# The Body Keeps the Score ## Metadata - Author: [[Bessel van der Kolk MD]] - Full Title: The Body Keeps the Score - Category: #source/books ## Highlights - Some people’s lives seem to flow in a narrative; mine had many stops and starts. That’s what trauma does. It interrupts the plot. . . . It just happens, and then life goes on. No one prepares you for it. —Jessica Stern, Denial: A Memoir of Terror ([Location 293](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=293)) - “The nucleus of the neurosis is a physioneurosis.”2 In other words, posttraumatic stress isn’t “all in one’s head,” as some people supposed, but has a physiological basis. ([Location 371](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=371)) - “The greatest sources of our suffering are the lies we tell ourselves.” ([Location 379](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=379)) - Trauma, whether it is the result of something done to you or something you yourself have done, almost always makes it difficult to engage in intimate relationships. After you have experienced something so unspeakable, how do you learn to trust yourself or anyone else again? Or, conversely, how can you surrender to an intimate relationship after you have been brutally violated? ([Location 409](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=409)) - “I think this man is suffering from memories.” ([Location 457](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=457)) - Note: Quoting Freud - Somehow the very event that caused them so much pain had also become their sole source of meaning. They felt fully alive only when they were revisiting their traumatic past. ([Location 519](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=519)) - Trauma results in a fundamental reorganization of the way mind and brain manage perceptions. It changes not only how we think and what we think about, but also our very capacity to think. ([Location 572](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=572)) - Note: I've literally talked about how my bain capacity has degraded over time... Just this gradual decline... And for, at least then, no apprent reason within my control - it wasn't just a, "get some more sleep." - For real change to take place, the body needs to learn that the danger has passed and to live in the reality of the present. ([Location 576](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=576))