(It makes me think: long-term inflammation, body armoring, & chronic patterns of predicting worse case scenarios keep the score—but it doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. ;)
Thank you for a clear and articulate response, not only to the actual importance of Bessel's work, but also to an often greater danger: the interaction of science with social media. In the cacophony of voices/research/articles, it is an unfortunate reality when someone believes that, in order to be seen, they must sensationalize. Your post does well to correct both the science and the sensationalism.
Ryan highlights the nuance that popular psychology (insert any other field) misses. My work with children in war and disaster is much indebted to van der Kolk’s “The Body Keeps the Score”. Little children usually lack the vocabulary or experience to describe how they are feeling. So instead of talk, we use song, dance, story, games, crafts, snacks. The results are immediate and are a step in preventing the patterns that trauma so often produce later on. It also helps us to identify children who might have higher risk due to complex or chronic trauma that is hidden.
This is the correction the discourse needed, and you buried the most important line at the very bottom.
“It is about undoing aloneness.”
I would move that one to the center. Everything else on your list, regulating survival responses, reconsolidating memory, expanding flexibility where there was rigidity, happens in the presence of another nervous system. A system that organized around threat re-organizes when it borrows steadiness from someone safe first. Predictive processing explains what trauma changed. Co-regulation explains how it changes back. Which is why undoing aloneness belongs at the center rather than the end. It is the condition the others run on. Glad someone with your clarity is saying this.
Yes! I think the wellness influencer that lives in my cul de sac needs to hear that trauma is not literally stored in the body, but you are correct that serious practitioners understand the metaphor and view it more holistically.
And like all strawman arguments, it’s a diversion from the conversation we actually need to have.
Ha ha! When I moved in last summer and said that I’m a therapist and studying spiritual formation and relational neuroscience, she said “I’d love to collaborate!” Part of me wants to because maybe I could help her understand what she doesn’t know, but as I’ve seen more of her content and went to a couple local classes, that is way more work than I want to take on!
Ryan, thank you for this piece. Your point that the headline itself exploits the very reactivity trauma produces is sharp and worth sitting with; I have not seen anyone else name that mechanism quite as clearly.
I want to press on one thing, though. Framing the controversy as algorithmically manufactured does some quiet work in the piece — it lets the substantive critique off the hook before it gets a fair hearing. The 2026 Kotler et al. paper is operating within predictive coding, one of the more rigorous frameworks in contemporary neuroscience, and Michael Scheeringa brings real peer-reviewed standing to his critique as well. Neither is a fringe reaction to a viral title. The science is more genuinely contested than the piece allows.
But even granting your strongest point that healing is not excavation, I think the conversation as a whole — both van der Kolk's defenders and his critics — remains within a closed frame. The real question being debated is where in the body-brain system suffering's effects reside and which intervention best addresses them.
That is worth debating. It is not, however, the deepest question.
What neither side can answer is what it means that a person carries shame they did not earn and a longing for wholeness that no recalibration of the nervous system will fully satisfy. The research refines the instrument. It does not name the player. I would be glad to talk further if you are open to it.
Thanks for this. You bring up some important points that are far beyond the scope of the short piece I wrote. The goal was to address the strawman title. It was unnecessary. When science and social my collide, it's fraught with potential problems including this one. As a licensed therapist and trauma specialist, I am very familiar with the trauma literature. I also sit with clients every day and have my own history of severe trauma. There are many approaches, methods and modalities that "work" for some but not for others. The key is understanding what a particular person's system needs. There's no one size fits all approach. Every bodymind requires certain conditions to integrate trauma. It varies from person to person.
I’ve been chewing on your post for a bit and this comment helped clarify my reaction. Just as people require varying approaches and conditions, we also need a variety of metaphors for understanding trauma (and any aspect of reality). There is no “literal” scientific knowledge that is free of metaphor, and different metaphors bring different aspects of “the real” into our awareness and understanding for us to encounter and engage. The Body Keeps the Score does that. But we always need multiple metaphors, and some are more meaningful to some than others.
