those are 10 years ago, I know some other things since that time, uh, are unconventional methods that don't, don't, do not get practiced in mainstream psychology and psychiatry because they need to be productive and they need to be cheap, and whether you get better or not doesn't matter. Were you cheap is the main motivation. I think, uh, the profit motive is killing good practice.

    11. SB

      Your, your book was-

    12. BK

      Yeah.

    13. SB

      ... very interesting because,

  23. 34:18 – 36:12

    The Body Keeps the Score

    1. SB

      um, when I read the cover and then I watched a video you'd made talking about the sort of six, uh, sort of treatments and stuff-

    2. BK

      Yeah.

    3. SB

      ... that exist within the body, things like yoga, um, you talk about theater and acting and how that helps you to-

    4. BK

      Yeah.

    5. SB

      ... to get out of your trauma essentially.

    6. BK

      Yeah.

    7. SB

      The Body Keeps the Score. This was a, a pretty radical approach-

    8. BK

      Yeah.

    9. SB

      ... to thinking through trauma.

    10. BK

      And it became a meme, which is an interesting thing to see.

    11. SB

      Well, I, I, I use it in my life-

    12. BK

      Yeah.

    13. SB

      ... everyday language with my partner.

    14. BK

      Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

    15. SB

      Uh, and I've heard other people-

    16. BK

      Yeah.

    17. SB

      ... say, "The body keeps the score. The body keeps the score-"

    18. BK

      Yeah.

    19. SB

      ... when we're talking about how our body is holding onto those-

    20. BK

      Yep.

    21. SB

      ... traumatic memories, traumatic things that have happened to us.

    22. BK

      Yeah.

    23. SB

      For someone who has never read your book and doesn't even understand the, like, base premise here, what is the, like, base premise of your, of the title there?

    24. BK

      It's really that trauma is a visceral experience of-

    25. SB

      What does visceral mean?

    26. BK

      ... in your body. Heartbreak and gut wrench. You stiffen up. You s- surrender. You lose your power. You tighten up. That's really where trauma is lived.

    27. SB

      I kind of see it as two approaches. You can either go, "Let's try and change the mind, which will then change the body downstream," or you can say, "Let's change the body, which will then change the mind."

    28. BK

      Right.

    29. SB

      Is that-

    30. BK

      You could, but I do a lot of CBT with my wife, let's say.

  24. 36:12 – 36:39

    Somatic Approach to Healing

    1. SB

      and she says it's amazing and she's told me, she told me to speak to you on this podcast because-

    2. BK

      Yeah.

    3. SB

      ... she says, you know-

    4. BK

      Yeah.

    5. SB

      ... you'll really help to change her opinion on this. What is this somatic approach to healing?

    6. BK

      Somatic approach is to really experience what your body feels and also, uh, allowing your body to do things that it has been afraid to do.... and to explore how your body moves through the world in some ways.

    7. SB

      Why women just dis- seem to be so much better

  25. 36:39 – 37:47

    Are Women More in Touch with Somatic Healing?

    1. SB

      than, at this stuff than men because they're doing, like, pilates-

    2. BK

      I'm not sure.

    3. SB

      ... pilates, yoga. These are all things, dancing, these are things typically women do-

    4. BK

      Yeah. Yeah.

    5. SB

      ... more than men.

    6. BK

      Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

    7. SB

      And it seems women are just more in touch with it.

    8. BK

      Yeah. I think it's, uh, intriguing question because it's not exclusively women. Of course, men have always done it in armies and basic training in the military. And, uh, what's intriguing to me is that, uh, you know, when people join the military, oftentimes they're not very well put together people, and they go through basic training, and they really march together, they sing with people, and they climb barricades, and they go through, uh, composite physical experience with other people. At the end of 12 weeks, they feel competent, and they feel connected, and they have found a band of brothers. How do they do it? Not by yakking, but by having very deep shared physical experiences.

    9. SB

      One of the interesting things that you write about, which I found particularly interesting because I saw little flashes of myself in the words, is you said, "I found that the more traumas

  26. 37:47 – 41:00

    Impact of Trauma on Creativity

    1. SB

      your patients have in their background, the more creative and successful they often become."

    2. BK

      Often, huh? The-

    3. SB

      Often.

    4. BK

      Often. Th- the-

    5. SB

      Often. Yeah.

    6. BK

      And we don't know how often that is, but I get to meet quite a few of them. Yeah. Yeah.

    7. SB

      "It's the people who have had to struggle, who often see new possibilities and have no choice but to discover new options."

    8. BK

      That's true. That's true. Yeah. But, you know, but those are the people who manage to get into my practice.

    9. SB

      Mm.

    10. BK

      And the people who don't find the solutions don't have the wherewithal and the capacity to make it into therapy with me.

    11. SB

      They might be outside with a drug addiction.

    12. BK

      Getting drugs, lying on the streets, etc., etc. And to, to a large degree, I see this as, as an issue of accident. You know, I, this past year, I visited a program in Los Angeles called, um, Homeboy Industries. It's a, it's a program for formerly incarcerated, largely Latin men who had no fathers, who had been criminals. And it's a spectacular program where they honor, they say, "What do you need? How we can we take care of you? How can we make safe, uh, safe place for you?" And I saw real treatment there. St. Quentin Hospital, uh, St. Quentin Prison, famous prison in California, is now trauma-based. They used my book as a foretext there. And they're transforming people's lives by acknowledging the reality of what they dealt with, helping people to be part of the healing system, working in groups, working with movement. Um, like at St. Quentin, they have hula dancing classes. I go like, "Yeah." Moving together with other people gives you a sense of connection, a sense of pleasure. Uh, they are begin- they're really beginning to understand you can do it. At the Harvard Hospital, you wouldn't do the hula with people. You wouldn't dance with people. (laughs)

    13. SB

      I think there's a bit of a joke in the investment community, um, that says you'll get better returns if you invest in someone, an entrepreneur or founder, that is a little bit traumatized. And I actually think, I, if I... I don't want to misquote her, but-

    14. BK

      No.

