Lesson 9: It's More Than a Brain Thing 

Post-traumatic events cause our brains to inject stress hormones that can affect us negatively in many ways.

These can include:

• Memory loss

• Sleep loss

• Problems with focus and attention

• Mood instability

• Weight gain or loss

• Chronic back and/or neck pain

• Headaches

• Depression

• Digestive issues

• Chronic fatigue

You might be experiencing physical pain or other problems and not making the connection to trauma. The longer we dismiss triggers, the more opportunity we allow for symptoms to develop and manifest. And it is downright impossible to feel fully alive and yourself when you’re dealing with symptoms like these. Our bodies will only start to heal once we face our traumas.

I want to introduce you to what I call the bible of understanding trauma. It’s a book that really put me on the road to post-trauma recovery. “The Body Keeps the Score” is a best-seller written by a psychiatrist named Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk, who is the founding father of modern trauma treatment. The bulk of what I share in this guide is based on a mixture of his learnings and my own. While this book is meant to be ingested in short bites, “The Body Keeps the Score” digs deep with detailed explanations, myriad experiments, and dozens of retellings of trauma survivors’ journeys and recovery outcomes.

“The Body Keeps the Score” is the one book I would recommend every trauma survivor pick up and read. It’s long—over 350 pages—but worth the time spent reading it.

Buy the book here.