The Body Keeps the Score: A Trauma Therapist’s Complete Companion

POP CULTURE & TRAUMA • May 20, 2026

Last reviewed: June 2026 by Annie Wright, LMFT

In short: The Body Keeps the Score established that trauma is encoded as neurobiological change in the body and nervous system, not simply as psychological memory, reshaping how clinicians understand and treat traumatic experience.

Why this story lands in the body

The core insight of The Body Keeps the Score. That trauma is held in the body. Resonates deeply with survivors and clinicians alike. This isn’t just a poetic expression but a scientific and clinical reality. Trauma imprints itself on the nervous system, creating patterns of physiological arousal, muscle tension, and implicit memory that live beneath conscious awareness.

What I want to be clear about. Because it matters clinically. Is that trauma is more than what we think or remember. It’s what the body “knows” and how the nervous system responds. This isn’t metaphor. For example, a survivor might recall little about a traumatic event yet experience panic attacks, chronic pain, or sudden waves of dissociation triggered by sensory reminders.

The body’s role in trauma is foundational because it stores procedural memories. Habits of posture, gesture, and movement. That reflect survival strategies developed in unsafe environments. These adaptations may have saved lives but can later limit thriving if they remain unchanged.

Van der Kolk’s work helps us understand that healing trauma requires more than talk therapy alone. The body must be engaged, regulated, and integrated into the process. This is where somatic therapies, mindfulness, and nervous system work become essential.

The trauma lens: Body, brain, traumatic memory, treatment

To understand The Body Keeps the Score, we must look through multiple trauma lenses. From brain science to somatic psychotherapy.

Brain and Nervous System

Trauma fundamentally disrupts the brain’s ability to regulate arousal and integrate experience. The amygdala, the brain’s alarm center, becomes overactive, triggering fight, flight, or freeze responses. Meanwhile, the prefrontal cortex. Responsible for executive functions like reasoning and inhibition. Becomes less effective during trauma activation.

Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory provides a nuanced map of the autonomic nervous system’s role in trauma. It describes three neural circuits: the ventral vagal complex (social engagement and safety), the sympathetic nervous system (mobilization for fight/flight), and the dorsal vagal complex (shutdown/freeze). Trauma can lock the nervous system into defensive states, making safety hard to access.

Traumatic Memory

Unlike ordinary memories, traumatic memories are often stored nonverbally as sensory fragments and body sensations rather than coherent stories. This explains why survivors may have vivid flashbacks or somatic reactions without clear narrative recall.

Janina Fisher and Pat Ogden have emphasized the importance of reconnecting the neocortex (thinking brain) with subcortical regions (emotion and sensation) to integrate traumatic memories. Dissociation is a protective mechanism that fragments experience but also creates barriers to healing.

Treatment Approaches

Van der Kolk highlights a range of therapeutic modalities that address trauma’s somatic imprint, including:

• Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR): Facilitates processing of traumatic memories by engaging bilateral brain activity.
• Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: Focuses on body awareness and movement to release implicit trauma stored in procedural memory.
• Trauma-Sensitive Yoga: Uses mindful movement to regulate nervous system states and reconnect with the body.
• Mindfulness and Theater: Practices that cultivate presence and narrative coherence.

This multi-modal approach reflects the clinical truth that trauma recovery requires body, brain, and relational work.

How The Body Keeps the Score Shows Up in Driven Women

In my work with clients. driven women who present as the most competent person in every room they enter. The stories we’re analyzing here don’t stay on screen. They walk into the therapy room. Two composite client portraits, drawn from common patterns rather than any individual client:

Camille is a 38-year-old VP at a Series C startup. She’s the one her family of origin still calls when something breaks. She’s the one her team calls when something breaks. The Slack notifications don’t stop. Last Tuesday she found herself crying in her car in the parking garage at 7:47 PM, holding her phone, knowing she should call her mother back and unable to make her hand move.

What van der Kolk’s book names. And what brought Camille to my office. Is the way driven women learn to attune to everyone else’s nervous system at the cost of their own.

