The Ezra Klein Show: Bessel van der Kolk on Trauma

EZRA KLEIN: You have this very powerful line in the book from the writer Jessica Stern where she says, quote, “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.” Tell me a bit about how trauma interrupts the plot.

BESSEL VAN DER KOLK: Well, trauma is really a wound that happens to your psyche, to your mind, to your brain. Suddenly you’re confronted with something that you are faced with horror and helplessness. That nothing prepares you for this and you go like, oh, my God.

And so something switches off at that point in your mind and your brain. And the nature of trauma is that you get stuck there. So instead of remembering something unpleasant, you keep reliving something very unpleasant.

So the job of overcoming trauma is to make it into a memory where your whole being knows this happened a long time ago, it’s not happening right now. But the nature of traumatic stress is that you keep reacting emotionally and physiologically as if these events are happening right now.

from The Ezra Klein Show – This Conversation Will Change How You Think About Trauma. (2021, August 24). The New York Times.