Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, Trauma Expert
Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais
Dr. Michael Gervais
4.6 • 1.8K Ratings
🗓️ 8 May 2019
⏱️ 82 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week’s conversation is with Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, a clinician, researcher and teacher in the area of posttraumatic stress.
He has spent his career studying how people adapt to traumatic experiences, and has translated emerging findings from neuroscience and attachment research to develop and study a range of potentially effective treatments for traumatic stress.
You might be thinking, “Well I don’t have PTSD, how does this conversation apply to me?”
What you might be surprised to learn is how many of us are affected by trauma but just don’t realize it.
According to Dr. van der Kolk’s research, 75% of Americans suffer from some type of past traumatic experience.
In this conversation, he shares strategies for getting to the root of the trauma.
Trauma comes in many forms and so do people’s responses to it.
What’s important to remember is just because someone looks like they have it all together on the outside doesn’t mean everything’s ok on the inside.
In Dr. van der Kolk’s words:
“Some people adapt amazingly well and win Nobel Prizes or MacArthur Grants because of all the energy they put into just pushing things aside. That doesn't mean that they're necessarily resilient even though they may accomplish amazing things. They may go to bed feeling devastated, lonely, and bereft. Or they may still drink or cut themselves or do other things to manage their body's protesting against stuff. So what you see is not necessarily what you get.”
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | true genius in the world have all been traumatized. |
| 0:03.4 | These extraordinary solutions come from people who have been, have grown up under circumstances |
| 0:11.0 | very extremely stressful where they had to find their own way that was not the way of the |
| 0:16.6 | people around them. |
| 0:17.6 | I think that people growing up in perfectly safe and predictable surroundings probably get safe and predictable surroundings, |
| 0:22.7 | probably can save predictable brains anyway. Okay, welcome back to the Finding Mastery Podcast, and if you're new, welcome to the Finding |
| 0:37.3 | Pastory Podcast, and if you're new, welcome to the community and these conversations. |
| 0:41.8 | My name is Michael Jervay and by trade and training, |
| 0:45.0 | I'm a sport and performance psychologist, |
| 0:47.0 | as well as the co-founder of Compete to Create. |
| 0:50.0 | And the whole idea behind these conversations |
| 0:52.0 | is to learn from people who have committed their life efforts to the path of mastery to the nuances of their craft to understanding themselves a mastery of craft, a mastery of self. |
| 1:03.0 | And we want to dig to understand how they organize their inner world, |
| 1:08.0 | how they relate and connect to other people, |
| 1:10.0 | how they explain events that take place. |
| 1:13.4 | We really want to understand, that's all fancy for their psychological framework. |
| 1:17.4 | We want to know their mental skills that they use to build and refine their craft, and |
| 1:21.1 | we want to understand what they are searching for. |
| 1:24.7 | I am really excited to announce that this year finding mastery is releasing our first |
| 1:29.7 | ever holiday gift guide. Yes. Having spent decades working with and around some of the most |
| 1:36.5 | driven people on the planet, I know the high-performer types in your life can be a little tricky to buy for. Their standards tend to be really high, |
| 1:45.0 | they rarely settle. We all know the drill here. |
... |
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