Sarah is a 44-year-old physician at a Bay Area hospital. She’s had three difficult cases this week. She hasn’t told her husband. She hasn’t told her therapist. She’s the kind of woman colleagues describe as ‘unflappable’. Which is another way of saying no one has ever asked her how she’s actually doing.

Driven women like Sarah often come to therapy not because something dramatic has broken, but because they’ve gotten so good at performing fine that they’ve forgotten what they actually feel. van der Kolk’s book gives that pattern a name.

Both Camille and Sarah. Or whichever pair I’m sitting with that day. Recognize themselves in the patterns the story is naming. That recognition is where the work begins. Not with diagnosis. With the relief of being able to put words on a pattern that had been operating in silence.

What the story gets right clinically

Van der Kolk’s book is a rare blend of accessible science, clinical experience, and survivor validation. Here are some clinical strengths that make the story land well:

• Validation of the body’s role: The book’s emphasis on somatic memory and nervous system regulation aligns with decades of trauma research and clinical wisdom from Judith Herman to Pat Ogden. This counters older models that reduced trauma to “just memories.”
• Integrative approach: Van der Kolk synthesizes neuroscience, psychotherapy, and body-based practices, reflecting the complexity of trauma. This helps therapists and survivors see beyond a one-size-fits-all approach.
• Survivor-centered: The narrative honors trauma survivors’ experiences without pathologizing or blaming. It normalizes symptoms as adaptations rather than character flaws.
• Ethical sensitivity: While the book is rich in clinical detail, van der Kolk acknowledges the importance of safety, pacing, and relational trust in treatment, echoing the foundational work of Judith Herman.
• Bringing Polyvagal Theory to life: By integrating Stephen Porges’ work, the book helps readers understand that trauma symptoms are nervous system strategies, not personal failings.

These clinical strengths make The Body Keeps the Score a foundational text for trauma-informed care.

What trauma survivors may recognize in themselves

For many trauma survivors, reading The Body Keeps the Score can feel like finally being seen and understood. Some common recognitions include:

• Physical sensations linked to trauma: Tightness in the chest, stomach aches, muscle tension, or unexplained pain that seems triggered by certain memories or environments.
• Flashbacks and dissociation: Experiencing memories as if they’re happening now, or feeling disconnected from the present moment as a protective response.
• Hypervigilance or emotional numbing: Constantly scanning for danger or shutting down emotionally to avoid pain.
• Difficulty trusting others or feeling safe: Nervous system states that make connection challenging.
• Fragmented sense of self: Parts of oneself that feel disconnected, ashamed, or frozen in past trauma.

Recognizing these patterns is the first step toward reclaiming agency and finding healing pathways that honor the body’s wisdom.

The both/and reframe

One of the most clinically important insights from van der Kolk and Judith Herman is the both/and reframe. Trauma reactions aren’t simply “bad” or “wrong.” They were brilliant adaptations in the context of overwhelming danger and survival needs.

For example:

• Dissociation was a lifesaver when no other escape was possible, but now it may limit presence and connection.
• Hypervigilance kept a child safe in a threatening home but now fuels anxiety and exhaustion.
• Emotional numbing protected against unbearable pain but can create isolation.

Recognizing this both/and truth allows survivors to meet their symptoms with compassion rather than judgment. It opens the door to recovery that honors the survival strategies while gently creating new pathways for thriving.

As Janina Fisher reminds us, parts of the self that hold trauma were once protective and still deserve respect, even as we help them heal and integrate.

The systemic lens

While The Body Keeps the Score primarily focuses on individual healing, it’s essential to place trauma within systemic and relational contexts. Jennifer Freyd’s betrayal trauma theory particularly reminds us that trauma often occurs within relationships and institutions meant to protect us.

Trauma isn’t just an individual problem but a societal and cultural one. Structural oppression, intergenerational trauma, and systemic neglect shape how trauma is experienced and healed.

For example:

• Childhood abuse or neglect often happens within families, where power dynamics and secrecy protect perpetrators.
• Institutional trauma, such as in schools, foster care, or justice systems, compounds individual wounds.
• Marginalized identities face additional trauma from racism, sexism, homophobia, and other oppressions.

