The Body Keeps the Score: How Trauma Lives in the Body

Trauma isn’t just a memory, it’s an experience stored in the body. In this episode, we unpack the psychological and physiological impact of trauma, and how recovery means reconnecting with the body and reclaiming agency.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to the Deep Dive. Today we're diving into a truly
monumental book, one that's really shifted how we think
about human suffering, about resilience.
It's the Body keeps the score. Brain, Mind and Body in The
Healing of Trauma by Bessel Vanderkolk.
An absolute landmark piece of work.
Vanderkolk is such a central figure in this field.

(00:20):
Definitely. And our mission today for you
listening, is to really get under the hood of his insights
because this isn't just about, you know, bad memories.
Not at all. No, it goes so much deeper than
that. It's about how trauma
fundamentally reshapes us. Our minds, yes, but also our
brains physically, and our bodies too.
It lodges itself in there. Right, it gets wired in.

(00:42):
And importantly, we want to explore the pathways to healing
he talks about, which are often,well, quite surprising actually,
not just your standard therapy session.
Exactly. It's about those deep invisible
traces trauma leaves, the ones we don't even consciously know
are there sometimes. Yeah, the ones we can't easily
talk about. And Vanderkult, you know, he's
not just writing theory. This book brings together

(01:02):
decades of his work, clinical work, scientific research,
countless patients stories. It's incredibly rich.
He feels like a synthesis doesn't.
It totally it's a journey into understanding not just what
trauma is, but why it has such aprofound impact by logically
even and across generations sometimes.
And then the hopeful part, how we can start to heal, often in

(01:23):
ways that, like you said, defy convention.
In that title, the body keeps the score.
It says it all, really. Our minds might try desperately
to forget, to push it away. But the body remembers.
The body remembers. It holds the score, literally.
OK, let's start there then. Section 1.
This idea of an unseen epidemic.Traumas pervasive footprint.

(01:44):
Yeah, the scale of it is something else.
He kicks off with these statistics from the CDC, the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and honestly, they
just stop you in your tracks. They really do.
They're not abstract numbers, no.
Think about this. One in five Americans sexually
molested as a child, 20%. One in five.
It's staggering. One in four beaten by a parent

(02:06):
badly enough to leave a mark 25%.
And one in three couples engaging in physical violence.
He keeps going. 1/4 of us grew up with alcoholic relatives.
One in eight saw their mother being beaten or hit.
It paints this picture of what widespread suffering hidden in
plain sight. It's exactly these aren't just
statistics. These are people's lives.

(02:27):
Your neighbors, maybe your friends, maybe even you.
Listening right now, it's far more common than we think.
And Vanderkulk frames this so well, he says, look, humans are
incredibly resilient, right? We bounce back from wars,
disasters, betrayals. We do.
We survive incredible things. But Despite that resilience,
these traumatic experiences leave deep, deep traces,

(02:49):
indelible imprints. Not just scratches that fade.
Not at all. And these aren't just individual
scars, they ripple outwards. They affect families, histories,
entire cultures even. Like these dark secrets, as he
calls them. Exactly these unspoken legacies
of pain, passed down silently through generations, affecting
our joy, our intimacy, even our biology, our immune systems.

(03:11):
Wow, so it's like a hidden script playing out.
Pretty much often without us even realizing it.
And that ripple effect, it's powerful.
Trauma isn't a solo event, is it?
Rarely, if ever it expands, it hits other shores.
Like that analogy uses dropping a Pebble in a pond, but the
ripples just keep going. Yeah, they don't really fade.
They create this this web of suffering almost.

(03:35):
He gives us examples. Soldiers coming home, maybe
terrifying their families with rage or just absence, emotional
absence. Or the wives of men with PTSD
becoming depressed themselves, caught in the fallout.
Right. Or children of depressed or
traumatized mothers growing up anxious, insecure.
Because that primary attachment figure isn't consistently
available, isn't attuned. And if you grew up with family

(03:58):
violence, he stresses how hard it is then to form stable,
trusting relationships later on.Absolutely.
The initial wound happens, but the waves keep affecting new
generations, new relationships until it's brought to light.
Which? Brings us to why people try so
hard to push it away. Because, as he defines it,
trauma is fundamentally unbearable and intolerable.

