Comments on: Bessel van der Kolk Speaks with NICABM’s Ruth M. Buczynski about Trauma on 10/29/2014 & I Take Notes

By: Shelley Stockwell-Nicholas

Shelley Stockwell-Nicholas — Wed, 27 Apr 2022 16:27:37 +0000

Why is hypnosis not mentioned as a way of evoking positive neutrality and higher awareness… why skirt it with guided imagery… too much competition with “traditional therapy?”

By: Cissy White

Cissy White — Mon, 26 Jun 2017 13:59:15 +0000

In reply to Katinka.

Hi Katinka:
Thank you so much for your comment. I love hearing different views and experiences and appreciate it. I really admire his work, in general, and know many others love the book and exactly as is. It’s hard to know how much I projected on the tone from having been to the trauma conference in 2014.
Thanks again. I’m glad there are more and more options available and thanks for sharing about Pesso.
Cissy

By: Katinka

Katinka — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 05:26:21 +0000

I personally did like the Bessel van der Kolk book & did not feel infantilized. I came here to find out whether the nicabm site would be worth the trouble & it sounds like it would not be (because I have already read the book). Thanks.

I would like to add Pesso to ‘what works’ in my experience. It is also in his book. It is body-based group therapy and it basically means that the inner child gets what it would have needed back then. So it can be a pretty targeted way of dealing with issues. And because there is a group (and they each get a role in your structure), you can experience an alternative to what was normal back then.

Like other forms of therapy – or any way of dealing with trauma that actually works, including meditation – it can bring a whole lot of emotion to the foreground.

So – as Bessel rightly says – each one of us has to learn to trust our own instincts as to what we need. And that IS precisely what you say too – so I would say you’re in agreement. It is also putting the responsibility with the person who is experiencing the trauma, which is hardly talking down on us.

However, I can imagine that something in the tone of the book might not appeal.

By: Trauma Survivors As Experts: My Rant - Heal Write Now for Trauma Survivors & Adults Abused as Children

Tue, 04 Nov 2014 23:20:38 +0000

[…] just listened to a webinar with Bessel van der Kolk, took ten pages of notes and shared them on this site and I am reading his new book, The Body Keeps […]

By: Margaret Bellafiore

Margaret Bellafiore — Tue, 04 Nov 2014 01:46:37 +0000

I found the dialogue you started by giving the new Van der Kolk book on the Amazon website a review of only a single star quite illuminating. Your writing so expertly expresses the voice of the PERSON with trauma, the voice that is missing from his book.