“It’s those adversities that open up your mind and your curiosity to see if there are new ways of doing things,” Bessel van der Kolk told me. He then cited Socrates: “An unexamined life is not worth living. As long as one doesn’t examine oneself, one is completely subject to whatever one is wired to do, but once you become aware that you have choices, you can exercise those choices.” Notice that he didn’t say “once you spend decades in therapy.”