(04:19):
Unbearable. Intolerable.
Those words really land. For the person experiencing it,
rape, combat, child abuse, a horrific accident.
It's overwhelming, shattering. So the mind's natural response
is. To push it away,
compartmentalize, Act as if nothing happened, Try
desperately to move on. It's a survival mechanism then,

(04:40):
not weakness. Absolutely.
A profound, innate, biologicallydriven survival mechanism.
When reality threatens to shatter you, the brain protects
you, even if that means burying the unspeakable.
And you can just imagine the sheer energy that takes.
Oh, tremendous energy. Just to function day-to-day.
Go to work, see people, pretend everything's fine.
While carrying this invisible, crushing weight of terror,

(05:03):
powerlessness, shame. It's like running a marathon
every single day, isn't it? It is.
It's this constant internal struggle, this suppression that
drains your life force. The book makes you feel that
burden, that exhaustion of pretending nothing happened.
Yeah, It shows how that effort consumes resources that could go
towards growth, connection, joy.So trying to forget protects you
short term but costs you well, costs you your vitality in the

(05:27):
long. Run exactly your full presence
in the world. OK, let's shift then.
Section 2, the brains battlefield.
How? Trauma literally reconfigures
our inner world. This is where it gets really
fascinating looking at the neurobiology.
He uses these powerful patient stories.
Tom the combat veteran. Yeah, Tom's story is striking.
Before Vietnam. Valedictorian.

(05:48):
Athlete, leader. Devoted friend.
Bright future. Had everything going for him.
Then that ambush in the rice Paddy and his life just
transforms not just memories buthis whole being.
Right. The flashbacks were horrific,
seeing dead children. Constant nightmares, drinking to
cope, his family living in fear of his outburst.

(06:09):
It wasn't just bad memories, it was a complete hijacking of his
internal system. And Tom himself described this
pervasive emotional numbness, didn't he?
He did. He wanted to love his family,
feel connected, but he just couldn't.
Felt distant, like his heart wasfrozen living.
Behind a glass wall, he said. Yeah, observing life, detached
even from himself. Couldn't feel anything deeply

(06:31):
except. Those moments of rage and shame.
Exactly observing himself from adistance, floating in space,
even in court arguing a case. But the paradox was his only
relief came from intense high stakes situations like that
murder trial. Right.
He felt like being in combat then, Fully alive, absorbed,

(06:52):
clear. But only then, as soon as it was
over. The nightmares, the rage, it all
came flooding back. Danger became and the only way
to feel alive briefly. It's tragic, like his brain's
internal projector was just stuck on that one terrifying
film loop. That's a great way to put it.
He connects this to the Rorschach tests the ink blots.
Right how traumatized people tend to see their trauma

(07:13):
everywhere. Exactly, they struggle to see
the present clearly because their minds are stuck replaying
the past, re enacting the trauma.
It's. Not a lack of imagination, their
system is just stuck on that oldreel.
Constantly braced for a danger that's already passed, making it
impossible to engage with a safepresent.
Which leads us to that concept of inescapable shock.
Ah yes, the Mayor and Seligman dog experiments from the 60s

(07:36):
Crucial work. Can you walk us through that
briefly? It's pretty foundational.
Sure, they gave dogs electric shocks in cages they couldn't
escape from inescapable shock. Horrible, but revealing.
Extremely because later, even when the cage doors were open,
the traumatized dogs didn't eventry to leave, they just lay
there they. 'D learned escape was futile.
Learned helplessness. Precisely.

(07:57):
And Vanderkult draws a direct parallel to human trauma victims
who seem to just give up even when opportunities arise.
So it raises that question, if the open door isn't enough, what
keeps people stuck? It suggests it's more than just
a belief. It's a deep biological shift.
The expectation of helplessness gets wired in and.

(08:18):
The physiological cost. Is this where it gets really
interesting? Right, The stress hormones?
Yes, Mayer and Seligman found those dogs secreted way more
stress hormones even after the shocks stopped.
And the author found the same pattern in traumatized people.
Absolutely. They keep pumping out stress
hormones, cortisol, adrenaline, long after the danger's gone.
Like their internal alarm systemis stuck on.

(08:39):
Permanently on red alert, convinced the threat is still
there even when they're safe, which takes a massive toll on
the body. Chronic stress, exhaustion,
physical illness. And Rachel Yehuda's research
adds another layer to this. Her findings on cortisol levels
in PTSD seem paradoxical at first.
Because cortisol normally signals all safe.