Annie Wright Psychotherapy’s resources offer deeper dives into betrayal trauma, relational trauma, and complex PTSD, all of which help situate The Body Keeps the Score within a broader healing framework.

This systemic lens reminds us recovery involves not just individual work but also community, advocacy, and cultural change.

How this connects to recovery

Healing trauma is a multifaceted journey. Van der Kolk’s work emphasizes that recovery isn’t just about “talking it out” but about engaging the body, nervous system, and relational world in new ways.

Key components of trauma recovery illuminated by The Body Keeps the Score include:

• Safety: Establishing felt safety in the body and relationships is the foundation of all healing work. Without safety, regulation and integration can’t proceed.
• Nervous system regulation: Practices like trauma-sensitive yoga, sensorimotor psychotherapy, and mindfulness help survivors reconnect with their bodies and expand their window of tolerance, as described by Deb Dana.
• Integration of fragmented parts: Janina Fisher’s work on parts and internal family systems (IFS) approaches help survivors reconnect disowned or dissociated self-states.
• Relational repair: Secure attachment and reparative relationships provide corrective experiences that reshape nervous system expectations and support resilience.
• Empowerment and agency: Reclaiming choice and voice in one’s body and life counters trauma’s disempowerment.

Annie’s clinical approach integrates these insights, offering pathways for nervous-system regulation (nervous system regulation), working through dissociation (dissociation), and healing the mother wound.

Clinical Deepening: What This Story Helps Us See

The Polyvagal Perspective: Nervous System Safety and Connection

One of the most transformative frameworks that deepens our understanding of trauma’s imprint on the body is Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory, which Deb Dana has masterfully translated into clinical practice. This theory expands our lens beyond the traditional sympathetic/parasympathetic dichotomy to reveal a nuanced hierarchy of autonomic states that shape our capacity for safety, connection, and survival.

At its core, Polyvagal Theory describes three neural circuits regulating our physiological state:

• The ventral vagal complex supports social engagement, calmness, and co-regulation.
• The sympathetic nervous system mobilizes fight-or-flight responses when threat is detected.
• The dorsal vagal complex underpins shutdown, freeze, and dissociative states in extreme threat.

Trauma survivors often experience chronic dysregulation within this system. For example, a person may become “stuck” in a hyperaroused fight-or-flight state, manifesting as anxiety, hypervigilance, or irritability. Others may shift into dorsal vagal shutdown, feeling numb, disconnected, or immobilized. The body literally keeps the score by defaulting to these survival states based on implicit threat cues.

Understanding these autonomic states helps clinicians and survivors recognize that symptoms like panic, dissociation, or emotional numbing aren’t character flaws but adaptive nervous system responses to overwhelming danger. This insight fosters compassion and reduces self-blame.

Deb Dana’s work offers practical tools to track autonomic states moment-to-moment and build “windows of tolerance” where the nervous system can settle into ventral vagal safety. Practices such as paced breathing, grounding, and safe relational engagement can help rewire these neural pathways over time.

For readers interested in exploring Polyvagal Theory and its clinical applications, see our Polyvagal-Informed Therapy resource and Deb Dana’s Polyvagal Theory in Therapy summaries.

Judith Herman’s Three-Stage Model: Safety, Remembrance, and Reconnection

Judith Herman’s foundational work Trauma and Recovery remains a cornerstone for trauma-informed clinical care. Her three-stage model of healing offers a roadmap that complements van der Kolk’s neurobiological insights by emphasizing relational and systemic dimensions of trauma recovery.

1. Establishing Safety: Before trauma memories can be processed, survivors need to regain a sense of physical and emotional safety. This includes stabilizing symptoms, creating trustworthy therapeutic relationships, and addressing immediate threats in the environment.

2. Remembrance and Mourning: Once safety is secured, survivors can begin to access and integrate traumatic memories. This stage involves telling the trauma story, mourning losses, and working through fragmented memory and affect.

3. Reconnection: The final stage focuses on rebuilding connections with self, others, and community. It includes reclaiming agency, developing new life narratives, and restoring social participation.

Herman’s model highlights that trauma recovery isn’t a linear process but a cyclical and relational journey. It also situates trauma within social and political contexts, acknowledging how systemic oppression and betrayal shape trauma experiences.