    15. SB

      ... I had Barbara Corcoran, who's a shark on Shark Tank in the USA here on the show, and one of the things she said to me was with all of her investments, the ones that tend to do the best are those that have a little bit of a trauma in their past.

    16. BK

      Yeah.

    17. SB

      And she says, "Because when they call me with a problem-

    18. BK

      Yeah.

    19. SB

      ... they call me with the solution attached."

    20. BK

      Mm.

    21. SB

      "Versus people who have never had trauma, they call me and just tell me the problem." So they'll-

    22. BK

      Mm.

    23. SB

      ... call me and say, 'Listen, Barbara, this has happened-

    24. BK

      Ah.

    25. SB

      ... and this is what we're gonna do about it.'" And that was her... You know, she said it in a slightly humorous way, but I wondered if you thought there's any truth in this idea that-

    26. BK

      Yeah, I think that's, again, a selection bias of people she works with. Uh, I know certainly plenty of people have had, plenty of people working for me, uh, who, who really get paralyzed in the face of ch- of challenges and who don't have a solution, who become very dependent on giving, getting the reaction. So I think she has a bit of an unusual sample, actually.

    27. SB

      'Cause I wondered if, if you've had an, an anomalous

  27. 41:00 – 44:50

    Trauma as a Perception

    1. SB

      early upbringing-

    2. BK

      Yeah.

    3. SB

      ... does that make you an anomalous adult? Is it... Does it increase the probability that you become a anomalous, slightly different adult?

    4. BK

      Oh, absolutely.

    5. SB

      Okay.

    6. BK

      And the-

    7. SB

      And that can go everywhere.

    8. BK

      And you- y- y- you develop a mind and brain to fit with that particular situation. And if that particular situation doesn't help, you need to find new solutions. And so, uh, trauma and abuse really forces you to find, try to find other solutions, but many of them are not successful, you know?

    9. SB

      Is, is trauma a story in your brain?

    10. BK

      No. Trauma is a perception in your brain.

    11. SB

      A percept- what's the difference?

    12. BK

      Trauma. So the issue is something happens and your brain and mind takes it in and then makes an adaptation to that particular event that depends on how old you are and the circumstances and is very different for different people.

    13. SB

      Give me an example of a perception.

    14. BK

      Um, if you would beat me up right now, I'd go, "This guy is crazy," and I can call people and ruin your reputation, etc. If you're three, if I'm three years old and you start hitting me as a kid, I don't know what the hell to do about it, and I'll likely think that's probably I did something wrong that I caused the guy to beat me up, and I'm a terrible person, and no wonder that he beat me up because I'm a horrible creature. And that's what almost everybody who I know who was beaten as a child, uh, that's the internal understanding of it. Not when you're 8 years old or 15 years old, but when you're very young, that becomes your experience.

    15. SB

      Because you're still forming your perception of the world.

    16. BK

      Yeah. Yeah. The, the... Your, your brain creates a map of the world.... a very, in very deep ways. And so your experiences form an internal of the world that, that makes you expect certain things at certain times. So if I walk into a room and I see a person who looks like my old uncle who I used to play with, I start sidling up to you because you on the de- deep level remind me of that very nice uncle that I once had. I don't know that, but my brain is set to interpret the world in a particular way. So y- uh, one of the things, uh, most, uh, profound, uh, research experiences I had was purely accidental. We started to do Rorschach tests on people.

    17. SB

      What's that?

    18. BK

      Inkblot tests. So you show some formless ink picture and we showed it to people, and we saw that people had completely different interpretations of what they projected on that inkblot test. And that really brought home to me that we all are living, living in different worlds, and that our percep... Like, a lot of the Vietnam veterans I saw saw bloody corpses or mutilated bodies in those cards. People who had never been in combat didn't see that. Uh, rape victims saw torn vaginas and torn bodies. Other people didn't see this. So once that becomes lodged into your perceptual system, you continue to interpret the world in that particular way having to do with what you have gone through in the past.

    19. SB

      And an inkblot test for anyone that doesn't know is basically just a piece of paper with random ink-

    20. BK

      That's all it is.

    21. SB

      Yeah.

    22. BK

      But it's been analyzed on about 100,000 people over the years. (laughs) So there are certain patterns you can detect in it. Yeah, yeah.

    23. SB

      I've never done an inkblot test. I feel like I should do one.

    24. BK

      You know, I learned as much from my inkblot tests as I learned from my brain imaging, um, but the brain imaging is respectable and, and, uh, the mind has sort of disappeared. But, uh, for example, in our psychedelic research, I still very much hope to do inkblot tests because as Michael Pollan says, how do you change your minds? But we're not measuring how people changed their minds.

    25. SB

      How many people do you think... I mean,

  28. 44:50 – 45:35

    How Many People Have Trauma?

    1. SB

      this is maybe a ridiculous question, but how many people, what percentage of people do you think have trauma in some form, how you define it?

    2. BK

      Uh, you know, the figures are 1/4 of people get physically abused, one out of five people get sexually abused, uh, one of eight kids witnesses violence being their parents, uh, et cetera, et cetera. So, you know, if I sit in a room... You know, it's, it's not a binary issue. It's not either you were traumatized or you didn't get traumatized. But, uh, when I talk to a room of professionals, which I do a lot, I assume that at least half the group viscerally knows what trauma means.

    3. SB

      And what is trauma d- doing to my brain?

  29. 45:35 – 49:46

    How Does Trauma Affect Brain Activity?

    1. SB

      You said you've done a lot of neuroimaging-

    2. BK

      Yeah.

    3. SB

      ... scans. Um, if you, if, if I was traumatized and you scanned my brain-

    4. BK

      Yeah.

    5. SB

      ... is there something you could see?