(09:00):
Yeah, it ends the stress response.
Usually yes, but she found cortisol levels are often low in
PTSD. Huh.
How does that work? Her work showed that in PTSD the
whole stress hormone system doesn't return to baseline, that
all safe signal stays off or gets suppressed.
So the internal emergency just continues indefinitely?
Exactly. Hyper vigilant, constantly

(09:21):
braced, the internal thermostat for danger is broken, stuck on
hot. So what's happening in the brain
itself during all this? The brain scans during
flashbacks are mind blowing. They really are.
Only the right side of the brainlights up.
While the left side broke his area, the language center just
goes dark. Effectively blacks out, goes
offline. Wow.
So the part that makes sense of things, puts feelings into

(09:44):
words, builds A narrative, it's just gone.
Gone you might scream or freeze,but coherent logical
understanding? Impossible in that moment.
Which explains why it's so hard for survivors to talk about it
when they're overwhelmed. Absolutely.
The capacity for language literally deserts them.
And that left brain shutdown impacts everything, doesn't it?

(10:06):
Organizing experience logically.Cause and effect planning.
All compromised when people say they feel like they're losing
their minds. Well technically their rational
brain is impotent against the emotional brains reality in that
moment. The temporal lobes, too, right?
The part that tracks our sense of self across time.
Shows abnormalities too, which contributes to that feeling of

(10:28):
this will last forever. I'm permanently stuck.
The sense of continuity is broken.
Like Stan, the patient recallinghis car accident during the
scan. Yes.
He wasn't just remembering, he started sweating, heart racing.
He was. Reliving it as if it were
happening right there in the scanner.
His amygdala, but the fear center was lit up like a
Christmas tree. No distinction between past and

(10:49):
present danger for that part of the brain.
But then you take who is in the same accident, she reacted
totally differently. Complete contrast.
Her mind went blank. Brain activity decreased almost
everywhere. She felt nothing, just like
during the accident itself. Dissociation.
It's such a stark reminder. Some relive intensely, some shut

(11:09):
down completely, but both stem from that same core
neurobiological dysregulation caused by trauma.
To understand this better, he brings in the Triune Brain
model. Can you unpack that a bit?
Sure, it's a useful way to thinkabout the brains evolutionary
layers. He grouped the oldest parts, the
reptilian brain stem, basic survival functions like
breathing, heart rate and the limbic system, emotions, memory

(11:31):
and calls them the emotional brain.
The core system the. Core constantly scanning for
danger or opportunity unconsciously like a lightning
fast internal security system. Prioritizing survival above all
else. Absolutely.
It triggers those pre programmedfight flight freeze responses
automatically before your thinking brain even catches up.
The neocortex, the top layer forrational thought and empathy.

(11:53):
That comes later. Much later in evolution and it
reacts much slower. Like his analogy of seeing a
coiled rope. Perfect example, you leap back
in terror first. That's the emotional brain
reacting instantly to a potential threat shape.
Then your rational brain catchesup and goes, oh wait, just a
rope. Exactly, The emotional brain
jumps to conclusions for survival when trauma hits.

(12:14):
That ancient system can get stuck in on mode hijacking
everything. Constantly seeing snakes where
they're only ropes. Precisely leaving the rational
brain struggling to make sense of a world that the deeper parts
are screaming is still unsafe. Which is why I just
understanding trauma intellectually often isn't
enough to heal it right? OK, let's move into Section 3.

(12:34):
The echoes of childhood. How trauma, especially early
trauma, shapes development. This is such a critical part of
the book. The foundations laid in
childhood are everything he. Talks a lot about attachment
theory, John Bolby's work. Foundational A secure attachment
provides that secure base for a child.
Like learning to ride a bike with a steady hand of the seat.

(12:55):
Exactly like that, feeling safe enough to explore, to try to
fall, knowing support is there. It builds self-reliance,
emotional regulation, empathy. Without it, the world feels
dangerous. Perpetually.
And that dance of attunement between caregiver and baby is
key. The shared gazes, synchronized
movements, mirroring vocalizations.

(13:16):
It's how a child learns self regulation and the discovery of
mirror neurons in 94 was huge for understanding this.
The neural Wi-Fi. Yeah, that writer called them
that. We pick up not just movements,
but emotional states, intentions, sensations from
others. So we mirror each other sync up.
But the flip side is crucial. We're vulnerable to others.

(13:37):
Negativity too. Yeah.
Hijacked by their anger, draggeddown by their depression.
And trauma, he says, almost always involves not being seen,
mirrored, taken into account. Exactly which disrupts that
fundamental connection and our ability to regulate ourselves.
He describes that sequence implicitly, like Tronics.
Still face experiment. Yeah, the mother and baby.