Clinicians who incorporate Herman’s model foster a trauma-informed environment that prioritizes safety and empowerment before delving into difficult material. Survivors reading The Body Keeps the Score may find this progressive stance validating and hopeful.

Explore our Trauma and Recovery overview for a deeper dive into Herman’s work and its clinical applications.

Janina Fisher and the Integration of Fragmented Self States

Janina Fisher’s clinical contributions build upon van der Kolk’s emphasis on the body by focusing on the integration of fragmented self states that often result from complex trauma and dissociation. Her approach blends somatic awareness with cognitive and relational interventions to help survivors reclaim a cohesive sense of self.

Trauma can splinter identity into dissociated parts, some overwhelmed by helplessness, others hypervigilant or angry. These parts may hold conflicting feelings, memories, or physiological states, making it difficult for survivors to maintain a stable inner experience.

Fisher’s approach uses somatic tracking, paying close attention to bodily sensations and autonomic cues, to identify when different parts are activated. She guides survivors to develop window of tolerance awareness, helping them stay present without becoming overwhelmed or shutting down.

Crucially, Fisher integrates internal family systems (IFS) concepts, inviting survivors to cultivate compassionate “self leadership” that witnesses and negotiates between parts. This process fosters internal dialogue, reduces internal conflict, and supports healing integration.

For clinicians and survivors, Fisher’s work offers concrete skills to work with dissociation and fragmentation in a trauma-informed, body-centered way. See our Janina Fisher and Somatic Integration resource for guided practices and clinical insights.

Pat Ogden’s Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: Healing Through Embodiment

Pat Ogden is a pioneer in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, a modality that directly addresses the somatic dimension of trauma by combining body awareness with traditional talk therapy. Her work aligns closely with van der Kolk’s thesis that trauma is stored in implicit memory and bodily sensations.

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy helps survivors develop mindful awareness of bodily states, movement patterns, and muscle tension that reflect trauma responses. By gently tracking these sensations in session, survivors can access implicit memories and unresolved emotions held in the body.

Ogden emphasizes the importance of resourcing,building internal and external supports to regulate the nervous system, before activating traumatic material. This ensures that survivors have the capacity to tolerate affect and maintain safety.

The approach also utilizes movement and posture to release trauma-related tension and restore a sense of agency. For example, subtle shifts in body position can interrupt freeze responses or chronic muscular contraction.

This embodied work complements narrative and cognitive approaches by addressing the “somatic residue” of trauma. For survivors who feel stuck in their bodies or disconnected from physical experience, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy provides a pathway toward reconnection and healing.

Learn more about Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and embodied trauma treatment in our Somatic Trauma Therapy guide.

Jennifer Freyd’s Betrayal Trauma Theory: Understanding Trauma Within Relationships

Jennifer Freyd’s Betrayal Trauma Theory offers critical insights into trauma that occurs within close relationships, such as childhood abuse or intimate partner violence. This theory elucidates how survivors’ minds may adaptively forget or dissociate traumatic experiences to preserve attachment to caregivers or protect survival.

Freyd highlights how betrayal trauma differs from other trauma types because it involves a violation of trust by someone the survivor depends on. This dynamic creates complex psychological challenges, including secrecy, shame, and difficulties in memory processing.

Understanding betrayal trauma is essential for clinicians working with survivors who struggle with fragmented memories, ambivalent feelings toward perpetrators, or relational mistrust. It also underscores the importance of addressing relational safety and trust repair in therapy.

Van der Kolk’s emphasis on relational healing and somatic regulation aligns with Freyd’s focus on restoring safety within attachments. Together, these frameworks encourage a trauma-informed approach that honors the survivor’s need for connection while validating their pain.

For more on betrayal trauma and relational trauma-informed care, see our Betrayal Trauma and Healing resource.

The Role of Memory: From Fragmentation to Narrative Coherence

A central clinical theme in The Body Keeps the Score is how trauma disrupts memory processing, leading to fragmented, sensory-based, or implicit memories that resist verbalization. This fragmentation contributes to re-experiencing symptoms, flashbacks, and difficulties integrating the trauma into a coherent life story.

