Whether knowingly or unknowingly trauma is something that we have all come in contact with. Maybe personally, through a family member or friend, or perhaps in a brief interaction with a stranger. In Youtuber Big Think’s video “6 Ways to Heal Trauma Without Medication”, Bessel van der Kolk goes through his personal and professional experience treating trauma, along with how we can heal from it.

Now an acclaimed psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and author of  “The Body Keeps The Score”, Dr. van der Kolk has been studying how trauma manifests itself in our bodies for over 50 years in populations around the globe. However, it was closer to the start of his career during his research with the Veterans Affairs he and his colleagues found conventional pharmaceutical treatments for PTSD were not working. This time is when he began to understand that trauma interacts with us in such a way that your body automatically goes into a state of ‘fight or flight’ or ‘collapse’. Thereby leaving the lingering effect of reacting to mild stressors as if your life is in danger and begging an important question.

“So the big challenge of treating trauma is how do we help people to live in bodies that feel fundamentally safe?”

What Dr. van der Kolk goes over in the video is that the issue is primarily one of self-compassion and the disconnect between the mind and body resulting in the survivor almost being stuck in the past. He started to look to non-pharmaceutical options to heal trauma, finding psychotherapy to be effective in helping the individual acknowledge the atrocity of what they survived and the care and understanding they deserve from themselves. Further, he expresses Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy to be profoundly effective at aiding the individual in letting go of what happened by reinterpreting their current reality from a different angle.

Continually, Dr. van der Kolk goes into how by simply re-strengthening your connection with your body and its sensory symptoms you can bring your body back to the present. He details how yoga, theatre and movement all help to heal trauma by forming a more connected relationship within your body and with your senses, thereby altering your perception of your reality. Furthermore, Dr. van der Kolk speaks to the potential behind the development of newer therapeutic methods. These treatments are often seen as controversial, with neurofeedback therapy and MDMA-assisted therapy still under study and having only been shown to be effective when administered by a team of medical professionals. The essence of all therapeutic interventions discussed is to remind your mind and body how to experience outside of what has been.

“To see that the reality they live in is just a small part of the reality that is”

Video “6 ways to heal trauma without medication”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoZT8-HqI64&ab_channel=BigThink

Image Credits:

Featured Image: Getty Images For Unsplash+