6 ways to heal trauma without medication | Bessel van der Kolk | Big Think

Trauma Treatment

Bessel van der Kolk argues that trauma treatment should help people feel safe in their bodies and understand their reactions with self-compassion. He says conventional medications he studied for PTSD did not work well for many people, and that different approaches suit different individuals.

Strategies Discussed

• Psychotherapy and self-compassion: Acknowledge what happened, recognize that your reactions make sense, and tend to the emotional wounds you carry.
• EMDR: While recalling a traumatic memory, follow a therapist’s side-to-side finger movements. Van der Kolk says this can help people experience the memory as something that happened in the past, rather than something happening now.
• Yoga: Use breathing, movement, and postures to pay attention to bodily sensations and build a more supportive relationship with your body.
• Theater and movement: Try different roles and ways of moving to experience new possibilities in how you inhabit and relate to your body.
• Neurofeedback: Receive feedback and rewards for producing brainwave patterns associated with calm and focus, with the aim of shaping new patterns.
• MDMA-assisted therapy: In the research he describes, participants prepared for a full-day session with therapists present. He says MDMA appeared to help some people revisit painful experiences with greater self-compassion. This is presented as a research approach, not as a suggestion to use the drug on your own.

Central takeaway: There is no one-size-fits-all method; finding what helps is an individual process.

Presenter/source: Bessel van der Kolk; Big Think.