When I noticed that this year will be the 34th Annual Boston International Trauma Conference, I was momentarily amazed. I went to most of them. That makes me pretty old! And it also means I’ve been at this for a pretty long time. I remember I would start watching for announcements of the May date as soon as the year turned. I was probably the first person to sign up. Before that, we only had the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, ISTSS, which seemed to me like an “Old Boys’ Club: lots of white guys in suits, many with European accents, and lots of science. But I went to those too. And the International Society for the Study of Dissociation, ISSD, which was a little gentler and seemed to have more women.
Trauma training and information were hard to come by in those days. So I went to all of them – I was a shy and silent child of neglect, used to floating around like an invisible ghost. I never spoke to anyone, always sat in the front row, and scribbled away madly. I bought all the audiocassettes of the lectures and listened to them endlessly in my old Corolla on the long commute to my job at the SF VA.
I was slightly ashamed that my specialty area in graduate school was “Somatics,” as it seemed rather “soft” and not to be taken seriously by these serious research types. I would come home from the conferences loaded down with books, and I have accumulated a pretty darn good trauma library to show for it. I poured over those books, having grown up in a time when girls were told they were not good at what are now called STEM subjects, I struggled and tried hard to learn the stuff. “Binge” listening to the tapes, (not a term we used then) I knew all the stories by heart. Pierre Janet, World War 1 Shell shock, World War 2 Battle Fatigue, then Vietnam, and the Rorschach. And I must have heard the story about the patient who first said, “the body keeps the score,” a million times.
Everyone was rather shocked when Bessel started talking about the body. It was radical enough that our field was talking about the brain. But I loved it. And then Voila, we got the Trauma Conference, which has been a long and continuing hotbed and Petrie dish of tremendous growth and knowledge for us all as a field and certainly for me.
When I was about 23, I was ravaged by alcohol and anorexia. My enlightened therapist, recognizing that I needed something adjunctive that addresses the body, sent me to a colleague/friend who practiced a body-oriented approach called Self Acceptance Training. I don’t remember much, it combined Bioenergetics and Gestalt, a measure of woo woo, and lots of grand declarative platitudes. “You are a body with sensations. That’s all.” And “All headaches are anger.” But I spent many a four-day weekend sitting on the floor in those circles (admittedly still often distracted by figuring out who in the room was thinner or fatter than me). I suppose I must have learned something about regulation because I felt better. And I did stop drinking eventually. The eating disorder took much longer, but I am sure the “SAT” helped. So long ago.
The Body Keeps the Score is a favorite book partly because it tracks my own story. It is no accident as I followed Bessel’s work diligently, long before he knew I existed. Each chapter reminds me of stages of my own professional and personal evolution and development. First EMDR, which I loved, until I learned about Peter Levine and Pat Ogden. I traveled to Boston every month for several years and had the privilege of training with Pat and getting certified in Sensorimotor, which I also loved. Then at a Trauma Conference in 2008, I heard Sebern Fisher talk about Neurofeedback, and it seems since then, all I have wanted to do in combination with depth psychotherapy, is that. (Although admittedly I am compelled by the wide world of psychedelics) … Oy vey. I need another 34 years! But what a great problem to have.
There is a reason why The Body Keeps the Score is an unbudging fixture on the NY List. The book is a must read and a “must practice”. As a survivor and a clinician, I fervently believe that for trauma depth, and most especially developmental trauma and neglect, depth, attachment-based psychotherapy is necessary but not sufficient; and a body approach, my preference being neurofeedback, is necessary but not sufficient. Together, however, we have a winning combination, and countless people have a chance at a regulated and even pleasurable life. I can attest to that! With all the chaos and misery of this godforsaken world, what a great time to be alive. Thanks Bessel!
Photo by Gülfer ERGİN on Unsplash
