The Body Keeps the Score: What It Taught Me About Trauma, PTSD and Learned Helplessness

What
The Body Keeps the Score
Taught Me

Dr. Bessel van der Kolk’s work is revolutionary—not because he wants to "fix" patients, but because he chooses to hear them. His book The Body Keeps the Score opened my eyes to the deep, often invisible imprint trauma leaves on the body.

This post is the first of many where I’ll break down valuable insights from the book—and the personal realizations they triggered.

---

⚡ INESCAPABLE SHOCK: Understanding Learned Helplessness

(Inspired by Chapter 2: Revolutions in Understanding Mind and Brain, p. 29)

Let’s start with a shocking (literally) experiment by Steve Maier and Martin Seligman:

Researchers gave electric shocks to dogs. After repeated shocks in locked cages, the dogs stopped trying to escape—even when the doors were open.

• Dogs who had never been shocked, Escaped.
• Dogs who had been shocked before whimpered and stayed.

🧠 What These Lines Mean

"A response paired without a shock enhances extinction."

"A response paired with a shock enhances acquisition."

Let’s decode:

🔖No Shock = Unlearning Fear (Extinction) : If you stop pairing an action with a negative outcome, the brain slowly forgets the fear. The body learns: “It’s safe now.”

🔖🔖Shock = Learning Fear Faster (Acquisition) : The more consistent the pain with an action, the quicker the fear response is wired into the body.

Learned helplessness is not about lacking ability. It’s about believing there’s no point trying—because you’ve been conditioned to believe your actions have no effect.

FOR MORE INFO check this paper out ! :https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4920136/

---

🧩 The Realization: You Learn What You See

We don’t choose to feel helpless—we learn it.

Even when the cage is open, we stay, because that’s all we’ve known.

It’s not a thinking issue. It’s a nervous system issue.
Even children or animals realize: "I have no control.

---

🩺 The Body Doesn’t Forget 

A group of trauma researchers from Yale, NIMH, and Mount Sinai observed something strange:

Trauma survivors kept releasing stress hormones long after the threat was gone.

But here's the twist—Dr. Rachel Yehuda found that PTSD patients had low cortisol.

🤔 Wait, Low Cortisol?

Cortisol tells your body, "You’re safe now."

If cortisol is low, the “all-clear” signal never comes. The body stays stuck in:
Over and over again.

Fight. Flight. Freeze.

🔁 The Never-Ending Loop of Trauma

In a healthy stress system:

• Danger → Stress response
• Safety → Relaxation

In PTSD:

• Danger → Stress response
• No relaxation follows.

You stay on high alert. And that chips away at your health—emotionally, physically, mentally.

💡 That Made So Much Sense

Suddenly, I understood:

• Why people don’t “just leave.”

• Why victims return to abusers.

• Why “safety” doesn’t always feel safe.

Because your body believes it has no control.

Just like the shocked dogs. The door is open. But your body doesn’t trust it.

💬 Quote That Hit Me Hard

"Physically making your body understand that you are not trapped anymore, you can leave."

That’s the real work of healing—not just in thought, but in your body.

🚪Why People Stay in Abuse: Survival Becomes a Habit Even if peace is better, it can feel alien. Unsafe.

We go back to chaos not because we want to suffer—but because chaos feels familiar.

Even if peace is better, it can feel alien. Unsafe.

And when safety feels “abnormal,” we sabotage it.

🌪️ Calm Feels Unsafe to the Traumatized

So it waits—on edge.

This hit me deeply:

People raised in chaos find calm terrifying.

Because survival became the norm.

In trauma, the body learns: "If it’s quiet, the storm is coming."

So it waits—on edge.

🧬 Trauma Lives in the Body 

Trauma isn’t just a memory—it reshapes our biology:

• Sense of self
• Triggers
• Fight/flight reflex
• Decision-making
• Relationships and trust

That explains so much about the reactions we—and others—have to seemingly small things.

📝 Final Thoughts

Because healing isn't a one-time read—it's a layered understanding.

Dr. van der Kolk’s work is not just about trauma—it’s about hope.

Hope that by understanding how deeply the body remembers, we can also begin to retrain it. Slowly. Gently. Through safety. Through movement. Through listening.

This was just part one. There’s more to come.
Because healing isn't a one-time read—it's a layered understanding.

🖋️ Written by: Ishannita 
📚 Inspired by: The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk