Bessel van der Kolk
Dutch-American psychiatrist whose forty-year career studying the effects of trauma on the body, brain, and human relationships has reshaped the modern field of integrative healing. Born in The Hague in 1943 to a family marked by the German occupation of the Netherlands, he has been a clinician and researcher at Boston University and Harvard, and is the founder of the Trauma Center in Brookline, Massachusetts. His 2014 book The Body Keeps the Score — combining clinical case studies, neuroscience, and the somatic, contemplative, and creative therapies that traditional talk therapy cannot reach — has sold over three million copies, spent more than 200 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and become the foundational text of the contemporary trauma-informed movement that now shapes therapy, education, and contemplative practice.
quotes in library
Quotes by Bessel van der Kolk
101 quotes“The body holds memories the mind has forgotten.”
“Healing trauma requires the body's participation.”
“Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health.”
“Trauma robs you of the feeling that you are in charge of yourself.”
“To recover, you must reclaim ownership of your body and your mind.”
“Yoga is one of the most effective trauma treatments we have.”
“You cannot fully recover until you acknowledge what happened to you.”
“The greatest sources of our suffering are the lies we tell ourselves.”
“Trauma compromises the brain area that communicates the physical, embodied feeling of being alive.”
“As long as you keep secrets and suppress information, you are at war with yourself.”
“Communicating fully is the opposite of being traumatized.”
“Healing requires safety, presence, and the slow rewiring of the body.”
“Knowing what you feel is the first step.”
“To regulate emotion, you must first feel emotion.”
“Many traumatized people seem to be able to feel only when they are afraid or angry.”
“Mindfulness puts us in touch with the transitory nature of feelings and perceptions.”
“When you cannot be fully present, your life becomes a series of fragments.”
“Trauma is not just an event. It is the body's response to an event.”
“The body keeps the score.”
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