    6. BK

      Not necessarily. I can see how, uh, your brain may be different from other people's brains. I may take a particular population, you can average it out and you can say, "Oh, there's a little more activation of the periaqueductal gray, a little bit less of the, uh, right insula." So you see, see certain patterns of, uh, connectivity in the brain. But to some degree, you know, I, I think we, we learn a lot about the brain, but we don't know much about the brain, and I think people tend to overstate how much the brain pictures can teach us. Uh, you know, it's like I love the Hubble Telescope or the Webb Telescope. You know, it's, our brain is like a universe and our technology is very inadequate to really know about all the unbelievably connec- complex connections the brain has. But we have learned a few things in the last 20 years.

    7. SB

      So how, how does trauma affect the brain?

    8. BK

      It affects the brain that you tend to... Well, there's, there's one part of your brain that I call the cockroach center of your brain, the periaqueductal gray that lights up. It's sort of underneath the amygdala. Everybody knows the word amygdala these days.

    9. SB

      Uh, I think so.

    10. BK

      And, so the part of your brain that tells you that you're in danger. When you're traumatized, you're likely that that little part of your brain way back in the, your brainstem, is firing all the time. All the time you go like, "I'm in danger, I'm in danger, I'm in danger." And so that's where it starts, in the very elementary sensory level. Uh, you don't know what the danger is, but you just feel that, uh, you should be scared. And then there are certain, um, parts, other parts of your brain, for example, your insula, which makes the connection with your physical sensations and your body awareness, that for many people gets shut down because trauma, uh, basically the experience of trauma is a visceral experience of heartbreak and gut wrench. And if you have a lot of that, you can learn to shut that part of your brain down so you don't feel your body so much anymore. When you don't feel your body so much, you don't feel very alive either. But you don't feel so scared all the time. But it's likely that you will want to take some drugs to make yourself feel alive sometimes. Um, stuff like that. Yeah.

    11. SB

      So the part of my brain, you said just under the ami- around the amygdala-

    12. BK

      Below the amygdala, yeah.

    13. SB

      ... below the amygdala.

    14. BK

      Yeah.

    15. SB

      People that are traumatized, they have some kind of dysfunction in that typically?

    16. BK

      Well, the dysfunction is that it keeps firing.

    17. SB

      Keeps firing.

    18. BK

      Yeah.

    19. SB

      And how does that make you feel?

    20. BK

      And, and so, and then the amygdala... So, so there's a constant sense of d- of subliminal dread.

    21. SB

      Is that anxiety?

    22. BK

      Anxiety's already too high a, a mental functioning.

    23. SB

      Okay.

    24. BK

      It's more elementary. Uh, it's like your dog shaking, like... You know, my daughter has a, adopted a dog a few years at a time, and two years later the dog still also barks at my house.

    25. SB

      You've adopted a dog and it shakes in your house still?

    26. BK

      Yeah. Yeah. But still never quite comfortable. Um, um, and that's how many traumatized people you meet are, never quite comfortable.

    27. SB

      So when someone says they're triggered...

    28. BK

      No, trigger is in the higher level thing.

    29. SB

      Okay.

    30. BK

      So then the next level is, indeed the trigger that is in part mediated by the amygdala, is your amygdala is your smoke detector that tends to become hypersensitive so that minor things get blown up, and a minor thing that you may say to me, I take as the most insulting thing in the world. And so you're constantly triggered by things and that makes, makes you feel like you are doing terrible things to me. And it's not like I'm hypersensitive, uh, and when you have an off day, um, that is your issue and not my issue. No. When you have an off day, I feel your off day and then, uh, we start getting into trouble together.

  30. 49:46 – 54:59

    Study: Reliving a Traumatic Event

    1. SB

      brain's smoke detector-

    2. BK

      Yeah. Yeah.

    3. SB

      ... um, goes off. Is that what it looks like on the brain when it's-

    4. BK

      That is one particular guy and nobody is exactly the same as everybody else.

    5. SB

      Can you explain this to me?

    6. BK

      But basically what, what you see here is, uh, this is a guy who is reliving a terrible car accident he was involved with. And what you see here is that the right posterior part of the brain, the temporoparietal junction on the right side of the brain, uh, fires, and that's the feeling part of your brain. So you go, "Oh my god. Oh my god. I'm terrified." But there's no cognition and basically the left side of the brain shuts down. So when you're in your trauma, you don't become... You're not a reasonable person. You actually, uh, become a little bit of a blubbering idiot. All of us when we really are angry or upset, are not very articulate but we have a lot of feelings. And, and then the, the piece that I, why I showed this is that as he's re- this guy's reliving his trauma, these two parts of the brain go offline. This is the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, that's the part of the brain that's the timekeeper of your brain. And so if something unpleasant happens between us let's say, uh, I'll go, "Oh, it's another half hour and I'll be okay, so let me just put up with this." But when you get traumatized, the timekeeper disappears and this is all there is. You lose your sense of perspective and that is what happen when you're in your trauma, you don't know the difference between the past and the present because the timekeeper of your brain goes offline and whatever is you're feeling is real, as opposed to be feeling like a memory.

    7. SB

      So if you-

    8. BK

      Do, do you get it? The- the-

    9. SB

      Yeah. So if you- people that can't see it in this-

    10. BK

      Yeah.

    11. SB

      ... brain scan-

    12. BK

      Yeah.

    13. SB

      ... what I'm basically seeing is the right side is extremely activated.

    14. BK

      Yeah.

    15. SB

      The left side looks like it's off.

    16. BK

      Off, yeah.

    17. SB

      And then there's these two-

    18. BK

      Yeah.

    19. SB

      ... blanks, um, empty spaces that aren't activated-

    20. BK

      Yeah.

    21. SB

      ... called the dors-

    22. BK

      Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. So this-

    23. SB

      Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

    24. BK

      ... that's part of the system in the brain that give you a sense of time.

    25. SB

      Okay.

    26. BK

      And as long as you have a sense of... It's like little babies don't have a sense of time either.