(13:57):
Right, the delight, then the rupture.
Baby pulls hair. Mom gets angry, Baby gets
scared. But then the repair mom softens,
soothes, reconnects. And that whole cycle, maybe just
12 seconds long, teaches A profound lesson.
Broken connections can be repaired.
Which builds that internal locusof control, the belief that you

(14:18):
can influence things. Seek help, feel better.
Absolutely secure kids learn what feels good or bad and
crucially, how to get comfort. But then you have the insecure
attachment patterns. Which are devastating.
There's avoidant attachment, kids look unaffected when mom
leaves. But physiologically?
Their heart rates are up, stresshormones high.
They're dealing, but not feeling.

(14:39):
Exactly. And even worse is disorganized
attachment, often called fright without solution.
Because the caregiver is both necessary for survival and the
source of fear. An impossible dilemma.
Who do you run to? And the person you need is the
one terrifying you. No coherence strategy for
safety. None.
So you see these confusing behaviors going into a trance,

(15:00):
freezing with arms raised. Getting up to greet a parent and
then just falling down. Yeah, like their system is short
circuiting or being overly affectionate with strangers, or
trusting absolutely no one. Imagine that internal chaos, not
knowing who's safe, who you belong to.
And, the book explains, if you can't communicate what you feel
to your caregiver, you can't communicate it to yourself.

(15:22):
Leading to denial, dissociation.Yeah, feeling not real inside.
That devastating feeling like Sherry, the woman who picked her
skin compulsively. Not to self harm, but just to
feel something, anything. To feel alive, tangible, to
prove she existed in her disconnected state, it's
heartbreaking. Which leads us straight into the

(15:42):
ACE study, Adverse Childhood Experiences.
A truly monumental piece of research, Doctor Vincent Filetti
stumbled onto it almost by accident.
Running an obesity clinic. Right.
Yeah. And what it revealed was this
hidden epidemic even among, you know, white, middle class
educated people. The kind of people you wouldn't
necessarily expect to have high trauma rates.
Exactly like finding this hiddenriver of pain running beneath

(16:04):
seemingly calm ground. And the numbers, they just under
score the scale of it. Over 1/4 reporting physical
abuse. 28% of women, 16% of men reporting sexual abuse, one in
eight witnessing domestic violence.
And crucially, these things rarely happen in isolation,
right? They cluster.
Very rarely, adverse experiencesare interrelated.

(16:26):
If one thing is happening often others are too.
So the more ACE someone has, thehigher their score, the greater
the damage later on. A devastating chain reaction and
the link to later suffering is undeniable.
Chronic depression rates just skyrocket with higher ACE
scores. Dramatically, 66% in women, 35%
in men with four or more ACE's compared to 12% was 0.

(16:48):
And reliance on antidepressants,painkillers, that goes up to.
Proportionally, the author makesthis powerful point.
We might be treating today the fallout from things that
happened 50-60 years ago. At huge cost, both personal and
financial. The cost to the healthcare
system for meds, treatments, it's astronomical.
It really highlights the long shadow of unaddressed early

(17:09):
trauma. Which brings us to that
diagnostic dilemma. He talks about the frustration
over developmental trauma disorder, or DTB.
Yeah, the fact that the AmericanPsychiatric Association rejected
it as an official diagnosis. Despite all the research showing
how early maltreatment literallysculpts the brain, he calls
trauma A chisel shaping the brain.

(17:30):
Exactly. It's not something you just get
over. It has enduring physical effects
on brain development, but the diagnosis that would capture
that complex, pervasive impact got rejected.
It seems like such a roadblock. It is because many kids in
clinic is clearly suffering fromrelational trauma don't fit the
rigid PTSD criteria. So they get these other labels

(17:50):
instead. He calls pseudoscientific
oppositional defiant disorder disruptive mood dysregulation
disorder. Impressive but meaningless
labels, he says. Because they completely miss the
root cause. It's like painting over water
stains on the wall when the foundation is cracked.
They ignore the desperate survival attempts behind the
behaviors. Exactly.
The rage, the withdrawal. These are responses to

(18:13):
unbearable circumstances, not character flaws.
And this connects to the bigger picture, right?
Societal priorities. The economics of prevention
versus treatment. Absolutely.
He cites Nobel laureate James Heckman's work.
Showing that high quality early childhood programs pay for
themselves many times over. Yeah, involving parents,
teaching basic skills. Every dollar invested saves

