#87 Trauma: the body keeps score

Hi friends,

I recently had an MRI scan on my knee, which showed that I have a slight tear in my meniscus. It is very probable that it happened in January. Rest, rehab, and gradual loading have not been sufficient because, understandably, the issue was more serious than I had first assumed.

At the same time, I’m currently listening to the audiobook ‘The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma’, which explores the lasting impact of trauma. Trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers' capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust.

In the same way that the MRI has shown me the lasting impacts of a physical issue not appropriately addressed, the book is quite vividly illuminating for me on how unresolved trauma can have significant impacts on not only the mind but even the body, many years after the fact.

The identity timeline

It reminded me of an exercise I did a few years ago in a career development programme for ethnic minorities called an identity timeline. As homework before one of the sessions, we were asked to note down, in timeline form, the stories of our lives so far. We looked at them through the lens of our ethnic backgrounds, focusing on some of those significant moments where we may have encountered challenges or barriers related to our ethnicity, both in our professional and personal lives.

I found the exercise very challenging. When we were each asked to spend a few minutes taking the rest of the group through our timelines, I found myself nervous and uncharacteristically unwilling to volunteer to go first because I could feel the emotion attached to the story within me. As the group shared their experiences, there was a lot of emotion, cracking voices, and tears.

To date, I’ve found it to be one of the most interesting things I’ve done for my personal development. It made it clear to me where experiences from my past still affected my present, and it gave me areas of my life to explore in more detail to gain greater awareness and understanding of their impacts.

As we go about our daily lives, we all carry around with us a past, and for many of us, this includes some unresolved things. We might not always be aware of it, but the body keeps score.

Implementation idea

What’s your identity timeline?

What elements of your past might still unknowingly be influencing your present?

— AJ

On my bedside table:

📖 Non-fiction: The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk - It is a long, dense, emotionally heavy read, which is triggering for many readers. I would urge caution.

📖 Non-fiction: How to Disagree: Lessons on Productive Conflict at Work and Home by Ian Leslie

“It’s telling that we don’t have a good word for engaging in a non-hostile disagreement with the shared aim of moving the participants toward a new understanding, better decision, or new idea, ‘Debate’ implies a competition with winners and losers, ‘Argument’ comes tinged with animosity. ‘Dialogue’ is too bland, ‘dialectic’ too obscure. The linguistic gap is evidence of how unpracticed we are at productive disagreement. Fight and flight come naturally to us'; disagreeing well does not.”

💬 Quote: “Most people go through life using up a very, very small part of their potential. You could have a 300 horsepower motor and get 300 horsepower out of it or you can get a lot less. The people who I see function well are not the ones with the biggest “motors,” but the ones with the most efficient ones.” — Warren Buffett

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