    27. NA

      (instrumental music)

    28. BK

      Whatever happens, happens totally, then you see a child slowly grow and they get a sense of perspective. "This is happening right now but tomorrow it will be different."

    29. SB

      Okay. So that's when, I mean, presumably-

    30. BK

      Yeah. Yeah.

  31. 54:59 – 55:40

    Most Radical Improvement in Clinical Practice

    1. SB

      you've seen in your clinical practice?

    2. BK

      Oh, really, people really coming to life, people just saying, "It's over."

    3. SB

      Give me the, the, the most-

    4. BK

      Um-

    5. SB

      ... uh, the best example.

    6. BK

      Uh, the good example is the videotape I showed people yesterday of a woman, again, terrible car accident, freezing, uh, upset, f- freaked out. And then three sessions later, we go talk about it. She says, "Yeah, this shitty thing happened to me. Uh, I was in this car accident, and, uh, I was jolted for it, and my head was swollen, and boy, that was terrible back then. But I'm, uh, you know, now I have a granddaughter, and I drive my car to my granddaughter, and I'm fine."

    7. SB

      Three sessions, it took?

    8. BK

      Three sessions, yeah. And we

  32. 55:40 – 57:39

    EMDR

    1. BK

      saw it in psychedelic therapy all the time.

    2. SB

      What did you do in those three sessions?

    3. BK

      Wiggle your fingers in front of people's eyes. I mean, for, for me, for me, EMDR was really the gateway drug. Like, um, so, you know, I've written three books about PTSD, actually wrote a very first book in which the word PTSD exists in '84 or something. Um, but they didn't know how to treat it. So I'm a world-renowned expert, but I have no idea how to treat it because people keep reliving that trauma, and I don't know how to stop that. And then somebody starts telling me about EMDR, and I don't believe a word of it. And they say, "Just, you move your fingers in front of people's eyes, I mean, you move your eye from side to side as you relive the trauma." And I go, "That is crazy." Everybody who hears it, "That's crazy." And then people start doing it, and they show me how it works. I go like, "Wow." And people indeed, uh, a certain subsample of people we studied, indeed, after a few sessions of EMDR, going like, "Yeah, that really sucked, but it's over. It belongs in the past. It's not happening right now." Yeah.

    4. SB

      You're telling me that wiggling your fingers in front of people's eyes can help heal their trauma?

    5. BK

      Well, and then, of course, we had to do a little research, which took us 15 years to get enough funding to ge- do it, to see what happens when you move your eyes back and forth. And then we discovered that if you move your eyes back and forth as you recall traumatic experiences, you activate certain pathways between the temporoparietal junction, which gives your sense of self, and your insula, which is your sense of your body. So your brain is able to say, "Oh, yeah, this is what happened to me, but it happened to me in the past." So these are pathways that makes it possible for your brain to, uh, make that distinction.

    6. SB

      And in the research that's been done on this-

    7. BK

      Yeah.

  33. 57:39 – 58:46

    How Effective Is EMDR Therapy?

    1. BK

    2. SB

      ... what does the, what did the outcome, what was the conclusion in terms of its efficacy?

    3. BK

      Oh, in terms of, uh, in our research, um, 78% of the people who had adult onset trauma, so, so, uh, being assaulted or raped, uh, by a stranger, 78% of them were completely cured. But that's not the majority of people we see because most people we see have early childhood trauma, which is much more complicated to treat.

    4. SB

      Early childhood trauma is much more sort of stubborn and resistant to this treatment than-

    5. BK

      Yeah, because your early childhood, uh, experiences create who you are. And so if you go to, uh, a fancy college when you're 18, you do become identified with that college, but it doesn't radically change you into a new person. (laughs) But it becomes part of your identity. But if you grow up in a certain family, uh, early on in your life, you actually become that, and you, that, the imprint is very deep early on, yeah.

    6. SB

      So it's called eye movement desensitization-

  34. 58:46 – 1:03:57

    Demonstration of EMDR

    1. SB

    2. BK

      Yeah.

    3. SB

      ... and reprocessing-

    4. BK

      Right, yeah.

    5. SB

      ... treatment.

    6. BK

      Mm-hmm. Yeah.

    7. SB

      Um, I was just looking up some stats about it. It says it's been extensively studied with evidence supporting its efficacy across various conditions. With PTSD, a 2020- 2014 meta-analysis of 26 randomized control trials found that EMDR significantly reduced PTSD symptoms with a large effect size. Depression, a 2024 systemic review and meta-analysis in- encompassing 25 studies and more than 1,000 participants reported that it alleviated depressive s- depressive symptoms. The same 2014 meta-analysis noted that EMDR led to significant reductions in anxiety symptoms among PTSD patients with a large effect. Uh, and finally, a 2024 systemic review and individual participation data meta-analysis concluded that EMDR is an effective, is as effective as other psychological treatments for PTSD, achieving comparable symptom reduction and remission rates. So-

    8. BK

      Good.

    9. SB

      ... can you show me how it works? Can you do it on me?

    10. BK

      I could. (laughs) Uh-

    11. SB

      I'm gonna be-

    12. BK

      Can I move my chair?

    13. SB

      Of course you can. Are you gonna come closer?

    14. BK

      So can you bring to mind a really sort of rather unpleasant experience you've had not too long ago?

    15. SB

      Yeah.

    16. BK

      And when you, can you bring to mind what you saw at that point?

    17. SB

      Yeah.

    18. BK

      Can you remember what the voices sounded like at that point? Or whatever it was. Any sounds come to mind?

    19. SB

      Yeah.

    20. BK

      Uh, do you remember what your body felt like back then?

    21. SB

      Yeah.

    22. BK

      Okay. Can you remember what you were thinking or bring to mind what you were thinking?

    23. SB

      Yeah.

    24. BK

      Okay. So how vivid is your feeling right now of recollecting it?

    25. SB

      Like a 6, 7 out of 10.