Thanks Aaron. Yes, metaphors are powerful. The psyche resonates with them beyond the left hemisphere. I think having a variety of metaphors for trauma is essential.given how it impacts us on various levels. In terms of there being no scientific knowledge beyond metaphor is difficult to grasp. For example when we look at the research that shows trauma impacts the linkage and differentiation of different areas of the brain, I don't personally hear a metaphor in that. When we look at the research from Yehuda that shows lower cortisol levels in PTSD, I don't see a metaphor in that. I hear empirical data which to me doesn't involve a metaphor. Thanks again for engaging! I appreciate you and your work
I agree science uses plenty of non-metaphorical language. To clarify (and have a little fun, because I’m a nerd), by “there is no ‘literal’ scientific knowledge that is free of metaphor,” I mean that all language is inherently rooted in metaphor, and this necessarily includes scientific discourse. Eg, the authors’ thesis includes metaphors (both live and dead):
“What endures after trauma is not a memory lodged in non-innervated tissue but a collapse of flexibility—a loss of metastability, the brain's ability to fluidly switch among semi-stable network states.”
Endure = “harden”; Collapse = “fall together”; flexible = “able to be bent”; stable = “a standing place”.
More substantively, the authors don’t just distinguish metaphor vs literal, but also contrast an invalid metaphor with a valid metaphor:
“Yet embodiment is active and transient—it does not imply storage. Trauma-related somatic symptoms are better understood as mis-calibrated feedback between prediction, action, and sensation, not as remnants of the past frozen in muscle or fascia. The distinction matters. Where the storage model leads to metaphors of exorcism: finding and purging what was buried. By contrast, the inference model leads to training: recalibrating precision, retraining expectations, and expanding the brain's capacity for adaptive variability.”
Training is still a metaphor. Or later on they contrast like this: “Healing, in this light, is not excavation but exploration.”
So helpful and well written.
(It makes me think: long-term inflammation, body armoring, & chronic patterns of predicting worse case scenarios keep the score—but it doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. ;)
Not quite the same ring 🙃 Love all of this. Thanks my friend 🙏🏽✨
Thank you for a clear and articulate response, not only to the actual importance of Bessel's work, but also to an often greater danger: the interaction of science with social media. In the cacophony of voices/research/articles, it is an unfortunate reality when someone believes that, in order to be seen, they must sensationalize. Your post does well to correct both the science and the sensationalism.
I really appreciate these words. Thanks. And your articulation of "interaction of science and social media" is super helpful!
Ryan highlights the nuance that popular psychology (insert any other field) misses. My work with children in war and disaster is much indebted to van der Kolk’s “The Body Keeps the Score”. Little children usually lack the vocabulary or experience to describe how they are feeling. So instead of talk, we use song, dance, story, games, crafts, snacks. The results are immediate and are a step in preventing the patterns that trauma so often produce later on. It also helps us to identify children who might have higher risk due to complex or chronic trauma that is hidden.
Beautiful work you are doing ✨
This is so helpful. Thank you for setting the record straight!
Thanks so much for reading and taking a moment to reply 🙏🏽 I appreciate it.
Love the heart behind this. So agree!
Thank you!
Thanks for laying this out so clearly Ryan. I felt to overwhelmed to step into this arena about all of this but am glad you have in this way.
Trauma is a whole being experience that impacts every part of us. That should be enough to know shouldn’t it?
This is the correction the discourse needed, and you buried the most important line at the very bottom.
“It is about undoing aloneness.”
I would move that one to the center. Everything else on your list, regulating survival responses, reconsolidating memory, expanding flexibility where there was rigidity, happens in the presence of another nervous system. A system that organized around threat re-organizes when it borrows steadiness from someone safe first. Predictive processing explains what trauma changed. Co-regulation explains how it changes back. Which is why undoing aloneness belongs at the center rather than the end. It is the condition the others run on. Glad someone with your clarity is saying this.
Hey Ryan. Thanks for this. Yes, absolutely. Well said. Nothing changes without undoing aloneness. It's the fullcrum around which the rest rotates.
Yes! I think the wellness influencer that lives in my cul de sac needs to hear that trauma is not literally stored in the body, but you are correct that serious practitioners understand the metaphor and view it more holistically.
And like all strawman arguments, it’s a diversion from the conversation we actually need to have.
