The thing that people don't talk enough about it to my mind is that when you get traumatized,

it makes it very difficult to learn important new life skills and to grow and to mature in some ways

because you keep sort of getting stuck on, I'm a little child who's getting hurt.

And you don't have the opportunity to really feel, oh, that's what it feels like to be an adult

who's more or less in charge of their own lives.

So these last few years, they've dealt a lot of blows to our state of mind, body, and health,

and on some level, it's been hard to escape some form of trauma.

Even if you can't point to a big capital T thing that happened. We live in this perpetual sea of

micro moments that unsettle, upset, and shake us in a way that can leave a mark. Whether we know

it's there or not, whether we realize or acknowledge it, it's affecting so many of us. You, me,

pretty much everyone on some level. The question is, what do we do about that?

This is the very question I explore with my guest this week, Bessel van der Kolk,

legendary trauma researcher, psychiatrist,

and author of a book that has been locked onto the number one spot

on the New York Times bestseller list for years now,

the body keeps the score.

And the very fact that it has been there

speaks to the pervasiveness of what so many have been feeling. In 1984, Bessel established one of the

first clinical research centers in the U.S. dedicated to the study and treatment of traumatic stress

in civilian populations, while also training researchers and clinicians specializing in

the study and treatment of traumatic stress. He was a member of the first neuroimaging team to

investigate how trauma actually changes the brain. His efforts led to the establishment of the

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