Body Keeps Record

Unfortunately, the current understanding of psychiatry is based on you telling your complaints and the doctor recommending a medication to correct these complaints. However, “No medication can fix a bad childhood”. Unfortunately, how your parents or spouse treated you, what kind of family you grew up in, your parents’ loving or hostile behavior towards each other, the traces of individual, familial and even social traumas on you are never discussed.

We now know that our brains and bodies are shaped by mutual interactions. A diagnosis and treatment approach that does not evaluate these interactions will always be incomplete. I often come across therapists who say, “You shouldn’t think that way… Your way of thinking is wrong!” “A fish caught on a hook may be thought crazy by its friends when they see its behavior”. But all the fish is doing is trying to save its life. We cannot evaluate people separately from the environments they live or grow up in, and if you cannot see the hook, it will not be possible to understand and make sense of these behaviors.

Medicine requires you to tolerate helplessness. People get sick, grow old and die. We don’t know the solution yet. Most of the time, all we can do is reduce the pain, be there for the people who are suffering, try to delay death, and most of the time, wait helplessly… Pain is inevitable. Life is full of joy, health and happiness for all of us, as well as suffering and loss, to a greater or lesser extent. Some of us encounter these very early, very vulnerable and one after another, some later. After all these years, we think that one of the most important tasks of psychiatry is to help people cope with this pain and loss, to help them recover, get rid of the effects of their past and, if possible, continue their lives stronger.
“The Body Keeps Records” sheds a ray of hope on the deadlock of the existing understanding of psychiatry, and thanks to the developments in neuroscience, it presents a different understanding of the origins of our mental and even physical illnesses, and the pieces falling into place in a clear, evidence-based and understandable way. It shows the ways of effective coping by introducing new therapy methods brought by the twenty-first century. While doing this, it once again leaves us in awe of human intelligence, resilience, and the power to cope and recover with real stories. It shows the magnificent results of healing from trauma, just as great victories emerge from great destruction, just as we protect the parts that hurt the most. We have met many people who have made the traumas they have experienced the source of their lives, and even gone beyond that and fought so that others would not experience the same pain. Just like the lives you will read about in this book…

We believe that it is a compass for trauma workers who empathize with clients in challenging life events, in our efforts to establish a ceasefire in their battles with their memories, in our efforts to mediate their struggles with their negative beliefs in their minds and the disturbing sensations in their bodies, and in their struggles with the effects of witnessing trauma. A masterpiece that deserves to be read again and again.
We hope you benefit from “The Body Keeps Records” as much as we do.