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Criticisms of “The Body Keeps the Score”

(josepheverettwil.substack.com)
249 points adityaathalye | 2 comments | 22 Oct 25 18:49 UTC | HN request time: 0.405s | source
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amyamyamy2 ◴[22 Oct 25 19:41 UTC] No.45674155[source]▶
I really disliked The Body Keeps the Score. But at the same time, I think it's probably useful for people who have been traumatized to make sense of their experiences.

I also think that for a traumatized person, it probably doesn't make that much of a difference whether or not their body is different because of the trauma, or they're traumatized because of their body - they are experiencing these reactions and trauma responses, and they're looking for a solution. Somatic experiences might help them.

To be honest, reading the book was more helpful than critiquing whether or not my testosterone levels were too low as a 11-year-old, or if I had elevated inflammation because of my diet. Perhaps I'm biased.

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biomcgary ◴[22 Oct 25 21:24 UTC] No.45675348[source]▶
The mind-body link is too important to get the causality wrong and The Body Keeps Score is an ideology where the causality only goes one way.

I have a cousin that had frequent, overwhelming anxiety attacks. She started eating breakfast consistently and the anxiety disappeared at the same time. Anxiety is strongly linked to gut activity, so the temporal correlation is a smoking gun, even if not dispositive.

For her, "understanding past trauma" was irrelevant to the solution.

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1. amyamyamy2 ◴[22 Oct 25 22:06 UTC] No.45675744[source]▶
I'm glad to hear how well this worked for your cousin! I don't eat breakfast often enough.

I specifically wanted to touch on the cycle of trauma & ADHD that's discussed in the article.

> That is, the ADHD leads to very negative experiences. Having had negative experiences (trauma) doesn’t lead to ADHD.

I think integrating traumatic experiences can have a lot of benefits to people, especially in the absence of easy fixes - as far as I know there's not really a smoking gun for ADHD, or borderline, etc. I'd argue the causality matters a bit less here. I say this even though I genuinely hated the fatalistic nature of the Body Keeps the Score, but I think Everett is a bit too quick to discard that the mind is relevant at all. I'd love to be proven wrong.

At least for myself, I've noticed increased well-being / reduced trauma responses when I avoid relationships that cause me a lot of stress, get enough sleep, and exercise regularly. But my baseline disposition is still there, and it's hard to untangle whether or not that's from trauma or from my body.

Everett argues that it's probably just my body (low T / high inflammation / too sensitive?) and I don't think that's very actionable. I'd argue that mind-body link goes in both directions, but that's purely anecdotal.

I also really liked softwaredoug's take on Adverse Childhood Experiences in the thread above.

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2. tonyarkles ◴[22 Oct 25 23:30 UTC] No.45676477[source]▶
This is really interesting on the ADHD side. For me, I’m pretty sure the traumatic experiences did lead to the ADHD. My mom kept all of my report cards and you can see exactly where it started. I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 36 or 37. I made it through undergrad (barely) and grad school (kicked ass in the challenging courses, took 6 years to finish an MSc thesis). After my diagnosis, I can retrospectively see a lot of ways my life could have been different if I’d known earlier but I have essentially no trauma caused by the ADHD traits other than a few failed relationships in my 20s.