How Our Body Does Keep the Score

How trauma affects not only our mental, but also our physical health

Dear mental health advocate,

One of the psychology topics I research and work with most is trauma. Why? It is a matter that a lot of us have to deal with to some extent in our lives. A traumatic experience often has lasting effects. In today’s premium article I want to specifically zoom in how trauma affects our body and overall physical health. When people think about trauma, several mental symptoms come to mind like flashbacks, mood swings and anxiety. However, trauma also has a severe impact on our body which can occur much longer than you’d initially think.

Before I dive deeper into the details about how trauma and our physical health are connected, I want to highlight a specific author and book that has been of great help on this matter. My fellow Dutchman and psychiatrist with the name of Bessel van der Kolk has written a very insightful book about ‘How the Body Keeps the Score’ that I would strongly recommend to read if you have suffered from trauma. He highlights in this book how trauma is not just a psychological experience, and understanding how trauma impacts the body can help us develop better strategies for healing and recovery. I will provide some snippets and insights from both this book and other information from psychology science below!

The Mind-Body Connection

According to Bessel van der Kolk, experiencing trauma creates a large disconnect between our brain (the mind) and our physical health (the body). Although our mind will probably try to suppress or even bury traumatic memories to protect ourselves, our body almost always retains the raw sensations, emotions as well as our primal survival instincts that are activated during a traumatic event. Van der Kolk very poignantly describes this as our body ‘keeping the score’. So how does that work?