Your Body Keeps Score! - Unhealed Trauma Making You Feel Lost, Addicted, Stressed | Dr. Bessel

Van der Kolk says the nervous system stays stuck viewing the world through the overwhelming experience, so people react to trivial challenges as catastrophes. He notes trauma can be invisible, such as a frozen, emotionally quiet household where nobody blows up.

He says trauma affects deep functions like appetite, motivation, arousal and sleep, which is why people turn to alcohol, drugs or food to avoid losing control. He links the ACE study's findings to people not liking, trusting or caring for their body.

Citing Pennebaker's writing research, he says writing about how trauma affects you now made a difference, while writing about the trauma alone did not. He warns that trauma can become an alibi, and that telling people to choose differently does not work either.

He says people need someone with deep interest in them, and he laments that American medicine has swapped human connection for pills. Both he and the host describe how simply talking with and knowing a patient can change outcomes.

He says talking and remembering everything often does not remove symptoms, and points to yoga, martial arts, theater, tango, bodywork, EMDR and IFS. He recommends therapists trained in several methods, ideally including something body-oriented.