Part V: Paths to Discovery (Ch17 - Epilogue)

Required Reading:

Chapter 17 - Putting the Pieces Together: Self-Leadership

Chapter 18 - Filling in the Holes: Creating Structures

Chapter 19: Applied Neuroscience: Rewiring the Fear-Driven with Brain/Computer Interface Technology

Chapter 20: Finding Your Voice: Communal Rhythms and Theater

Epilogue: Choices to be Made

Discussion Prompts:

1. If you have experience or heard of experiences revolving around EMDR, yoga, IFS psychomotor therapy, neurofeedback, and/or theater, please share

2. Please share the ways you practice self-care.

3. What did you most enjoy about this book?

Part V: Paths to Discovery (Ch13 - 16)

Required Reading:

Chapter 13 - Healing from Trauma: Owning Your Self

Chapter 14 - Language: Miracle and Tyranny

Chapter 15: Letting Go Of The Past

Chapter 16: Learning to Inhabit Your Body: Yoga

Discussion Prompts:

1. “Switching” Do you journal or do any type of sustained writing practice? And if so, do you catch yourself “switching”? What are some things that make you switch? The author refers to “switching” as the changes in physical and emotional states when one moves from topic to topic as they’re writing.

2. Chapter 15 explores the sleep connection. Did you realize how important deep sleep was prior to reading this chapter and how it affects memories?

Part IV: The Imprint of Trauma

Required Reading:

Chapter 11 - Uncovering Secrets: The Problem of Traumatic Memory

Chapter 12 - The Unbearable Heaviness of Remembering

Discussion Prompts:

1. Over 100 years ago, Freud and Breuer published the exciting new discovery that talking can release stuck emotions. This was called “the talking cure,” and includes the most popular therapy we know today: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. However, according to Dr. van der Kolk CBT may not help much when the source of distress is past trauma. What are views on this? Do you think talk therapy is enough in treating people with trauma?

2. Dr. van der Kolk prologues Chapter 11 with his introduction to the story of Julian, a young man who claimed to have been sexually abused as a child by Father Paul Shanley, a Catholic priest. Julian said that he had repressed these memories until his girlfriend told him about an article in the Boston Globe which reported that Shanley was under suspicion of molesting children. The memories of Julian’s own experience then returned in a fragmentary and disorganized way. Julian’s story and journey brings up memories of the recent #MeToo movement. The surge in public survivor accounts had and is continuing to have a powerful and transformative impact on cultural attitudes and public policy. In this chapter, we learn that fragmented memory is common for sexual assault survivors. Did you know this already? If not, does this assist in how to better engage with survivors’ stories? Also, did Julian’s story bring anything up for you?

3. Can you point to a specific passage that struck you personally in Chapter 12 - as interesting, profound, incomprehensible, or illuminating?

4. Why does van der Kolk include so many examples of specific patients? How does including them support the main themes of the text?

Part III: The Minds of Children

Required Reading:

Chapter 7 - Getting on the same wavelength: Attachment and attunement

Chapter 8 - Trapped in relationships: The cost of abuse and neglect

Chapter 9 - What's love got to do with it?

Chapter 10 - Developmental trauma: The hidden epidemic

Discussion Prompts:

1. Were you aware that it is through the experience of being cared for by their parent/s or guardian/s that children learn to take care of themselves as they grow up?

• Keywords: self-regulation, secure attachment, emotional attunement 

• Re: Chapter 7, page 112

  • “Children’s disturbed behavior was a response to actual life experiences — to neglect, brutality, and separation.” 

  • “Mastering the skill of self-regulation depends to a large degree on how harmonious our early interactions with our caregivers are.”

  • “Children are programmed to choose one particular adult (or at most a few) with whom their natural communication system develops. This creates a primary attachment bond. The more responsive the adult is to the child, the deeper the attachment and the more likely the child will develop healthy ways of responding to the people around him.” Him/her/them***

2. Though we have yet to read the part of the book where the author goes over solutions to adequately addressing trauma, what are some ways you feel safe in your body?

• Re: In Chapter 8, Marilyn’s story once again brings us to the mind-body connection, and trauma manifesting itself in physical ways. After seeing Dr. Van der Kolk, Marilyn faced the sexual-abuse trauma she’d experienced as a child. Soon after, her eyesight started to fail: an autoimmune disease was eroding her retina. In a study, his team found that incest survivors had abnormalities in the ratios of immune cells, compared with un-traumatized women, exposing them to autoimmune diseases.The past is impressed not only on their minds, and in misinterpretations of innocuous events (as when Marilyn attacked Michael because he accidentally touched her in her sleep), but also on the very core of their beings: in the safety of their bodies. 

3. The author begins Chapter 9 “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” by saying that trauma patients will often receive five or six unrelated diagnoses and prescriptions during the course of their treatment and that these will depend on which aspect of their case the doctor in question regards as most significant. None of these diagnoses will be wrong, but neither will they address the root of the issue — trauma. What are you thoughts on this? Do you have any personal opinions or stories on how folx affected by trauma are treated by the medical profession/system? 

4. Can you point to a specific passage that struck you personally - as interesting, profound, incomprehensible, or illuminating?

Part II: This is Your Brain on Trauma

Required Reading:

Chapter 4 - Running for Your Life: The Anatomy of Survival

Chapter 5 - Body-Brain Connection

Chapter 6 - Losing Your Body, Losing Yourself

Discussion Prompts:

1. Were you aware that trauma can manifest in physical ways?

2. Noam, the boy who witnessed the 9/11 attack, had the agency to run away and dream up a solution for the future which is an extreme contrast to the paralysis experienced by victims of trauma. Do you have any thoughts on this example shared by the author, or did you want to share what came up for you after reading Noams story?

3. What are your thoughts on the stark difference between how Stan and Ute responded to the 87 car pileup?

4. What are some of the practices you use in your daily life to “to live fully and securely in the present?”

5. What are some practices/things you do to cultivate a more loving relationship with your body?

6. Can you point to a specific passage that struck you personally - as interesting, profound, incomprehensible, or illuminating?

Part I: The Rediscovery of Trauma

Required Reading:

Overview: Part I - The Rediscovery of Trauma

Chapter 1 - Lessons from Vietnam Veterans

Chapter 2 - Revolutions in Understanding Mind and Brain

Chapter 3 - Looking into the Brain: The Neuroscience Revolution

Discussion Prompts:

1. If you’ve ever lost yourself, what did you do to find yourself?


2. Can you point to a specific passage that struck you personally - as interesting, profound, incomprehensible, or illuminating?


3. Did you reread any passages? If so, which ones?How did you feel just sitting with the uncomfortableness of what you were reading?

4. Have you discovered a healthy method to cope with trauma and pain?


5. What are ways you’ve utilized your imagination to stay present?