Presentation with @BesselvdKolk at #theembodimentconference "My favourite treatment, which I won't talk too much about, actually is psychodrama, where people get to play different roles and get to feel what it feels like to play different roles in life." 1/x

"In America many people still believe that we are individuals & that we have individual psychopathology. But that is really a nonsensical. We are deeply embedded in each other embedded in the culture. 2/x

People are part of each other & the main reason why we have a brain is to be in tune with other people. 3/x

"And it's also surprising to me, to what degree what we know about the brain has not been incorporated in psychotherapy and how many psycho therapies that I hear about really are sort of opposed to how the brain works." 4/x

The frontal lobe is a beautiful part of ourselves. It is creative is variable it is imaginative is connected with people is magnificent. It's also the area where most psychotherapists work. The problem is, that's not where traumas, imprint is... 5/x

People don't become traumatized because they're stupid.
People don't get come traumatized because they don't understand things & I'm astounded by the degree to which CBT and correcting patient people's wrong perceptions has become a mainstream in psychology 6/x

Like how low have be sunk be thing that you can talk people into being reasonable. And try to be reasonable with them & try to convince them often doesn't work because these deep emotions are large, deep inside of us. Lodged in our brainstem, cerebellum, hippocampus, amygdala 7/x

And there are no pathways from there to there, so you can not talk yourself into being reasonable. Psychotherapist don't just ask people about breathing, appetite, sucking, pooping & being-but that's where trauma hits, in the housekeeping of the body. 8/x

And you really don't get better until you learn to we regulate the housekeeping of your body. I made funded Yoga study. And it turns out that yoga is a more effective treatment for PTSD than any drug that anybody has ever studied. 9/x

when you're terrified your body starts moving automatically and it starts moving, it has a GPS that tells you 'go home'.
So mammals have an intrinsic sense of, we have a home. And if you go home, we will be safe. 10/x

After 9-11 there was very little PTSD, the people who got PTSD after the attack were people who were living at home with traumatized veterans. who were domestic violence, people who had previous abuse, for whom home was not safe. So basically, as long as our homes are safe. 11/x

We can come to rest and calm ourselves down. And that's slowly is beginning to sort of move into that as long as you it attachment system is intact, as long as we are there for each other, we are going to survive. 12/x

Trauma is played out in the theatre of the body, & I could give you a long talk about it. About how at the end we understand today. Is that the core expression of trauma is not so much mental but it's about all the physiological health and body things that are residue. 13/x

And by playing you get: to learn things, to get along with people, you get a feel good about yourself. and so is normal thing is normal to play essential to play. 14/x

100 years ago the expression of PTSD was different for us today. And just very motor, very muscular, but the body express it. In the Second World War and go to express more in heart disease as stomach disease & after Vietnam, he called express more as a normal behaviours. 15/x

So culture shapes it but the body continues to drive it. And so he is a board. 16/x

[Shows video of veteran in supermarket] What I'd like to say about this guy is talking with this guy abought his war trauma is probably not going to do him a lot of good.
What he needs to do is to is to activate his capacity to be fully alive in the here and now.
17/x

He needs to get supermarkets therapy. So you can just go to the supermarket and be quiet and get his cake and so the issue of trauma is how you help people to be focused on the present and be fully alive here. 18/x

My dream is that with all the knowledge we have learned about trauma is that every school system in the world would have the four R's: Reading, writing, arithmetic & self regulation. 19/x

That if every kid is taught that we have intrinsic self regulatory mechanisms. Having to do with touch movement, rhythmicity, reciprocity, by which we can make ourselves feel calmer. 20/x

So the treatments about trauma is to help people to be back in tune with each other, to move together rhythmically, because that's our nature. And we know today that singing together and moving together change these brain core brain structures that get damaged by trauma. 21/21

When you get your body to move with other bodies & to be in sync with other people, you feel safe, you feel calm, & you feel responded to.
I'd say this is the big dimension that is missing in psychology, is missing in therapy. This is what you need to do to overcome your trauma.