Criticisms of “The Body Keeps the Score”

This article (and author) seems to be something of a trauma-skeptic, which doesn't seem to agree with mainstream science (setting aside Body Keeps the Score)

> That is, trauma doesn’t lead to dysfunction or abnormal brain function, physiology or hormonal regulation. Rather, an unhealthy person may be more susceptible to trauma.

What has been documented about Adverse Childhood Experiences doesn’t agree with this. There is copious evidence that the presence of ACEs, independent of other factors, leads to poor health outcomes [1]

It's also well known that past trauma predisposes you to future trauma [2]

There's also data indicating CPTSD, PTSD, and Borderline are distinct disorders [3]

1 - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8882933/ https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s...

2 - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5858954/

3 - https://www.psychiatrypodcast.com/psychiatry-psychotherapy-p...

I think there is a bit of a crowd that is pushing the idea that you can make events worse by telling people that they are forever scarred from them? That is, yes, some trauma sticks with you. History shows people are also very resilient at moving on from trauma. Kind of have to be, so that we aren't devastated when we ultimately do lose some family.

Would be like saying you should hammer people on how much grieve they must be feeling because they lost a dog. Now, nor should you also scold people for feeling said grief. It is very personal and hard to really know what experience someone will have until they have it.

more information is better if it’s also provided with the context of how to heal.

> History shows people are also very resilient at moving on from trauma

i’m extremely skeptical that people move on

they suppress, they survive, but without deep understanding its impossible to say move on

you can be ignorant and survive, or face reality and climb the deeply uphill battle of real growth.

of course you can be paralyzed by it, but no one is advocating for that as treatment

> > History shows people are also very resilient at moving on from trauma

> i’m extremely skeptical that people move on

Historically, essentially everyone who lived long enough to have children had some of those children die [1]. So either:

- that wasn't traumatic

- they managed to deal with that trauma

- or they didn't move on, and everyone was somewhat traumatised

You can take your choice from the above, but on the whole this was the normal state of affairs for most of human history and prehistory.

[1]: from https://acoup.blog/2025/07/18/collections-life-work-death-an..., 50% of children died by age ~5