Tarlow Lab

This post is part of an ongoing series about our lab’s fall book club. We’re reading The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. We hope you can join us at our next meeting or share your thoughts in the comments below.

Chapter 2: Revolutions in Understanding Mind and Brain

The author began seeing trauma differently when working with sexual assault survivors. He emphasizes the importance of acknowledging the reality of trauma in order to be capable of healing. He describes how trauma affects the stress hormone system. The author discusses drugs and how they became the new norm for treating trauma, increasing serotonin levels, and helping patients restore a sense of well-being.

This post is part of an ongoing series about our lab’s fall book club. We’re reading The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. We hope you can join us at our next meeting or share your thoughts in the comments below.

Prologue: Facing Trauma

In the prologue to The Body Keeps the Score, author Bessel van der Kolk introduces the topic of trauma, discusses how common traumatic experiences are, and outlines the various scientific approaches to studying trauma and its treatment.

As the lab prepares to start our fall book club, we’re thinking about how we can lead fun and enriching discussions every week. Sometimes group members arrive at a book club meeting with plenty of their own questions and reactions to the selected reading, and at these times the job of the moderator is simply to facilitate the “back and forth” of group discussion. This is usually the best case scenario for a book club. But sometimes group members need help getting the conversation started. Often the moderator’s facilitation skills and prepared discussion questions are the difference between a stimulating conversation and a dull review of the selected reading.