Bessel van der Kolk has been one of the most important PTSD researchers of the last 40 years, and his work on the embodied aspects of trauma and stress is fantastic.

I highly recommend you read The Body Keeps The Score. Immensely insightful and well researched book that will change the way you think about overcoming trauma

In my estimation, especially on the east coast, most people are more tense than they consciously realize

I enjoyed that you pointed out avoiding caffeine as a way to detense

The body is the mind and vice versa.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22429941-200-the-life...

He writes about this clearly and elegantly—must read for those dealing with anxiety, and certainly with any traumatic stress.

Can highly recommend the book The Body Keeps The Score for further reading.

"Why We Sleep" and "The Body Keeps the Score" are two of the most helpful books I've ever read (and both found by reading HN book suggestions).

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma > https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18693771-the-body-keeps-...

A chunk of the book talks about intergenerational transmission of trauma. The rest of it is a fascinating insight into the mind-body connection. It's Thorough and well worth the read.

https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Score-Healing-Trauma/dp/01...

For other relevant scientific perspectives, I recommend looking into the theory around "memory reconsolidation."

- Kaj Sotala does a good job of summarizing an important book in the field here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/i9xyZBS3qzA8nFXNQ/book-summa...

- How Emotions are Made also provides a perspective from neuropsychology on what's going on: https://www.amazon.com/How-Emotions-Made-Lisa-Barrett/dp/132....

- The Polyvagal Theory stuff mentioned in the article is also great, and some classic accessible books on the overall topic include The Body Keeps the Score and Waking the Tiger.

I'm personally a fan of a technique called Emotional Resolution (EmRes), which is notably simple and effective, and that you can learn to apply to yourself after a 90 minute course, but there are many other approaches: Organic Intelligence, somatic experiencing, cranio-sacral therapy, bioenergetics and core energetics, and many more. Effective self-therapy methods include Core Transformation, Focusing, and "self-therapy".

Keywords to search for are: "somatic therapy," "body work," "energy work" or "energy medicine."

I read The Body Keeps The Score and tried EMDR after that. It changed the memory of finding my dad's body after his suicide. It's a much less intense memory now because I remember it differently in a way that doesn't make me feel so abandoned.

Trauma can be healed.

* read The Body Keeps the Score
* get a massage at least once a month
* Start a regular yoga practice
* Start journalling with pen and paper
* Find ways to get outside in nature / around water

God speed

Before reading it, I discovered that a regular sauna practice (alternating cold hot cycles) had major benefits on my trauma symptoms, both developmental and acute PTSD from a near death experience. Then I read the book and was gratified to find this approach studied/explained/validated. These days I recommend it to anyone with mental health concerns, which is basically everyone these days as far as I can tell.

This book on developmental trauma looks good as well, thanks for sharing.

Edit: I will also add that The Body Keeps The Score is an interesting book, but I would definitely not recommend everyone read it. If you have suffered some trauma it is definitely worth a read.

The Body Keeps the Score is a pretty good book that covers how much trauma affects the body in myriad ways.

For what it’s worth, Bessel Van der Kolk is not without issue himself. Here’s a partial transcript that I wrote up (so any mistakes are my own) when listening to a podcast episode about trauma and abuse. The relevant part is around time code 30:00.

https://www.probablypoly.com/post/episode-25-interviewing-sa...

Trigger warning: trauma, gaslighting, and abuse

Mandee Conant: Well, I think it’s important not to discount the book, More Than Two, because we know that Eve had a lot of input into this book, but as a whole, just because someone writes a book about something does not make them an expert in it, and I think we kind of… as a community we kind of took that because their book was one of first how-to manual what to do, what not to do resources fo us, so he must be an expert. And we just took that, we took that too easily, and we need to learn to not do that.

Samantha Manewitz: And sometimes even when when people are experts they can still be terrible people. For example, Bessel Van der Kolk, who founded The Trauma Center in Brooklyn, which is my back yard. He wrote wrote the book, The Body Keeps the Score, which is required reading in any grunt school and required reading for anyone who ever wants to go into trauma work. Period, full stop.

I was initially applying for a job at The Trauma Center, and then it came out in The Globe that his co-writer and co-founder and CEO was horrifically abusive and he created a toxic work environment, and the way he responded was just textbook gaslighting, and then sort of [wrote this letter] why these people didn’t come tell him to his face. Yes, why would someone with 1 or 2 years under their belt make ever make a criticism about this person who the luminary of trauma work. If anyone should know better, it’s Bessel Van der Kolk.

[1]https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Score-Healing-Trauma/dp/B0...

[2] http://addcentre.com/page-34/page-28/media.html

Haven't checked out some of these other titles (only know of pete walker, loving "From Surviving To Thriving"), thanks. Do you know about EMDR? Worth looking into, IMO.

For anyone who has struggled with depression or severe anxiety, if you haven’t read the book The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, I encourage you to read it as soon as possible — it’s one of the best, most approachable, resources out there to understand not only many of the roots of depression, but many strategies to actually overcome it (it’s very different from traditional talk therapy, which is mostly focused on getting people to cope with their past trauma rather than resolve it).

https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Score-Healing-Trauma/dp/01...

> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18693771-the-body-keeps-...

by Bessel van der Kolk

>https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18693771-the-body-keeps-...

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, overview of how PTSD forms and how to use break the patterns

I have already begun The Body Keeps The Score and is actively looking for a therapist now.

The perpetual cycle of overreach, then crash certainly deepens the negative self talk - the fact that you can't tame yourself through excessive discipline while ignoring "how you actually feel" (ie. often like complete trash because you ARE crashing) certainly doesn't help the "neurotic behaviour/emotional armour". But i somehow thought i could "plough through".

The suppression of real emotions seems like a perfectly reasonable explanation for why you become so tired/worn out. Also you get used to ignoring the negative self talk because you feel like it makes no sense from the intellects perspective and you have to "perform professionally" or whatever.

One thing that has kept me from really going in this direction has been the observation that 3-4 days in bed with only my laptop has been able to "heal" all of the pain and fatigue and tension in the body - if done before for example an important meeting i end up completely calm, extroverted, like another person or "the real me", but the "tension" and fatigue soon returns. Such a weird and labyrinthian process. I guess it has to do with the fact that the negative self talk quickly returns and i get burned out again very easily.

Anyway, i guess the way forward is not ploughing through with a tense body and an "ignored" mind. Sounds almost stupid as i write it out like this, but here we are.

I posted the comment [2] that is still top of that thread; basically I've been living this for many years. I've certainly found that chronic back pain (which I've experienced) responds to deep emotional healing.

Physical exercise is important too; I'm not claiming, and you shouldn't accept anyone else's claims, that emotion-based treatments will magically heal the pain without exercise or physical therapy.

But the reverse applies too, and the subconscious mind can certainly keep muscles tense and joints out of alignment for a long time, in spite of any exercise or physical therapy you undertake.

I'll repeat the offer that I made in that subthread: I'll be writing a document or perhaps rather starting a discussion forum, so that I can explain everything I've experienced and learned, and allow others to take what they need from it.

Feel free to email me (address in profile) to be included.

Be assured, there are things that can be done. I know how you feel, but trust that you don't need to suffer like this forever.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21340636

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21341101

Another book "Why We Sleep" by Matthew Walker also goes into how important various stages of sleep are for learning and good health: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We_Sleep

So, while you have found something that seems to work for you to prevent regular dreams, I wonder if it could leave you stuck somewhere emotionally with a trauma or otherwise may also interfere with other healing and learning aspects of good sleep? On the other hand, maybe your approach help keeps you call enough at night, and so you are dreaming OK but don't remember your dreams (which is fine), and so you do have dreams and do process memories through them, and so your approach is a breakthrough in that sense? Anyway, there remain a lot of unknowns about sleep and dreams...

"Sleeping pills" in general are bad news for healthy sleep (as Matthew Walker explains in depth), so good to avoid them. This is because they interfere with normal sleep (as do many other things like alcohol late at night).

And yes, I would very much recommend therapy in general. Here are some thoughts on this from a discussion a few months ago [1]. There are lots of good points in that Ask HN in general.

[0] If you like somewhat technical books I can recommend The Body Keeps The Score [0]. Very much not a self-help book but the observations of someone working with people's traumas.

https://www.besselvanderkolk.com/resources/the-body-keeps-th...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22261226

I would have thought that since traumatic experiences have been around forever, humans would have adapted to dealing with those better by now. And yet the medical evidence laid out in this book seems to show that healing from traumas is difficult. To me, that means there is something "unnatural" about trauma (or at least the most awful cases).

I'm probably not doing the book enough justice. Here's the goodreads profile for anyone who wants to explore further: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18693771-the-body-keeps-...

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Score-Healing-Trauma/dp/01...

I think it is far more likely that people either didn't discuss these things due to stigma, or they conceptualized it as the haunting of demons and ghosts since severe cases of PTSD can cause split personalities and convulsions and things like that.

> And does that imply that an avoidance strategy, or a wise-cracking support group, might have better mental health outcomes than time with an empathetic therapist ?

See fight-flight-freeze-fawn response: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/addiction-and-recove....

But generally, yeah, that's a lot. Try going to therapy. Or reading a book like "The body keeps the score" that explains how trauma affects people (including things that happened to you). I think you might find yourself in some pages of that book.

I've not yet "conquered" my porn addiction, but I've realized it may have its roots in repressed anger and unable to deal with anger in a healthy way. So I echo the answer of the other comments that mention emotional displacement as the cause. I think the first step is to realize that you're addicted because subconsciously your mind is looking for relief from some difficult feeling you're unable to confront. This makes it useless to try quit by using "will power". Instead I would look for a good therapist who can help with behavioural addictions and with help and hard work you might be able to overcome it. I'm speaking only from personal experience and of course some of these things may not apply to you. But I hope it helps. Good luck my friend.