    26. BK

      Okay. Okay. So, so stay there. Now follow my finger with, with your eyes. So look at my, look at me right now. Take a deep breath. (exhales) So what comes to your mind right now as we're doing this?

    27. SB

      I feel calm.

    28. BK

      Uh-huh.

    29. SB

      Yeah, I, I just, uh, I feel calm.

    30. BK

      Okay. So when you go back to what you were just feeling, what's it like now?

  35. 1:03:57 – 1:05:40

    Breath work

    1. BK

    2. SB

      What role did... Breathwork's become a really big topic.

    3. BK

      Right. Right.

    4. SB

      My partner runs a business called Bali Breathwork, #ad.

    5. BK

      Right. Yeah.

    6. SB

      Um, and she takes women away, she does these breathwork retreats all around the world.

    7. BK

      Yup.

    8. SB

      Has a studio, et cetera.

    9. BK

      Yup.

    10. SB

      Um, what do you think of breathwork as a way to relieve trauma?

    11. BK

      It makes perfect sense.

    12. SB

      Why?

    13. BK

      For one thing, it's been used since I'm- time memorial in certain cultures. And people say, uh, people always discover it. No, in India people know it. Northern Europe, nobody knows about breathwork. That's why it's a, these are culturally dependent things. I think, uh, um, the closers may know it. I don't know. Go out there and see if, if people know it. Uh, and, and so people are so conformist to be approved of by their teachers and their peers that, then when people do something innovative, they tend to very quickly be, "Oh, they're, they're kooky. They're crazy." And like, um, I really got into body work and, no, I've not, don't done breathwork myself but I hear about it from people and I... So it's perfectly legitimate to me. Um, but when I, we do something new, like I was the first person who studied yoga for, uh, PTSD. And people go like, "Putting your butt in the air and twisting your spine and for trauma?" Like, and I said, "Well, let's find out." And so we did the study and it turned out that yoga was very effective for treatment of PTSD. But the overwhelming reaction of my academic colleagues was, "Oh, there he goes again. He's gone off the deep end." And now, yoga is sort of pretty well accepted as a .

    14. SB

      So you can-

    15. BK

      Yeah.

    16. SB

      ... you can use y- yoga to

  36. 1:05:40 – 1:06:08

    Impact of Yoga on Trauma

    1. SB

      treat trauma? Um-

    2. BK

      You can... No, you don't treat trauma. You, you, you, you yoga to treat your relationship to your body. It's not the same thing. But trauma really distorts your relationship to your body, and, uh, what our research also shows is that when you start doing yoga, certain brain areas that tend to get sort of dampened by trauma come to life. It's an adaptive thing because trauma is so

  37. 1:06:08 – 1:07:54

    Study: Effects of a Weekly Yoga Class

    1. BK

      relived in visceral, visceral experiences, as, as Darwin said, "Heart breaking, gut wrenched" is the visual sensations. And so if your heart, constantly heart broken and gut wrenched, you try to pull that down and so you lose contact with your body in the, as a defensive maneuver to, of feeling overwhelmed by these physical sensations.

    2. SB

      So I want to make sure I understand this.

    3. BK

      Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

    4. SB

      So the insular part of the brain is the part that-

    5. BK

      Yeah.

    6. SB

      ... links how we're, what we do with how we feel?

    7. BK

      How we viscerally feel, yeah. What's happening in our bodies.

    8. SB

      Okay. It link, and so it links how we're feeling in our bodies-

    9. BK

      Yeah.

    10. SB

      ... to...

    11. BK

      To what we know about ourselves. Yeah.

    12. SB

      The stories we have in our head about ourselves.

    13. BK

      Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

    14. SB

      So th- that's what the insular does and trauma interrupts that.... which-

    15. BK

      Yeah.

    16. SB

      ... causes what kind of dysfunction on a day-to-day basis?

    17. BK

      Because you are out- out of saturated You feel numbed out.

    18. SB

      Or disconnected or-

    19. BK

      You don't feel alive. You don't feel connected. You, uh, you can't feel pleasure.

    20. SB

      Or you feel hyper-sensitive?

    21. BK

      And you feel hyper-sensitive.

    22. SB

      'Cause you talk about the two-

    23. BK

      Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    24. SB

      ... sort of responses being disconnection or hyper-sensitivity.

    25. BK

      Yeah, they, so it, there's always these two contradictory things that co-exist; remembering too much and remembering too little, feeling too much and feeling too little. Uh, there is no happy medium, it, you go from one extreme to another. You're, you're agitated and numbed out at the same time.

    26. SB

      And that's-

    27. BK

      And, and, and I bet you know what it's like because we all have been there that we feel agitated and at the same time we feel completely nothing at all. Uh, the... And there's almost no mind there and that, I think, is a very not an uncommon human experience.

    28. SB

      And the insula's playing a role, the insula-

    29. BK

      The insula plays a big role in that and many other brain structures.

  38. 1:07:54 – 1:10:12

    Disconnection and Hypersensitivity

    1. BK

    2. SB

      So if I start doing yoga-

    3. BK

      Yeah.

    4. SB

      ... what is that then doing to that hyper-sensitivity disconnection?

    5. BK

      Y- Yoga makes it possible for you to reconnect your senses in a way, uh, to, to feel what you feel and to make it safe what you feel. So that when you go to a yoga studio with a teacher with a nice voice who really helps you to now take a deep breath, stretch out your arms, feel that warrior three pose, and then you start feeling it. And for many people, doing yoga can be actually quite agitating, scary actually in a way for traumatized people. We see it all the time is that, uh, something gets triggered and you start getting upset just doing a simple down dog, let's say. Or certainly the, the yoga poses all sexually abuse victims have great trouble with is the happy baby pose. Happy baby pose is where you put your feet in the air, you lie on your back, you hold your toes, and you spread your, uh, your legs wide so your pelvis is up against the air. For most of us that's a, a very pleasant pose, makes you relaxed. If you're a sexual abuse survivor, that's going to trigger a lot of stuff.