Building on this, Judith Herman and Janina Fisher emphasize the importance of narrative coherence in trauma recovery. Creating a trauma narrative helps survivors organize fragmented memories, contextualize their experiences, and reclaim agency.

However, narrative work must be paced carefully and scaffolded by safety and regulation skills. Without adequate nervous system stabilization, revisiting trauma memories can retraumatize or overwhelm.

Somatic and sensorimotor approaches complement narrative work by accessing the nonverbal, implicit memory stored in the body. This integration of body and mind enhances the capacity to process trauma fully.

Clinicians often use a both/and approach: honoring the body’s wisdom while also supporting verbal meaning-making. This synergy fosters a fuller, more resilient healing process.

Explore our Trauma Memory and Narrative Integration guide for clinical strategies and survivor tools.

Both/And: Holding Truth and Compassion Together

A trauma-informed mindset embraces the both/and reframe: holding seemingly contradictory truths simultaneously. For example:

• Trauma symptoms are both adaptive survival responses and sources of suffering.
• Memories can be both fragmented and meaningful.
• Healing involves both confronting pain and cultivating safety.
• Survivors can be both vulnerable and resilient.

This complexity honors the survivor’s whole experience without reducing it to pathology or heroism. It also encourages clinicians to remain curious, humble, and flexible.

Bessel van der Kolk’s work exemplifies this by integrating neuroscience, psychology, and somatic therapies without privileging one over the other. Similarly, Judith Herman’s framework balances individual healing with social justice.

For survivors, the both/and reframe can reduce shame and foster self-compassion. It invites a spaciousness where healing can unfold organically.

Explore how this reframe informs clinical practice in our Both/And Trauma-Informed Care resource.

The Systemic Lens: Why This Wound Is Not Just Personal

Trauma doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Jennifer Freyd, Judith Herman, and others emphasize the importance of viewing trauma within systemic and cultural contexts.

Factors such as racism, poverty, sexism, and community violence shape how trauma is experienced, expressed, and treated. These systemic forces also influence access to care and social support.

A trauma-informed approach must therefore incorporate cultural humility, advocate for structural change, and recognize the intersectionality of survivor identities.

Van der Kolk’s work touches on these systemic dimensions, and Annie Wright Psychotherapy is committed to addressing trauma within broader social justice frameworks. See our Trauma and Social Justice page for further resources.

How This Connects to Recovery: Hope and Resilience

Despite the profound impact of trauma, the clinical literature and lived experience affirm that recovery is possible. The body’s capacity for neuroplasticity, the power of supportive relationships, and the development of self-regulation skills all contribute to healing.

Van der Kolk’s work highlights innovative therapies, EMDR, yoga, neurofeedback, sensorimotor psychotherapy, that harness the body’s resources to restore regulation and integration.

Judith Herman reminds us that recovery involves reclaiming agency, rebuilding trust, and reconnecting with community.

Clinically, this means offering survivors a menu of healing options, honoring their pace, and fostering empowerment.

For survivors seeking support, explore Annie Wright’s Trauma Recovery Programs and Individual Therapy.

Clinical Deepening: What This Story Helps Us See

Integrating Foundational Trauma Theories: A Clinical Synthesis

Understanding the body’s role in trauma recovery benefits immensely from integrating the work of several foundational trauma theorists alongside Bessel van der Kolk. Each expert contributes a vital piece to the complex puzzle of trauma’s imprint on body and mind, and their frameworks complement one another in clinical practice.

Judith Herman and the Three Stages of Trauma Recovery

Judith Herman’s seminal work, Trauma and Recovery, remains a cornerstone for trauma clinicians. Herman outlines three essential stages for healing from trauma: safety, remembrance and mourning, and reconnection. This progression aligns with van der Kolk’s emphasis on establishing nervous system regulation before processing traumatic memories.

Herman’s focus on safety echoes in Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory, which underscores the importance of feeling safe in order to engage socially and begin healing. Without safety, trauma survivors remain locked in survival states, limiting access to memory integration or relational repair.