Thanks for this Mary. The wellness influencer next door, could be a reality TV show 🙂
Ha ha! When I moved in last summer and said that I’m a therapist and studying spiritual formation and relational neuroscience, she said “I’d love to collaborate!” Part of me wants to because maybe I could help her understand what she doesn’t know, but as I’ve seen more of her content and went to a couple local classes, that is way more work than I want to take on!
Yeah she'd have to be paying you 😂
Well said, my friend. That article’s attempted takedown was sooooo annoying. 😣
Thanks Shane. I appreciate you.
Ryan, thank you for this piece. Your point that the headline itself exploits the very reactivity trauma produces is sharp and worth sitting with; I have not seen anyone else name that mechanism quite as clearly.
I want to press on one thing, though. Framing the controversy as algorithmically manufactured does some quiet work in the piece — it lets the substantive critique off the hook before it gets a fair hearing. The 2026 Kotler et al. paper is operating within predictive coding, one of the more rigorous frameworks in contemporary neuroscience, and Michael Scheeringa brings real peer-reviewed standing to his critique as well. Neither is a fringe reaction to a viral title. The science is more genuinely contested than the piece allows.
But even granting your strongest point that healing is not excavation, I think the conversation as a whole — both van der Kolk's defenders and his critics — remains within a closed frame. The real question being debated is where in the body-brain system suffering's effects reside and which intervention best addresses them.
That is worth debating. It is not, however, the deepest question.
What neither side can answer is what it means that a person carries shame they did not earn and a longing for wholeness that no recalibration of the nervous system will fully satisfy. The research refines the instrument. It does not name the player. I would be glad to talk further if you are open to it.
Thanks for this. You bring up some important points that are far beyond the scope of the short piece I wrote. The goal was to address the strawman title. It was unnecessary. When science and social my collide, it's fraught with potential problems including this one. As a licensed therapist and trauma specialist, I am very familiar with the trauma literature. I also sit with clients every day and have my own history of severe trauma. There are many approaches, methods and modalities that "work" for some but not for others. The key is understanding what a particular person's system needs. There's no one size fits all approach. Every bodymind requires certain conditions to integrate trauma. It varies from person to person.
I’ve been chewing on your post for a bit and this comment helped clarify my reaction. Just as people require varying approaches and conditions, we also need a variety of metaphors for understanding trauma (and any aspect of reality). There is no “literal” scientific knowledge that is free of metaphor, and different metaphors bring different aspects of “the real” into our awareness and understanding for us to encounter and engage. The Body Keeps the Score does that. But we always need multiple metaphors, and some are more meaningful to some than others.
Thanks Aaron. Yes, metaphors are powerful. The psyche resonates with them beyond the left hemisphere. I think having a variety of metaphors for trauma is essential.given how it impacts us on various levels. In terms of there being no scientific knowledge beyond metaphor is difficult to grasp. For example when we look at the research that shows trauma impacts the linkage and differentiation of different areas of the brain, I don't personally hear a metaphor in that. When we look at the research from Yehuda that shows lower cortisol levels in PTSD, I don't see a metaphor in that. I hear empirical data which to me doesn't involve a metaphor. Thanks again for engaging! I appreciate you and your work
I agree science uses plenty of non-metaphorical language. To clarify (and have a little fun, because I’m a nerd), by “there is no ‘literal’ scientific knowledge that is free of metaphor,” I mean that all language is inherently rooted in metaphor, and this necessarily includes scientific discourse. Eg, the authors’ thesis includes metaphors (both live and dead):
“What endures after trauma is not a memory lodged in non-innervated tissue but a collapse of flexibility—a loss of metastability, the brain's ability to fluidly switch among semi-stable network states.”
Endure = “harden”; Collapse = “fall together”; flexible = “able to be bent”; stable = “a standing place”.
More substantively, the authors don’t just distinguish metaphor vs literal, but also contrast an invalid metaphor with a valid metaphor:
“Yet embodiment is active and transient—it does not imply storage. Trauma-related somatic symptoms are better understood as mis-calibrated feedback between prediction, action, and sensation, not as remnants of the past frozen in muscle or fascia. The distinction matters. Where the storage model leads to metaphors of exorcism: finding and purging what was buried. By contrast, the inference model leads to training: recalibrating precision, retraining expectations, and expanding the brain's capacity for adaptive variability.”
Training is still a metaphor. Or later on they contrast like this: “Healing, in this light, is not excavation but exploration.”