The Body Keeps the Score

These interactions help to bring our babies’ emotional arousal systems into sync with their surroundings.

When that system fails: when you beg for your life, but the assailant ignores your pleas...

Many traumatized individuals are too hypervigilant to enjoy the ordinary pleasures that life has to offer, while others are too numb to absorb new experiences.

Achieving any sort of deep intimacy—a close embrace, sleeping with a mate, and sex—requires allowing oneself to experience immobilization without fear.

I was amazed to discover how many of my patients told me they could not feel whole areas of their bodies.

The implications are clear: to feel present you have to know where you are and be aware of what is going on with you.

Our study showed that, on a deep level, the bodies of incest victims have trouble distinguishing between danger and safety.

Marilyn’s past shaped her view of every relationship. She was convinced that men didn’t give a damn about other people’s feelings and that they got away with whatever they wanted.

Learning to trust is a major challenge.

The past is impressed not only on their minds, and in misinterpretations of innocuous events…but also on the very core of their beings: in the safety of their bodies.