    6. SB

      Really?

    7. BK

      Yeah. And you have to be very careful doing that.

    8. SB

      Because it's-

    9. BK

      It's triggering. And so, so because these positions may be triggering, you may hold your body in a frozen position in order not to trigger those feelings of sexual abuse.

    10. SB

      I was just thinking as you were speaking-

    11. BK

      Yeah.

    12. SB

      ... about a f- a friend of mine who-

    13. BK

      Yeah.

    14. SB

      ... um, tends to go through life with a sort of crumpled up body.

    15. BK

      Yeah.

    16. SB

      They, and, and they're low self-esteem, they're quite low confident.

    17. BK

      Yeah.

    18. SB

      I've never... I don't know if they're traumatized in any way. Can't pass judgment on that. But they started doing yoga and it really has helped their mental health in a profound way and I'm just wondering what you think the link is between someone who, I'm just telling you on the surface is, like, crumpled up through their life, but then goes-

    19. BK

      Oh, absolutely.

    20. SB

      Do, d-

    21. BK

      I told you I was a sickly child, huh? Uh, I, uh, I was really sickly until... I had asthma when I was 13 and, huh, and I think the most helpful thing I ever did was rolfing. Rolfing is a very intense form of massage where they sort of tear your muscles from your fascia,

  39. 1:10:12 – 1:13:01

    Impact of Physical Activity on Trauma

    1. BK

      and I li- came to live in a new body. I no longer lived frozen in that body of this little child who al- almost died. Had a profound effect on me, as mu- as much as anything I've ever done.

    2. SB

      Why and how?

    3. BK

      Because you get stuck in habits. In a way, trauma becomes a habit. My habit is that when I see a strong guy in the room, I get scared. Hypothetical situation. And so you have habitual responses and part of, uh, what you do therapy for is to get to realize your habitual responses and become curious about it. Like, like, you know, whenever a person like that comes in the room, I freeze and I sound like an idiot and, and your therapist says, "So what happens in your body? And how long have you felt this way? Did you feel this way when you were six or three or eight?" And then s- at some point people get a narrative that be- may begin to explain it. And that narrative may say, "Oh, I was bullied by somebody and that feeling comes back when I meet somebody who reminds me of my bully." And then you go like, um, "Have you ever tried martial arts? And see what it'll like, be like for you to actually learn to use your body to fight somebody." And that's, for example, treatment that I have never studied but I was amazed how many of my close colleagues who are very much into trauma tell me at some point, "Oh, and now I have to go to my martial arts class." (laughs)

    4. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    5. BK

      And now this... Nobody sees it as a legitimate way of dealing with what they're dealing with, but I think people are doing that martial arts because they have memories of being victimized and it, it help, it gives them a visceral experience of, "My body can defend itself and my body, I can use my body to take care of myself." And that's not an intellectual process; that's a visceral experience.

    6. SB

      People often describe meeting somebody and their body just being off.

    7. BK

      Yep.

    8. SB

      So they say, "I met this person and-"

    9. BK

      Yep.

    10. SB

      "... my body was just, I just felt-"

    11. BK

      Yep.

    12. SB

      "... something in my body."

    13. BK

      Yep.

    14. SB

      That they can't consciously articulate but they-

    15. BK

      Yep.

    16. SB

      ... just feel it in their body this person's a bit off.

    17. BK

      Yep.

    18. SB

      What do you think they are describing there?

    19. BK

      I think they're describing two things. We pick up each other's energy. There's such a thing as the mirror neuron system which hasn't received much attention the past few years but I think it's a very important invention, uh, that you're... I pick up your energy and if, let's say, you're depressed but you have a job to do, so to talk with me today, it's very likely that I, on some

  40. 1:13:01 – 1:15:47

    Picking Up People's Energy

    1. BK

      level, will pick up your depression.... and it will affect our conversation. I'm not saying that I do, that's a hypothetical thing, you know.

    2. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    3. BK

      Uh, but we pick up each other's energy. And so we may be with somebody who is very angry but who's trying to behave themselves and behave very well, but you may pick up that anger. And that's really the, uh, very complicated stuff in psychotherapy. Am I picking up your energy or am I picking up my energy? And so, if I feel uncomfortable in your presence, is that because you're triggering something in me about my past or am I picking something up about you?

    4. SB

      Yeah.

    5. BK

      And that is the complexity of, of our interactions, huh, yeah.

    6. SB

      And from an evolutionary standpoint-

    7. BK

      Yeah.

    8. SB

      ... uh, um, as you were speaking I was thinking, where, where has this come from, you know, this ability to subconsciously just get a read for someone and then form a pattern of-

    9. BK

      Right.

    10. SB

      ... okay, this type of person hurt me in the past, and 20 years later I meet someone in the street-

    11. BK

      Yeah.

    12. SB

      ... and I immediately feel the same?

    13. BK

      Yeah.

    14. SB

      Is that just a survival thing, what you're saying?

    15. BK

      I think that makes perfect sense to me. Like, because we are primates, uh, it's something that came up in your interview with Trevor, the degree to which we're, the deep degree to which we're interconnected cre- creatures, that we really don't exist as individuals. So we are meant to live in troops, we're meant to be with other people, and so what is safe with other people, uh, becomes a critical issue of our survival. The reason that, that humans have survived is not because of your individual gifts or mine, it's because we can band together and build buildings and airplanes and all this sort of stuff. (laughs) It's all communal, communal things, so our, uh, it's- it's not central in our science anymore today, but it's- it's at the core if you understand human beings. We are a collective bunch of creatures who collectively create something, and so knowing how to do that and how to adjust to each other is at the core of who we are, yeah.

    16. SB

      Are we losing that a little bit? You know, people are getting-

    17. BK

      Yep.

    18. SB

      ... lonelier and lonelier and more individualistic.

    19. BK

      It's a huge issue, huge, huge issue. Screens as virtual realities is our biggest challenge, I think. Yeah.