In Annie Wright Psychotherapy’s Trauma Recovery Services, we prioritize establishing safety and stabilization as the foundation before diving into deeper trauma processing. Herman’s framework reminds us that recovery isn’t linear and requires attuned pacing to the survivor’s nervous system.

Jennifer Freyd’s Betrayal Trauma Theory: Recognizing Relational Complexity

Jennifer Freyd’s betrayal trauma theory expands our understanding by highlighting how trauma perpetrated by trusted caregivers or institutions can create profound relational ruptures. The theory explains why survivors may dissociate or remain unaware of abuse, as a protective adaptation to maintain necessary relationships.

This theory complements van der Kolk’s exploration of trauma’s relational impact and the body’s survival responses. Freyd’s work invites clinicians to hold the paradox of love and betrayal simultaneously, a complexity that can deepen therapeutic empathy and reduce shame for survivors.

For readers interested in exploring relational trauma, Annie Wright Psychotherapy offers Attachment and Relational Trauma Resources, which integrate Freyd’s insights with somatic and relational therapies.

Janina Fisher and Pat Ogden: Somatic Approaches to Trauma Integration

Janina Fisher and Pat Ogden are pioneers in somatic trauma therapy, emphasizing the body as a gateway to healing. Fisher’s work on structural dissociation helps explain how trauma fragments the self into parts that can hold overwhelming emotions or memories separately, often outside conscious awareness.

Pat Ogden’s Sensorimotor Psychotherapy focuses on bodily sensations and movement to access and integrate traumatic material non-verbally. This approach aligns with van der Kolk’s assertion that trauma is often “stored” in implicit bodily memory rather than explicit narrative memory.

Together, Fisher and Ogden offer clinicians and survivors practical tools for reconnecting fragmented parts of the self through mindful body awareness. Their work is especially valuable when words alone can’t capture the complexity of trauma experiences.

Annie Wright Psychotherapy’s Somatic Trauma Therapy programs incorporate these approaches, helping survivors build body-based resources and restore a sense of wholeness.

Deb Dana and Stephen Porges: The Polyvagal Perspective on Safety and Connection

Deb Dana’s clinical application of Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory has transformed trauma therapy by illuminating how the autonomic nervous system regulates safety and social engagement. Polyvagal Theory describes three primary nervous system states: ventral vagal (safe and social), sympathetic (fight/flight), and dorsal vagal (shutdown/freeze).

Trauma often traps survivors in sympathetic or dorsal vagal states, limiting access to the ventral vagal system that supports connection and regulation. Dana’s work offers concrete strategies to help survivors “track” their nervous system states and cultivate ventral vagal activation through breath, movement, and relational attunement.

This nervous system lens deepens van der Kolk’s body-based trauma framework by providing a clear map of physiological states and pathways to safety. It also reinforces Judith Herman’s stage of safety as foundational.

Explore Nervous System Regulation Tools at Annie Wright Psychotherapy to learn more about Polyvagal-informed approaches.

The Role of Memory: Traumatic vs. Narrative Memory

One of the most transformative contributions of The Body Keeps the Score is its nuanced understanding of traumatic memory. Unlike ordinary autobiographical memory, traumatic memories are often fragmented, sensory-based, and disconnected from linear narrative. This dissociation complicates survivors’ ability to make sense of their experiences.

Janina Fisher’s concept of structural dissociation explains how parts of the self hold traumatic memories in somatic or emotional form, while other parts remain unaware or detached. This fragmentation can lead to intrusive flashbacks, emotional numbing, or dissociative episodes.

Judith Herman emphasizes the importance of “remembrance and mourning” in healing, which requires integrating fragmented memories into a coherent narrative within a safe therapeutic container. This process is gradual and must be paced according to the survivor’s nervous system capacity.

Van der Kolk’s work highlights innovative treatments such as Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), yoga, and neurofeedback that help bridge the gap between implicit bodily memory and explicit verbal memory. These modalities support survivors in transforming traumatic memories from overwhelming sensory experiences into integrated, manageable stories.

For readers interested in deepening memory integration, Annie Wright Psychotherapy offers Trauma-Informed Memory Work services that blend narrative and somatic approaches.

