The Body Keeps the Score Flashcards
The Body Keeps the Score
True/False.
Trauma rewrites/modifies the brain.
True.
The Body Keeps the Score
How does trauma rewrite/modify the brain?
(1) Recalibrating the alarm system
(2) Increasing sensitivity to stress hormones
(3) Altering the system that filters out irrelevant info
The Body Keeps the Score
What are some of the long-term effects of trauma on the mind?
Hypervigilance, difficulty spontaneously engaging with life, repetitive errors
The Body Keeps the Score
What are some of the general categories of treatment options for patients who have undergone severe trauma?
(1) Therapy (top-down approach)
(2) Pharmacology (shut down inappropriate stress responses)
(3) New experiences (bottom-up approach)
(Options include therapy, yoga, medications, EMDR, neurofeedback, theater, etc.)
The Body Keeps the Score
What fraction of U.S. children are sexually abused at some point during their childhood?
What fraction had marks left from a beating by their parents?
1/5
1/4
The Body Keeps the Score
What fraction of U.S. children grew up with alcoholic relatives?
What fraction had witnessed their mother being hit or beaten?
1/4
1/8
The Body Keeps the Score
What fraction of U.S. couples have physical violence in their relationships?
1/3
The Body Keeps the Score
What did Freud say of a veteran he met who was undergoing severe psychological distress as a consequence?
“I think this man is suffering from memories.”
The Body Keeps the Score
What are two of the major psychological issues that veterans face?
PTSD; survivor’s guilt
The Body Keeps the Score
In The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk recounts a story of a veteran who refused pharmacology so as not to forget his fallen comrades. During his service, his platoon was ambushed, and he went on a revenge/rape spree on non-combatants (as often happens in these scenarios).
What psychological principle does this story illustrate?
Survivor’s guilt
The Body Keeps the Score
How does past trauma affect an individual’s ability to form/maintain relationships?
It makes trust and intimacy difficult.
(“It takes enormous courage to allow yourself to remember.”)
The Body Keeps the Score
Describe some of the reasons a traumatized individual may feel shame in regards to their traumatic experiences.
- Possibly due to one’s actions placating an abuser or assisting an abuser
- Imagination can be replaced by flashbacks/blankness
- Potential lack of ability to feel intimacy
- Likely numbness and derealization
The Body Keeps the Score
What do patients with PTSD often see in Rorschach tests?
(1) Nothing (imagination inhibited)
(2) Past traumatic experiences
The Body Keeps the Score
True/False.
Trauma often ‘fixes’ a person’s brain back at the traumatic point, no matter how long ago.
True.
The Body Keeps the Score
How do many traumatized individuals deal with / respond to the shame, guilt, numbness, derealization, and lack of intimacy they often feel?
Alcoholism / substance abuse,
rage / depression / hopelessness,
dangerous activities / obsessions / crime,
lack of interests,
only seeing other soldiers as trustworthy, ‘in-group’ members (veterans-specific)
The Body Keeps the Score
What fraction of war zone veterans develop severe S/Sy of PTSD?
1/4
The Body Keeps the Score
What medication was discovered in 1950, opening up the way towards pharmacology aimed at mental illness?
When did more psychoactive compounds start to be discovered?
Chlorpromazine
1960s / 1970s
The Body Keeps the Score
How many people lived in U.S. mental hospitals in 1955?
And in 1996?
> 500,000
< 100,000
The Body Keeps the Score
When did PTSD first become a recognized diagnosis?
1980
The Body Keeps the Score
True/False.
The understanding of child-daughter incestuous relationships as traumatic for the daughter was only well-understood in 1952.
False.
The understanding of child-daughter incestuous relationships as traumatic for the daughter was still not understood as recently as 1982.
The Body Keeps the Score
Half of all rapes occur before what age?
15
The Body Keeps the Score
True/False.
~1/8 of Americans will experience a violent crime during their lives.
False.
The majority of Americans will experience a violent crime during their lives.
The Body Keeps the Score
__/__ of individuals seeking psychiatric care have been assaulted, abandoned, neglected, witnessed violence in their families, and/or been raped as children.
1** / **2 of individuals seeking psychiatric care have been assaulted, abandoned, neglected, witnessed violence in their families, and/or been raped as children.
The Body Keeps the Score
What example is given in The Body Keeps the Score to illustrate that animals tend to seek home as a known place of refuge, even when safer and/or more welcoming locations exist?
Startled mice run for home, regardless of (1) whether home was loud and food-scarce or quiet and food-abundant and (2) whether there are more welcoming locations available.
The Body Keeps the Score
Trauma is often associated with learned what?
Learned helplessness
The Body Keeps the Score
“People can never get better without _____ing what they ____ and _____ing what they ____.”
“People can never get better without _know_ing what they _know_ and _feel_ing what they _feel_.”
What broad takeaways (in terms of activated and deactivated areas) can be inferred from neuroimaging in individuals experiencing a flashback of a traumatic experience?
Activation: visual cortex; right limbic area
Deactivation: Broca’s area; much of the left lobe
How do traumatic experiences (and subsequent flashbacks) affect brain laterality?
The right side (more intuitive, emotional, visuospatial) is overactivated;
the left side (more analytical, linguistic, sequential) is dampened
Why is it often so difficult for traumatized individuals to describe their traumatic experience?
Traumatic experience/flashback dampens the left side of the brain, including Broca’s area
