The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Body Trauma Expert: Medicating Kids Can Harm Brain Development! Eye Movement Trick That Fixes Trauma! The Secret To EMDR Therapy! - Bessel van Der Kolk
Mon, 23 Dec 2024
50-70% of people will experience a trauma in their life, but how do you heal from these devastating experiences? If the Body Keeps the Score, according to Bessel van der Kolk this is how you get even with trauma. Bessel van der Kolk is Professor of Psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine and President of the Trauma Research Foundation. He is the author of the global bestselling book ‘The Body Keeps The Score’. In this conversation, Bessel and Steven discuss topics such as, how to heal from childhood trauma, the benefits of EMDR therapy, the link between screens and loneliness, and how trauma physically changes your brain. 00:00 Intro 02:32 Bessel's Mission 03:09 What Is Trauma? 04:37 What Trauma Treatments Do You Disagree With? 06:03 Does Rationalising Your Trauma Help? 07:01 What Is Considered Trauma? 09:40 Can Small Events Lead to Trauma? 10:20 Bessel's Experience as a Psychiatrist 12:43 Bessel's Parents 15:31 Consequences of Child Abuse 16:07 Is It Important to Understand Childhood Experiences? 16:42 Was Your Mother an Incest Victim? 17:31 How Many Patients Trace Issues to Childhood Experiences? 18:01 Examples of Child Abuse 19:18 How Culture Influences Parenting 21:52 Disciplining Children 24:03 Liberation Equals Separation 25:44 What Did You Learn for Your Children? 27:01 Medical Treatment for Behavioural Dysfunctions in Children 30:36 Impact of Movement on Healing 32:00 Importance of Secure Attachment to a Caregiver 32:57 Can You Heal from Childhood Trauma? 34:32 The Body Keeps the Score 36:27 Somatic Approach to Healing 36:53 Are Women More in Touch with Somatic Healing? 38:02 Impact of Trauma on Creativity 41:14 Trauma as a Perception 45:05 How Many People Have Trauma? 45:50 How Does Trauma Affect Brain Activity? 50:00 Study: Reliving a Traumatic Event 55:13 Most Radical Improvement in Clinical Practice 55:55 EMDR 59:01 Demonstration of EMDR 1:04:12 Breath work 1:05:55 Impact of Yoga on Trauma 1:06:23 Study: Effects of a Weekly Yoga Class 1:08:09 Disconnection and Hypersensitivity 1:10:26 Impact of Physical Activity on Trauma 1:13:15 Picking Up People's Energy 1:16:01 Challenges of Individualistic Cultures 1:16:48 Role of Community and Social Connections in Trauma 1:17:37 Are Women Better at Forming Connections? 1:18:19 Building Relationships in the Army 1:19:13 Building Connections Through Sports 1:20:19 How to Get By in an Individualistic Society 1:21:13 Are You Optimistic About the Future? 1:22:12 Are You Able to Point Out Anything Good About Trump? 1:22:33 Human Inclination Toward Fighting 1:22:54 Three Ways to Reverse the Damage of Trauma 1:25:52 Types of Brainwaves 1:27:48 Psychedelic Therapy 1:28:26 Body Practices 1:29:07 Is Touch Healing? 1:29:21 Talk Therapy 1:29:46 Bessel's View on Taking Medications 1:30:08 The Bottom-Up Approach 1:31:53 Does Going to the Gym Help? 1:34:05 Bessel's View on Psychedelic Therapy 1:38:00 Effects of MDMA 1:39:25 Impact of Psychedelics on Treatment-Resistant Depression 1:40:32 Bessel's Experience with Psychedelics 1:43:11 How Did Psychedelic Experiences Change You? 1:43:48 Have You Healed from Your Trauma? 1:44:36 Psychodrama 1:49:33 The Rise in ADHD Diagnoses 1:51:45 Cause of ADHD 1:52:42 Is ADHD Over diagnosed? 1:55:21 How Can We Raise Untraumatised Kids? 1:56:24 Helping People in Traumatic Events 1:58:20 Question from the Previous Guest Follow Bessel: Website - https://g2ul0.app.link/fJd55uRwqPb Studies mentioned: besselvanderkolk.tiiny.co You can purchase Bessel’s book, ‘The Body Keeps The Score’, here: https://g2ul0.app.link/hLePea0wqPb Get your hands on the Diary Of A CEO Conversation Cards here: https://appurl.io/iUUJeYn25v You can purchase the The Diary Of A CEO Conversation Cards: Second Edition, here: https://g2ul0.app.link/f31dsUttKKb Follow me: https://g2ul0.app.link/gnGqL4IsKKb Sponsors: PerfectTed - https://www.perfectted.com with code DIARY40 for 40% off Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the mission of Bessel van der Kolk?