Both/And: Holding Truth and Compassion Together

A trauma-informed approach requires clinicians and survivors alike to hold complex truths simultaneously. Trauma is devastating and life-altering, yet healing and resilience are possible. Survivors may experience vulnerability and strength, fragmentation and wholeness, disconnection and longing for connection.

This both/and perspective is vital to avoid reductionist narratives that either pathologize survivors or minimize their pain. Jennifer Freyd’s work on betrayal trauma reminds us that relational trauma survivors often navigate contradictory feelings toward perpetrators and protectors.

Clinically, this means creating space for all parts of the survivor’s experience without judgment or haste. It means recognizing the nervous system’s survival strategies as adaptive rather than pathological, as Pat Ogden and Janina Fisher teach.

Annie Wright Psychotherapy’s Trauma-Informed Care Philosophy reflects this nuanced understanding, emphasizing compassion, empowerment, and individualized pacing.

Systemic and Cultural Contexts: Expanding the Lens

While The Body Keeps the Score focuses primarily on neurobiology and individual healing, trauma is never experienced in isolation. Judith Herman and Jennifer Freyd both emphasize the systemic and cultural dimensions of trauma, including social injustice, discrimination, and institutional betrayal.

Recognizing these broader contexts is essential for trauma recovery that’s just and sustainable. Survivors often face ongoing threats or invalidation from systems that should protect them, complicating healing.

Clinicians must therefore adopt a trauma-informed systemic lens, advocating for survivors within families, communities, and institutions. This approach aligns with social justice frameworks and recognizes the intersectionality of trauma experiences.

At Annie Wright Psychotherapy, our commitment to Culturally Responsive Trauma Therapy integrates this systemic awareness, ensuring that healing work honors the whole person within their social context.

Related Reading

• van der Kolk, Bessel. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. New York: Viking, 2014.
• Herman, Judith. Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence. From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. New York: Basic Books, 1992.
• McBride, Karyl. Will I Ever Be Good Enough?: Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers. New York: Atria Books, 2008.
• Wolynn, Mark. It Didn’t Start With You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are. New York: Penguin Books, 2017.
• Freyd, Jennifer J. Betrayal Trauma: The Logic of Forgetting Childhood Abuse. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996.

References

Peer-Reviewed Research (Vancouver)

1. Cloitre M, Stolbach BC, Herman JL, van der Kolk B, Pynoos R, Wang J, et al. A developmental approach to complex PTSD: childhood and adult cumulative trauma as predictors of symptom complexity. J Trauma Stress. 2009;22(5):399-408. doi:10.1002/jts.20444. PMID: 19795402.
2. Gómez JM, Smith CP, Gobin RL, Tang SS, Freyd JJ. Collusion, torture, and inequality: Understanding the actions of the American Psychological Association as institutional betrayal. J Trauma Dissociation. 2016;17(5):527-544. PMID: 27427782.
3. Payne P, Levine PA, Crane-Godreau MA. Somatic experiencing: using interoception and proprioception as core elements of trauma therapy. Front Psychol. 2015;6:93. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00093. PMID: 25699005.
4. Porges SW. Polyvagal Theory: Current Status, Clinical Applications, and Future Directions. Clin Neuropsychiatry. 2025;22(3):169-184. doi:10.36131/cnfioritieditore20250301. PMID: 40735382.
5. Ogden P, Pain C, Fisher J. A sensorimotor approach to the treatment of trauma and dissociation. Psychiatr Clin North Am. 2006;29(1):263-79, xi-xii. PMID: 16530597.
6. van der Kolk BA, Wang JB, Yehuda R, Bedrosian L, Coker AR, Harrison C, et al. Effects of MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD on self-experience. PLoS One. 2024;19(1):e0295926. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0295926. PMID: 38198456.

Books & Cultural Sources (Chicago Author-Date)

• Dana, Deb. The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy. Norton & Company, Incorporated, W. W., 2018.
• Dickinson, Emily. The complete poems of Emily Dickinson. Little, Brown, 1960.
• Fisher, Janina. Healing the fragmented selves of trauma survivors. Taylor & Francis Group, 2017.

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