Most Replayed Moment: Can Eye Movements Heal Trauma? Bessel Van Der Kolk Explains EMDR Therapy!

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Steven Bartlett (0:31)

How many people do you think, I mean, this is maybe a ridiculous question, but how many people, what percentage of people do you think have trauma in some form, how you define it?

Bessel van der Kolk (0:42)

The figures are a quarter of people get physically abused, one out of five people get sexually abused, one of eight kids witnesses violence being their parents, et cetera, et cetera. So, if I sit in a room, it's not a binary issue, it's not either you were traumatized, you didn't get traumatized, but when I talk to a room of professionals, which I do a lot, I assume that at least half the group viscerally knows what trauma means.

Steven Bartlett (1:16)

And what is trauma doing to my brain? You said you've done a lot of neuroimaging scans. If I was traumatized and you scanned my brain, is there something you could see?

Bessel van der Kolk (1:26)

Not necessarily. I can see how your brain may be different from other people's brains. I may take a particular population, you can average it out and you can say, oh, there's a little more activation of the periaxial gray, a little bit less of the white insula. So you see certain patterns of connectivity in the brain. But to some degree, I think we learn a lot about the brain, but we don't know much about the brain. And I think people tend to overstate how much the brain pictures can teach us. I love the Hubel telescope or the Webb telescope. Our brain is like a universe and our technology is very inadequate to really know about all the unbelievably complex connections in the brain. But we have learned a few things in the last 20 years.

Steven Bartlett (2:18)

So how does trauma affect the brain?

Bessel van der Kolk (2:20)

It affects the brain that you tend to... There's one part of your brain that I call the cockroach center of your brain, the periaxial gray that lights up, it's sort of underneath the amygdala, everybody knows the word amygdala these days. So the part of your brain that tells you that you're in danger. When you're traumatized, you're likely that that little part of your brain way back in your brain stem is firing all the time. All the time you go like, I'm in danger, I'm in danger, I'm in danger, I'm in danger. And so that's where it starts in a very elementary sensory level. You don't know what the danger is, but you just feel that you should be scared. And then there's certain parts, other parts of your brain, for example, your insula, which makes the connection with your physical sensations and your body awareness that for many people gets shut down, because the experience of trauma is a visceral experience of heartbreak and gut venge. And if you have a lot of that, you can learn to shut that part of your brain down, so you don't feel your body so much anymore. You don't feel your body so much, you don't feel very alive either, but you don't feel so scared all the time. But it's likely that you will want to take some drugs to make yourself feel alive sometimes, stuff like that.

Steven Bartlett (3:50)

So the part of my brain, you said, just around the amygdala, below the amygdala, people that are traumatized, they have some kind of dysfunction in that typically?

Bessel van der Kolk (3:59)

Dysfunction is that it keeps firing.

Steven Bartlett (4:01)

It keeps firing.

Bessel van der Kolk (4:02)

And how does that make you feel? And then the amygdala, so there's a constant sense of subliminal dread.

Steven Bartlett (4:08)

Is that anxiety?

Bessel van der Kolk (4:11)

Anxiety is already to higher mental function.

Steven Bartlett (4:15)

Okay.

Bessel van der Kolk (4:15)

It's more elementary. It's like your dog shaking. My daughter has adopted a dog two years ago. And two years later, the dog still walks through my house.

Steven Bartlett (4:28)

You've adopted a dog and it shakes in your house still?

Bessel van der Kolk (4:30)

Yeah, yeah. It's still never quite comfortable. And that's how many times you meet her. Never quite comfortable.

Steven Bartlett (4:38)

So when someone says they're triggered?

Bessel van der Kolk (4:40)

The trigger is in the higher level thing.