Astral Codex Ten

Bessel van der Kolk

4 min read

Bessel van der Kolk

Article

Bessel van der Kolk is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between February 13, 2021 and May 21, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “Bessel van der Kolk writes about the deep link between trauma and poor bodily awareness”; “Bessel van der Kolk writes about a population of trauma patients”; “Bessel van der Kock seemed to think that everything was great for trauma”. It most often appears alongside coherence therapy, EMDR, Internal Family Systems.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 3
  • Issue count: 3
  • First seen: February 13, 2021
  • Last seen: May 21, 2024

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

The Precision Of Sensory Evidence
February 13, 2021 · Original source
- In The Body Keeps The Score, Bessel van der Kolk writes about the deep link between trauma and poor bodily awareness. For example, trauma patients do much worse than normal on tests of stereoagnosia, where you have to identify an object (eg a key) by touch alone. He gives the example of a trauma patient undergoing massage therapy who was so out-of-touch with his body that he didn't even notice the massage had started. Trauma patients tend to say they "can't feel their bodies" or "they're living in a fog"; on successful treatment, they say they "feel alive again" or "I'm back in my body".
Inline links: The Body Keeps The Score
Are Woo Non-Responders Defective?
May 30, 2023 · Original source
Some evidence for this: Bessel van der Kolk writes about a population of trauma patients who have surprisingly low bodily awareness - in one case, he describes someone who cannot tell when they are being massaged. This is a stronger situation than just “there’s no problem so their body isn’t demanding attention”. He suggests that these people have gotten so used to negative feelings in their bodies that they’ve unconsciously “learned” to repress all bodily sensations. But this repression denies you the feedback you need to keep your body more comfortable and prevents you from updating back to believing your body might be okay. If the most unhealthy people are very out of touch with their bodies, maybe the healthiest people are very in touch with their bodies?
Book Review: The Others Within Us
May 21, 2024 · Original source
I also remember from How The Body Keeps The Score that Bessel van der Kock seemed to think that everything was great for trauma as long as it’s not an evidence-based therapy performed by real doctors. At the time I kind of made fun of him and assumed he was just being contrarian. But what if he’s right? What if doing something exotic and special is an important ingredient? One thing Falconer talks about again and again is that trauma patients - or the Parts of their mind, or the spirits inside them, or whatever - just want to be witnessed and validated. Getting an exorcism seems like the strongest way possible to say “yes, you’re completely right, all of your pain is 100% real, but now you’re allowed to stop having it without it invalidating how traumatized you were”.
Inline links: How The Body Keeps The Score