If you wish to understand more about emotional displacement, depression and addiction, I found two books particularly enlightening on the subject. One is "The body keeps the score" by Bessel Van Der kolk. The other is "In the realm of hungry ghosts" by Gabor Mate. Highly recommend both. The first is particularly great imo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtNW3I1FZ5o

What you have is a significant portion of people with c-ptsd due to the abuses western cultures' political experimentation has created who believe western culture was a mistake and tearing everything down it stands for is a lofty moral goal.

These people are angry, and IMO, they have a right to be angry; they've been through some terrible, terrible things. They believe, strongly, that engaging in pyschological warfare and using tactics to build cults or go get orgs to "go woke" that eventually culminate in killing people is a reasonable method of running what can be defined at this point as an insurgency.

I think it is manditory reading for people to read books like The body keeps the Score by Van Der Kolk if they want to really understand this movement and how these people have been marinated in bad situations. I think it is important to give them opportunities and show them patience in their recovery and to allow them to decide what their culture should be going forward.

Their tactics and logic do not stand up to scientific riguer but are complex enough to entrap the normal minimally educated individual and get them into an emotional trap; Much like the Seattle CHAZ\CHOP, the correct way to manage this is as an emotional discussion. Eventually the movement will hit a political peak, the emotions will die down, and an unruly minority is left over.

I think it is incredibly important for us to not ignore this minority, but to recognize, especially after reading that book, that these people exist and need to be given opportunities and space to decide for themselves what they want their culture to be.

We need to set strong boundaires of pride in western culture and its accomplishments, but not engage in debates about how western culture needs to be torn down or we need to self-harm as an act of solidarity. We need to not engage in political discource and when they do come, give them acts of virtue signalling which are a fascade. Over time, the emotions will dissipate and the healing can begin.

Western people are learning and we need, I think, to learn to pay for our mistakes a little better instead of ignoring people as detritus from failed systems.

It is nearly inconceivable to me that a leader in the field, a guy who wrote an earlier version of the DSM aka bible of modern psychiatry, manages to talk about the pros and cons of meds but never mentions the experiences that are known to drastically harm mental health.

We don’t need a “moon shot” as Dr. Frances suggests. At least in terms of expensive research into completely novel technologies or drugs to determine the root cause or treat much of this suffering. We may need a moonshot in terms of getting over our stigma around talking about trauma and abuse, so that trauma-informed care becomes the rule and not the exception.

The closest thing the DSM has to a trauma diagnosis is PTSD and complex PTSD. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk (author of The Body Keeps The Score, incredible resource on trauma) has proposed the diagnosis “Developmental Trauma Disorder” but this has not yet been widely adopted by mainstream psychiatry.

As far as I’m concerned, adding this single diagnosis and training mental health professionals to screen for trauma will do a lot more to help people than writing doomsaying articles like this one.

Source: grew up with developmental trauma from abusive family environment. Lost my little sister to suicide after her severe trauma was not screened for and was misdiagnosed as “bipolar”.

My fear though is that this very real need to be seen, and heard is being coopted by factions trying to use that very real human need as fodder for power (hence the right's claims of "cultural Marxism").

The balance here lies in celebrating one's heritage, without using it as a token for victimization. Because we get nowhere by further victimizing others - eg. calling someone a colonizer or oppressor. Everyone has trauma, and healing begins with radical inclusion - of everyone. I think you have a huge potential for using The Juggernaut to take the greatest parts of South Asian heritage and sharing that with non South Asians. I think a great success example is western adoption of yoga and pranayama - these are tools that emerged from South Asian culture ages ago, that have a very real place and utility for anyone living in the modern era.

I'll send you a dm with my contact info so we can continue the conversation. Appreciate your openness!

Nonetheless, it’s been instrumental in helping me alleviate my anxiety and depression. I read it a year ago and I can’t imagine going back to the way I felt then.

Specifically I’ve done two forms of therapy — EMDR and Somatic Experiencing — that were recommended (among many others) in the book.

Nope, wrong again. I am talking about cases where abusive speech is systematic, unescapable, and occurring in the context of a drastic power imbalance. Parental child abuse, for example. I can point you to countless studies where parental child abuse leads to physically harmed bodies, harm here consisting of chronic unmitigated pain, autoimmune disorders, even brain tumors. For a start, try "The Body Keeps the Score" by Bessel van der Kolk

So many of the things we call "diseases" can be traced to trauma. "Mental injury" may be a more useful construct than "mental illness". In the same way that your body can heal from a femur fracture, your psyche can heal from a trauma-induced mind fracture.

To say it’s purely physical is discounting the mental aspect of the disease. I personally suffered trauma as a child and I’ve seen first hand what strong negative emotions can do to the body.

I would think it unlikely that there will be a miracle drug that will cure it, I believe it is a disease of both the mental and physical.

For anyone affected by CFS and think that trauma may play a part, the book “The Body Keeps the Score” has helped me get more energy and control back.

People here praised this book recently, maybe worth reading: "The Body Keeps the Score" https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Score-Healing-Trauma/dp/01...

From The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D., in a section about "Applied Neuroscience" as it pertains to resolving trauma. It seems that the wave properties of the brain have been under-valued since psychopharmacology really took off in the 70s.