(18:35):
maybe $7.00 later on. Welfare, healthcare, prison
costs. Plus you get higher tax revenue
it. Was so much sense.
Yet the US incarceration rate issky high compared to European
countries that invest more in family support in prevention.
Like Norway or the Netherlands. Right.
It really forces you to think about our priorities.
Prevention is more humane, more effective, and ultimately more

(18:57):
economical than trying to fix decades of damage later.
OK, so if trauma is this deep, affecting brain body
development, how do we heal? Let's get into Section 4,
Pathways to Wholeness. This is the really hopeful,
practical part of the book. He outlines 3 fundamental
avenues for recovery. Three main paths.
Yeah, first top down talking, understanding, processing

(19:21):
memories intellectually. Traditional talk therapy,
essentially. OK, second.
Second, medication and technology.
Things like drugs to calm the alarm system or neurofeedback to
retrain brain patterns. And 3rd, 3rd, and maybe most
emphasized in the book is bottomup body based experiences.
Things that give you a visceral feeling that contradicts the

(19:42):
helplessness or rage of the trauma.
And he stresses that most peopleneed a combination.
Definitely, because, as we said,the rational brain alone can't
talk the emotional brain out of its reality.
The body holds truths words can't reach.
Which explains the limits of just talk therapy for trauma.
Especially since trauma is oftenpre verbal right, happened

(20:02):
before language or it bypasses language centers.
How do you describe a freeze response with words or that
silent scream? Incredibly difficult.
People can often tell the story of what happened to them easier
than they can access and articulate the internal
experience, the sensations, the trapped emotions.
The body holds what words can't capture.

(20:22):
So if you only use words. You miss a massive piece of the
puzzle. Which is why these bottom up
approaches are so important. Embracing the body.
Sensing, moving, connecting. Let's start with yoga and body
awareness. He sees this as powerful bottom
up work. Hugely powerful.
He tells Annie's story. Severe trauma.

(20:43):
Initially terrified of yoga. Because it meant looking inward,
listening to her body, things she'd avoided to survive.
Exactly. But after her second class, she
wrote to him. Your body has things to say.
And she vowed to listen. That's a huge shift, reclaiming
that inner world, moving towardsembodied presence.
Monumental and the research backs it up.

(21:04):
Yoga studies showed big improvements in arousal
problems, reactivity. And people's relationship to
their bodies changed. Dramatically, they'd say things
like I now take care of my body,I listen to what my body needs,
restoring into reception, feeling internal signals.
Even if their formal PTSD symptoms didn't change much on
paper. Right.
It shows that re engaging the body's own regulatory systems is

(21:25):
key. It improves heart rate
variability, that balance between the sympathetic gas
pedal and parasympathetic brake.Yoga helps restore that balance,
which is often way off in PTSD. Precisely through breath,
mindful movement, sustained postures.
OK then psychomotor therapy. That sounds intense.
It is intense but incredibly powerful.
It allows you to feel what you felt, then see what you saw, say

(21:48):
what you couldn't say. Like rewriting scenes from the
movie of your life. Exactly.
But actively re enacting them with role players in a safe
space. It's physical, visceral.
He did it himself, didn't he? Revisited A childhood scene.
He did and found it profoundly impactful.
And Maria's case? Confronting her abusive father,
but with an ideal mother figure present for support.

(22:10):
Yes, someone playing the role ofthe protector she never had.
She could finally express her truth, her rage, feel safe and
empowered in that reenactment. Giving a visceral experience of
agency that contradicts the pasthelplessness.
It creates a new virtual memory of competence living alongside
the trauma memory. It helps integrate the
experience by providing mastery where there was none, rewriting

(22:32):
the body's narrative. And internal family systems ifs
that's came to a lot of tractionlately.
It has, and for good reason. Richard Schwartz's model sees
the mind as a family of parts. Exiles, managers, Firefighters.
Right. And the key insight is that
these parts, even the difficult ones, the inner critic, the part
that wants to numb out, aren't bad.
They're protectors. Trying to shield the core self

(22:55):
from deeper pain, even if their methods are now harmful.
Exactly, they all have a positive protective function
trying to prevent feeling the full terror or shame of the
trauma. So IFS helps liberate those
exiled parts holding the pain. Yes, allowing them to be seen,
heard, unburdened by the core self, that compassionate,
curious, calm center. Peter the Doctor.

