Hello Friend,
I hope you are doing well.
Today I would like to talk about the book, The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel van der Kolk. This is an incredible book that I highly recommend reading. It is very easy to find this book on Amazon or at your local bookstore (I picked mine up at the lovely Park Road Books in Charlotte, NC). This book does an excellent job of describing trauma and the way it affects our entire bodies as well as our brain. Bessel van der Kolk's goes over his own journey of learning about trauma in his very expansive career in the mental health field. Given his experience though, he does sometimes use vocabulary that may not be the easiest for everyone to understand. As part of my self-care routine, I like to read a book for an hour every night before bed and not look at any screens. With this book, I found that I had to also bring my dictionary to bed with me. I do not believe that this should deter non-social workers from reading this book, as it paints a very detailed picture of trauma that everyone should see in order to understand trauma victims' brains.
I must warn that this book can be challenging to read at times. It deals with trauma and traumatizing events without holding back. The book talks about violent and bloody acts, rape, child molestation, and many other triggering stories. So be warned about that when going in.
One thing that caught my eye with this book is its description of a variety of treatments for trauma, that were not your traditional medication treatment or psychotherapy sessions. He describes using EMDR, yoga, bio-feedback, and many other methods for treating trauma. I found EMDR to be really interesting and I would like to get to do more research on it. I found mixed sources about it online, with some saying it works really well while others say otherwise. I talked to two social workers that I know personally about their thoughts on it, and they both said that they believe EMDR to be an effective and legitimate treatment, so I may consider going to a seminar or workshop for it in the future.
The treatment that I mainly look forward to doing more research on and most likely using in my future practice is Internal Family Systems Therapy. The book did a good job of touching the basic points of this therapeutic practice. I was very lucky that at my local library book sale, I was able to find a book on it so I can read about it more in-depth. For me, this book touches on many points and covers just enough so you understand the purpose of a treatment (and it feels justified to be in the book), but it also makes you crave to learn more about them and is very motivating to research them on your own.
So overall, I believe that this is a great book for social work students (and really anyone else who is curious) to get an excellent introduction to trauma and the effects it has on the body (as well as treatment options). I kind of wish that this would be assigned reading in the BSW program, but at the same time I know quite a few people that would instantly lose interest in it as soon as it becomes assigned reading, so maybe just having people come across it on their own or by word of mouth is the best course. My field advisor was the one who recommended this book to me, and as a result we started sharing books with each other and came to really trusting each other's opinions on books.
Go check out this book and let me know what you think about it!
Keep reading!
Sincerely,
Benjamin B.
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