This Conversation Will Change How You Think About Trauma
About this episode
Klein speaks with psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score, about how trauma works and how it can be healed. Van der Kolk explains trauma not as a bad memory but as a persistent physiological reliving of danger — shaped by attachment needs, shame, self-blame and fragmented memory — that can protect people in childhood while damaging their later relationships and health. He argues that talk therapy alone often cannot reach these wounds, and reviews body- and community-oriented treatments including yoga, movement, rhythm-based practices, EMDR, internal family systems, neurofeedback and psychedelic-assisted therapy such as MDMA, while stressing caution and evolving evidence. They also discuss lessons for national recovery after 9/11 and Covid, interventions for children, and how inequality shapes exposure to harm.