(23:17):
Who seemed callous but held thatterrified inner child right.
Connecting with and healing thatpart through IFS healed his
headaches and his relationships.It moves away from pathologizing
parts towards integration and self compassion.
OK, how about EMDR eye movement desensitization and
reprocessing? Another powerful tool seems
simple guided eye movements or alternating taps or sounds while

(23:39):
recalling the trauma. But it helps integrate those
fragmented memories. It does David's case his
compulsive sexual behavior stopped after EMDR.
And Kathy integrating abuse memories without lots of
talking, seeing her big me, holding her little me.
Such a powerful image of self compassion and safety taking
route. It helps achieve that felt sense

(24:01):
of control over past events. How does it work?
Does it mimic REM sleep? That's one fairy.
REM sleep helps forge new connections between memories.
EMDR seems to do something similar.
Unsticking those frozen associations like loud noise
equals danger. Exactly.
Those rigid, over generalized. As fear responses get loosened,

(24:21):
the brain can reprocess and integrate the trauma so it
becomes a memory, not a relived horror.
It helps the brain finish processing what got stuck.
Then neurofeedback. This one sounds futuristic.
It does feel a bit like sci-fi, but it's real brain training,
literally nudging the brain intohealthier electrical pattern.
Like an orchestra tuning itself or meditation on steroids.
Good analogies, you see your brain activity on a screen,

(24:44):
maybe as a game, and learn to shift it towards calmer states
like producing more alpha waves.Gaining conscious control over
unconscious brain states. Precisely.
Lisa's story is incredible. Severe abuse history, constantly
jumpy, heard low level conversations in her head.
Feared she was schizophrenic. Yes, after neurofeedback, the

(25:04):
dissociation stopped, the noisesvanished.
Her perception of people changedfundamentally.
From memorizing them out of fearto truly knowing them.
A profound shift brain mapping keg can show these different
patterns, confusion, agitation and help patients learn to
process information differently,retraining their brains

(25:25):
regulation. Putting the power back in their
own brains. Exactly.
Agency over internal states. And finally, theater may be
surprising, but he highlights its power.
An ancient pathway, really. He talks about veterans
transformed by performing plays like Ajax.
That 2500 year old Greek tragedyabout a warrior's breakdown.
Yes, it resonated so deep, deeply helped veterans and

(25:47):
families open up. It's like those communal rituals
societies have always used to cope with terror, providing
voice and shared experience. Collective confrontation with
suffering. And theater creates muscular
bonding, that connection throughshared movement and expression,
a sense of collective identity for those feeling cut off.
Like the Shakespeare and the Courts program, kids embodying
emotions, gaining competence. Yes, learning to stand tall,

(26:11):
speak, clearly, embody feelings,giving them power over their
destiny and it's healing trauma without even using the word
trauma. Building resilience through
creative expression and community.
And it connects back to language, like Helen Keller
finding her place in the world through words.
Learning to notice specific feelings and language them
moving beyond just good or bad. Exactly.

(26:33):
Giving voice to the unspeakable.Building community, transforming
suffering into connection. These aren't just about erasing
the past, but integrating it into a richer present.
Wow, we've covered so much ground.
It's been a really profound journey through this book.
The body keeps the score. It really has.
We've seen how pervasive trauma is, how it reshapes minds,
bodies, brains, those deep traces it leaves.

(26:56):
But also, crucially, how healingis possible through such diverse
paths. Aths that go way beyond just
talking, addressing the mind, body and brain together.
Reclaiming that sense of agency,of wholeness.
The road of recovery, as he says, really is the road of life
itself, isn't it? It takes courage to revisit the
past, but in these new embodied ways.

(27:18):
And that core message just echoes the body keeps the score.
Our fundamental needs for safety, connection,
self-awareness, they are the absolute backbone of healing.
Identifying what's going on inside, naming it, even the
chaos or numbness, that's the first step it.
Is and remembering that social support feeling seen and known.
It's not optional for healing, it's a biological necessity.

(27:40):
Isolation just locks us in, further connection is the
pathway. It helps us re regulate, feel
safe enough to just be. So as we wrap up this deep dive,
maybe a final thought for you listening.
If, as the author quotes, what cannot be spoken to, the mother
cannot be told to the self. Powerful quote.
Then what truth about your own inner world, what unspoken
feeling or fragmented experiencemight be waiting for you to

(28:02):
finally give it a voice? What story is your body still
trying to tell? And how might you begin to
listen, truly listen, to the wisdom it holds?