You've probably seen that black and white cover with the colorful, heat-mapped silhouette in basically every bookstore or airport terminal over the last decade. It's everywhere. The Body Keeps the Score has become less of a medical text and more of a cultural touchstone. At the center of this movement is Bessel van der Kolk, a Dutch-born psychiatrist who basically flipped the script on how we think about "the past."
For a long time, the medical world treated trauma like a story you just had to tell better. If you talked about it enough, the logic went, you’d eventually get over it. Van der Kolk disagreed. He spent decades watching veterans, survivors of domestic abuse, and neglected children struggle with physical symptoms that talk therapy couldn't touch. His conclusion? Trauma isn't just a memory. It's a physiological shift. It's a re-wiring of the brain's "smoke detector"—the amygdala—that keeps people stuck in a state of high alert long after the danger has passed.
The Man Behind the Movement
Born in 1943 in The Hague, van der Kolk grew up in the literal shadow of World War II. His father had been in a Nazi work camp. His childhood was colored by the "great Dutch famine." Honestly, when you look at his background, it’s not hard to see why he became obsessed with how survival-level stress imprints itself on a person.
He moved to the U.S. and eventually found himself at Harvard and Boston University. But it was his work with Vietnam veterans in the late 70s that really changed things. These men weren't just sad; they were having physical reactions to things that weren't there. Their bodies were reacting to the sounds of a car backfiring as if it were a mortar attack. This led him to help define PTSD in the 1980 edition of the DSM, though he's spent the rest of his career arguing that the current diagnostic labels are way too narrow.
What Everyone Gets Wrong About His Work
People often think van der Kolk is "anti-talk therapy." That’s not quite it. He’s more "pro-everything else." He argues that because trauma shuts down the medial prefrontal cortex—the part of your brain that handles logic and speech—you literally cannot "talk" your way out of a flashback. You're "speechless," as he puts it.
Instead, he advocates for what he calls "bottom-up" processing. This includes things that sound a bit "woo-woo" to traditional MDs:
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- Yoga (to help people feel their own skin again).
- Neurofeedback (to calm the brain's electrical storms).
- Theater and Psychodrama (to practice being someone other than a victim).
- EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing).
He’s currently a huge proponent of psychedelic-assisted therapy, specifically using MDMA to help patients stay grounded while they revisit horrific memories. In his view, the medicine creates a "chemical bridge" that allows the rational brain to stay online while the emotional brain does the heavy lifting.
The 2018 "Fall from Grace" and Controversies
It hasn’t all been bestseller lists and standing ovations. In 2018, van der Kolk was famously fired from the Trauma Center he founded in Boston. The allegations weren't about medical malpractice, but rather his management style. Former colleagues described a "hostile work environment" and accused him of bullying.
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Van der Kolk denied the specifics, essentially saying he was a difficult person to work for because he was so demanding of the mission. It created a massive rift in the therapy world. Some saw him as a visionary who was being pushed out by corporate interests (the Justice Research Institute), while others felt it was a classic case of a brilliant man who thought he was above the rules.
There’s also the scientific critique. Some neuroscientists argue he oversimplifies brain imaging to tell a compelling story. They’ll point out that while "the body keeps the score" is a great metaphor, the biological reality of how memories are stored is way more fragmented and complex than his book suggests.
Why he is still teaching in 2026
Despite the drama, at 82 years old, van der Kolk is still incredibly active. He’s spending 2026 leading workshops at places like the Esalen Institute in California and Blue Spirit in Costa Rica. He’s leaning heavily into psychodrama—using theater and movement to "re-stage" life experiences.
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He’s also still fighting the American Psychiatric Association. He wants them to recognize "Developmental Trauma Disorder." He argues that diagnosing a kid who grew up in a war zone (or a violent home) with ADHD or Oppositional Defiant Disorder is like "treating a drowning person for a cough." It misses the root cause: the nervous system is just trying to survive.
Actionable Steps for Processing Trauma
If you’ve read the book and feel overwhelmed, or if you’re just starting to look into van der Kolk’s theories, here is how you actually apply this stuff:
- Prioritize Interoception: This is the fancy word for "feeling your insides." Most traumatized people are "numb" from the neck down. Try simple activities like noticing your heart rate or the feeling of your feet on the floor.
- Move the Body: You don't need a 90-minute yoga class. Even rhythmic walking, drumming, or singing can help regulate the autonomic nervous system.
- Seek Specialized Care: If traditional "talk therapy" makes you feel worse or "stuck," look for practitioners trained in EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, or Internal Family Systems (IFS). These align more closely with van der Kolk’s findings.
- Practice Agency: Trauma is the ultimate loss of control. Rebuilding your life is about making small, "agentic" choices—deciding what you eat, what you wear, and who gets access to your space.
The legacy of Bessel van der Kolk isn't that he found a "cure" for trauma. It's that he gave millions of people a vocabulary for their physical pain. He validated the idea that if you feel "broken," it might just be your body doing exactly what it was designed to do: keep you alive.