    20. SB

      Why?

    21. BK

      Uh, because screens give you a virtual reality of pleasure, etc., etc., but it's not real and it is not a product of your efforts of doing something. You get a cheap reward, what ordinarily takes a lot of activity, and so you get your little dop- dopamine rush and it feels like you had the experience, but you don't learn how to get along with other people. You don't learn that visceral reaction of pleasure

  41. 1:15:47 – 1:16:33

    Challenges of Individualistic Cultures

    1. BK

      of we are friends.

    2. SB

      What role does community and social connection play in trauma?

    3. BK

      Everything. Critical. And there's another thing that is troublesome about the development of our field, namely, uh, in our generation, traumas who started with experiences like mine work with combat veterans. I'm not a combat veteran. I was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. Um, I don't know anything about the US Marine Corps, and so I couldn't, I couldn't have told people what it was like. But they're in groups and they talk to each other and they learned about what it's like to be a combat veteran from each other. And the moment they made this connection with each other, they were becoming a band of brothers.

  42. 1:16:33 – 1:17:22

    Role of Community and Social Connections in Trauma

    1. BK

      And that's how people survive trauma, by bonding with other people.

    2. SB

      It seems that women are better at forming those connections than men.

    3. BK

      Yeah, I think so. (laughs) I think so, although, no, that's not entirely true. Uh, I learned a lot about love from my combat veterans. To some degree, I think most human beings don't know what love is until you have, know what it's like to be in combat together with other people. It creates an enormously deep, deep bond between people. Uh, so I know something about male love more from (laughs) working with combat veterans than anything else. When you're in great danger, guys are there for each other. They really protect each other. They really look after each other, um, yeah.

    4. SB

      What is it about that environment

  43. 1:17:22 – 1:18:04

    Are Women Better at Forming Connections?

    1. SB

      that forms what you're describing there as real love, and how do we-

    2. BK

      It's d- it's danger. Uh, the natural instinct when you are in danger, you know, you and I would become much better friends than we are if something bad happened to us right now. (laughs)

    3. SB

      (laughs)

    4. BK

      We'd start clinging to each other.

    5. SB

      Is that because we would probably need each other?

    6. BK

      You'd need each other, yeah. You need each other and you count on each other and you have each other's back, and you're saying to me, "I have your back." Um, us making commitment to each other is a very profound human experience. You don't get that from a screen.

    7. SB

      Well, there's also, in an individualistic society, you're almost trained to not need anyone else but yourself.

    8. BK

      Well, but, you know, um, I have

  44. 1:18:04 – 1:18:59

    Building Relationships in the Army

    1. BK

      friends who went to Eton. Uh, actually, so the definition for me of many Englishmen is your mother hates you and sends you off to boarding school when you're six years old (laughs) and never looks after you anymore. And what helped my friends who went to these- these public schools in England was sports. Enormously powerful. Uh, people felt really close to each other, moving together, throwing balls together, uh, fighting in the- in the fields. Um, that traditionally has been the way that- that guys get close together.

    2. SB

      Yeah.

    3. BK

      That may ring a bell with you somewhere. (laughs)

    4. SB

      Of course, yeah.

    5. BK

      Yeah.

    6. SB

      I was thinking back to playing football growing up-

    7. BK

      Yeah.

    8. SB

      ... and just you- you t- you, yeah, you're one, you're one unit, effectively.

    9. BK

      Yeah.

    10. SB

      And if there's a problem in this part of the pitch-

    11. BK

      Yeah.

    12. SB

      ... then it's my problem too.

    13. BK

      Yeah.

    14. SB

      If you're in trouble, I- I'm there to help you.

    15. BK

      Yeah, yeah. And I bet you- you still make easy contact with your friends who you played football with 20 years ago, or now it's 30 years ago.

    16. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    17. BK

      Yeah.

    18. SB

      It's- it's really interesting-

    19. BK

      Yeah.

    20. SB

      ... because, um, uh,

  45. 1:18:59 – 1:20:04

    Building Connections Through Sports

    1. SB

      as you were talking I was wondering how we can bring that back into our lives in the modern world-

    2. BK

      Yeah.

    3. SB

      ... in a modern world where we live on screens and-

    4. BK

      Exactly.

    5. SB

      ... white walls, uh, alone.

    6. BK

      Yeah.

    7. SB

      Uh, you know, the studies say that-

    8. BK

      Yep.

    9. SB

      ... the average, I think it said something like the average American has-... an average of zero people that they feel they could turn to at a time of crisis, which is down from, like, three, I think, two decades ago.

    10. BK

      Is that right?

    11. SB

      I'll have a look. I'll have a look at the stats. I'll, I'll pull up the stats. But th- the general idea of, like, us being lonelier than ever before.

    12. BK

      Yeah. Yeah.

    13. SB

      And how do we in a society that's, like, designed to be lonely-

    14. BK

      Yeah. Yeah.

    15. SB

      ... how do I-

    16. BK

      Yeah.

    17. SB

      ... on an individual level fix that?

    18. BK

      I think that's the big challenge. Actually, uh, you know, we have a foundation now and the main thing that we're interested is in finding funding for projects like that, of how do you help people to connect to each other, be in sync with each other. We're very much into, uh, people making music together, doing, making theater together, creating projects together. That is who we are. That is our glory as human beings, is this collaborative, active, physical creation

  46. 1:20:04 – 1:20:59

    How to Get By in an Individualistic Society

    1. BK

      of things. Um, um, that's sort of not, has not been part of mental health. We talk and we give pills, but, but we don't really connect people on a very deep level.

    2. SB

      Is there... Is, are you optimistic about this?

    3. BK

      (laughs) Not after the last election, no. (laughs)

    4. SB

      Really?

    5. BK

      I'm very desperate after the election. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    6. SB

      You're very desperate after the last election?

    7. BK

      Yeah.

    8. SB

      Why?

