The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

by Bessel van der Kolk

It takes tremendous energy to keep functioning while carrying the memory of terror, and the shame of utter weakness and vulnerability.

Kardiner noted that sufferers from traumatic neuroses develop a chronic vigilance for and sensitivity to threat. His summation especially caught my eye: “The nucleus of the neurosis is a physioneurosis.”2 In other words, posttraumatic stress isn’t “all in one’s head,” as some people supposed, but has a physiological basis. Kardiner understood even then that the symptoms have their origin in the entire body’s response to the original trauma.