An interview with psychiatrist and trauma researcher Bessel van der Kolk about the impact of trauma on the brain. Bessel outlines the way in which traumatic experience in children shapes the development of the brain, and how our brains can get hijacked by triggers that make us feel we are in a life and death situation in the present. He describes the importance of helping the body feel safe, and how working with EMDR, Internal Family Systems Therapy and neurofeedback can literally help rewire the brain. Bessel also discusses traumatic repetition and the emergence of a new diagnosis for developmental trauma which reflects the effects of chronic, relational trauma on the child’s developing brain.