    9. BK

      Because the last election was based on othering. You are different, projection, you're evil. These immigrants come and kill us. And they project their own uncomf- discomfort with themselves on people, um, from different religions and different skin colors, et cetera, et cetera. It's all a projection of people's own discomfort with themselves. And there's no honesty about the problem is inside of me and not you. Yeah, yeah.

  47. 1:20:59 – 1:21:58

    Are You Optimistic About the Future?

    1. BK

    2. SB

      So I take it you're not a fan of Trump?

    3. BK

      (laughs) Let's, uh, let's leave it at that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I think, no, he's an obvious psychopath who doesn't give a shit about anybody else. Um, um, um...

    4. SB

      Are you able to point to anything good about him? And I've, when I've had people on this show that are pro-Trump, I ask them the same questions. I say, "Can you point about anything bad about him?" 'Cause he's got a family.

    5. BK

      Anybody who goes to China and says, "I've been received better than anybody else in Chinese history" is a fool. The guy's gone bankrupt any number of times. He says terrible things to other people. He insults other people all the time. I'm sure there's something good about him. Ivanka seems to have loved him at some point. Um, he's a terrible person.

    6. SB

      Going back to this point of trauma-

    7. BK

      Mm-hmm.

    8. SB

      ... um, you say that there's three

  48. 1:21:58 – 1:22:19

    Are You Able to Point Out Anything Good About Trump?

    1. SB

      broad ways to reverse the damage of trauma.

    2. BK

      Yeah.

    3. SB

      So if I came to you and I was a traumatized person-

    4. BK

      Yeah.

    5. SB

      ... whatever that trauma might be, what would, what would step one be if I came to you for support with my trauma?

    6. BK

      Step one is tell me about yourself. Who are you?

    7. SB

      Okay.

    8. BK

      Uh, what do you value? What is working? What do you want to work?

  49. 1:22:19 – 1:22:39

    Human Inclination Toward Fighting

    1. BK

      And what gets in the way? So at, at start off really language is terribly important. I don't make a list of how screwed up you are. I helped to create the DSM at some point in a very minor role, uh, but the DSM is not a good way of starting off, namely

  50. 1:22:39 – 1:25:38

    Three Ways to Reverse the Damage of Trauma

    1. BK

      how sick are you?At first I want to know who you are. What is working, what isn't working, what has helped you, what hasn't helped you, what gets in the way. And so we create a map together of who you are, um, and to some degree who you are in relationship with me. Uh, and I would check a lot with people about, is this helping you? Um, so I don't, I don't prescribe. At some point I may say, "Well, have you thought about doing some martial arts?" Uh, "Would you be interested in going to a yoga studio?" But by and large I give very little advice, but I help people to sort of discover what is going on and where that leads them in a way.

    2. SB

      And then once you've done that, say you find out that I had some early-

    3. BK

      Right.

    4. SB

      ... traumatic experience, how would you know... What treatment would you give me?

    5. BK

      That is, uh, another tricky thing, and that is something in my book I try to do that and I failed. And in my new book I'm not doing very much better. I would see how agitated you get, how much can you stay in focus, and if I would see that whenever a particular subject comes up I see you getting agitated or shut down, I would focus on that particular experience. And if I would see that you are sort of chronically agitated and unable to focus, I would say, "Let's just do something, you should do some things that help to calm your body and your brain down." And I'd say, "When you're sort of overall overwhelmed, let's start with yoga or qigong or whatever makes sense to you in terms of how to move your body." And I'd probably do neurofeedback.

    6. SB

      What's neurofeedback?

    7. BK

      Neurofeedback is you hook your skull up to electrodes that can harvest underlying brain waves so you can project your brain activity on a computer screen and that you can play computer games with your own brain waves to, uh, to, to organize your brain waves in a way that you can be more focused and pay more attention.

    8. SB

      So I've got some, uh, a graph what I'll put on the screen for anybody-

    9. BK

      Yeah.

    10. SB

      ... watching, and it shows five different types of brain waves.

    11. BK

      Yeah.

    12. SB

      Gamma brainwaves, which are very close-

    13. BK

      Yeah.

    14. SB

      ... brainwaves. Beta, less close. Alpha, less close. Theta, less close.

    15. BK

      Yeah, yeah.

    16. SB

      And then delta, which is when you're s- sort of sleep and dreaming.

    17. BK

      Yeah.

    18. SB

      The waves are very, very far apart.

    19. BK

      Yeah.

    20. SB

      Almost flat.So looking at these different types of brain waves, if we just categorize them from one being when the brain-

    21. BK

      Yeah.

    22. SB

      ... waves are really tight and close-

    23. BK

      Yeah.

    24. SB

      ... to five, which is delta, when they're really far apart, is one, gamma, is that like anxiety or something?

    25. BK

      No, no, anxiety is very focused thinking.

    26. SB

      Okay, fine.

    27. BK

      But it depends on where it is. So the back of your brain is supposed to have these slow waves 'cause your ba-

  51. 1:25:38 – 1:27:33

    Types of Brainwaves

    1. BK

      back of the brain is, uh, dealing with the housekeeping of your body. The back of your brain tells you, uh, you have to breathe a little bit more, you have to go to the bathroom. You have to eat, uh, uh, you have to, uh ... so bodily regulation. Very large part of your brain is about your bodily regulation, which get messed up in a major way by trauma. So, um, for example, when you close your eyes, the back of your brain is supposed to develop nice slow waves to tell you, "I'm feeling peaceful." When you're traumatized, when they ask you to close your eyes, it is very likely that the back of your brain gets, will get agitated and create much faster waves than you should. And so you get a sense of agitation the moment you close your eyes, um, which is of course ter- very detrimental to your health. So my job then becomes how to train your brain so that when you close your eyes, your back of your brain becomes very calm, for example. As I, again, it's not, this is not about trauma. It's about brain organization. I didn't mean that-

Episode duration: 2:02:54

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