Chapter 2: How do we define trauma?
Can you do it on me?
I could.
What do you see? Bessel van der Kolk has been described as maybe the most influential psychiatrist 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.
Your early childhood experiences create who you are.
And how many of the people that you treated in your practice have childhood trauma?
About 90%. And it's very difficult to change.
Are they changeable?
Yes, that is the great news. But the problem is, the focus is not on helping people. The focus is on running successful financial organizations. And even though I was the first person to study yoga for PTSD, which was very effective, and then there's psychotrauma and neurofeedback, where our results were stunning. People are so conformist, we already know
the answers let not explore anything new but let's do the science and see how well it works and for whom and what about psychedelic therapy it's very effective have you ever done a psychedelic drug yeah of course what did you learn that my quest for understanding trauma had to do with my own childhood trauma all the pain is suffering earlier on i asked if people could heal from their trauma have you healed from yours
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Chapter 3: What are the common misconceptions about trauma?
Chapter 4: Can you really heal from childhood trauma?
Well, you need to be more accurate. But the small T trauma 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. We have a cabin in northern Vermont. We've had terrible floods. The neighbors get together. They help each other.
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 not acknowledging what's going on with you. Saying to kids, 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 were too much for him and you caused him to be the person that he is. I think that people mean 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. I was irrelevant. We always had to take care of my mom or my dad, but there was no room for us.
So if you get fired from your job and it's a traumatic event for you because you get, I don't know, you lose your friends, you lose the job, your parents are embarrassed about you. Can that become trauma, something like that?
Yes, you could, depending on how you define it. And for some people it doesn't, for some people it doesn't. No, it depends again on the context. For some people, you get fired, you go like, well, I didn't like those assholes anyway.
I ask this because I'm wondering if there's a lot of people listening 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.
Absolutely. At the end, the issue is the perception. Your perception. 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, but I have so many talents. Why not try something else?
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Chapter 5: How does EMDR therapy work?
Chapter 6: What is the impact of trauma on brain development?
This is central to your story, is this early experience. You said earlier that you were born in 1943.
1943, very important. When you're born has a huge impact on who you become. So my earliest imprint is is of my father at some point was detained by the Germans. He was not in concentration camp, but he was supposed to go off there. My mom is by herself, raising small kids in hiding right next to the place where the Nazis are launching their rockets to go to.
So half of the rockets fell into our backyard. And I have no conscious imprint of that. But I grew up like a kid growing up in Ukraine today. And a lot of kids my age died. I was a very sickly child with a lot of hunger and misery. Half my generation died of starvation. And so I grew up with incredible pre-consciousness. imprint of what gets in Ukraine and Gaza are going through right now.
And that must have left a trace in my curiosity and my being, including a trace of having a body that was very sickly.
You were born in 1943 in Nazi-occupied... Netherlands. Netherlands, okay. And you're the middle children of five. That's right, yeah. You were very sick as a child. Yeah. What were your parents like in terms of love, affection, all those kinds of things?
My mother was more or less broken by the pandemic of 1919 in which her father developed Parkinsonism and became one of those Oliver Sacks type people. So my mother was a very frozen person, which had a very impact on me. My father was very conscientious, loving.
You described your mother as being a frozen person.
Yeah.
And it had an impact on you.
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Chapter 7: How do social conditions affect trauma treatment?
Chapter 8: What role does physical activity play in trauma recovery?
We're one of the few families that actually left the city, the fairly small town, 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 didn't get caught up in drugs like some of my friends. I wasn't dysfunctional. And my mother couldn't read or write as well. So I feel somewhat thankful.
But I'm rationalizing in hindsight because it somewhat ended up okay in certain measures of my life. In other areas of my life, there's dysfunction.
And your perception may change. My perception about my life and who I became has changed quite a bit over time as layers come open. But what you talk about, that things were predictable, is very important. My parents also were predictables. which is enormously helpful for at least for you to anticipate, to know what you are supposed to do, et cetera, et cetera. Chaos is a terrible thing.
I think that point is really interesting because although I was physically punished a lot,
um it was predictable yeah so i knew that if i and i understood why i was being punished so i kicked i was playing football in the house and broke ornaments yeah or something like that it was never unpredictable right but something comes to my mind as you're talking is that same visits that my parents finally came um i had a three-year-old daughter at the time we're staying at a house
And I 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, said, how dare she use our bathroom? You should punish her. And I almost did it. I had an immediate impulse, I should punish my three-year-old.
And I started to walk towards, oh my God, I'm about, I feel like crying. Oh my God, I feel I'm about to reenact what my parents did to me. And I made a decision. No, mom, she is allowed to use his bathroom. And I set the limit on my mom, which was 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 meet my daughter.
And I said, that's the end of the story. It still causes you a lot of emotion.
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