Top 160 Bessel A. van der Kolk Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Self-regulation depends on having a friendly relationship with your body. Without it you have to rely on external regulation – from medication, drugs like alcohol, constant reassurance, or compulsive compliance with the wishes of others.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

Featured in: Psychology Quotes

2. “Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

3. “We have learned that trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on mind, brain, and body. This imprint has ongoing consequences for how the human organism manages to survive in the present. Trauma results in a fundamental reorganization of the way mind and brain manage perceptions. It changes not only how we think and what we think about, but also our very capacity to think.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

4. “No matter how much insight and understanding we develop, the rational brain is basically impotent to talk the emotional brain out of its own reality.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

5. “As I often tell my students, the two most important phrases in therapy, as in yoga, are “Notice that” and “What happens next?” Once you start approaching your body with curiosity rather than with fear, everything shifts.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

6. “Being traumatized is not just an issue of being stuck in the past; it is just as much a problem of not being fully alive in the present.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

7. “Neuroscience research shows that the only way we can change the way we feel is by becoming aware of our inner experience and learning to befriend what is going inside ourselves.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

8. “The greater the doubt, the greater the awakening; the smaller the doubt, the smaller the awakening. No doubt, no awakening. – C.-C. Chang, The Practice of Zen.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

9. “Agency starts with what scientists call interoception, our awareness of our subtle sensory, body-based feelings: the greater that awareness, the greater our potential to control our lives.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

10. “If an organism is stuck in survival mode, its energies are focused on fighting off unseen enemies, which leaves no room for nurture, care, and love. For us humans, it means that as long as the mind is defending itself against invisible assaults, our closest bonds are threatened, along with our ability to imagine, plan, play, learn, and pay attention to other people’s needs.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

11. “After trauma the world is experienced with a different nervous system. The survivor’s energy now becomes focused on suppressing inner chaos, at the expense of spontaneous involvement in their lives. These attempts to maintain control over unbearable physiological reactions can result in a whole range of physical symptoms, including fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, and other autoimmune diseases. This explains why it is critical for trauma treatment to engage the entire organism, body, mind, and brain.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

12. “In order to change, people need to become aware of their sensations and the way that their bodies interact with the world around them. Physical self-awareness is the first step in releasing the tyranny of the past.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

13. “Psychologists usually try to help people use insight and understanding to manage their behavior. However, neuroscience research shows that very few psychological problems are the result of defects in understanding; most originate in pressures from deeper regions in the brain that drive our perception and attention. When the alarm bell of the emotional brain keeps signaling that you are in danger, no amount of insight will silence it.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

14. “The greatest sources of our suffering are the lies we tell ourselves.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

15. “It is one thing to process memories of trauma, but it is an entirely different matter to confront the inner void – the holes in the soul that result from not having been wanted, not having been seen, and not having been allowed to speak the truth.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

16. “Social support is not the same as merely being in the presence of others. The critical issue is reciprocity: being truly heard and seen by the people around us, feeling that we are held in someone else’s mind and heart. For our physiology to calm down, heal, and grow we need a visceral feeling of safety. No doctor can write a prescription for friendship and love: These are complex and hard-earned capacities.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

17. “The more you stay focused on your breathing, the more you will benefit, particularly if you pay attention until the very end of the out breath and then wait a moment before you inhale again. As you continue to breathe and notice the air moving in and out of your lungs you may think about the role that oxygen plays in nourishing your body and bathing your tissues with the energy you need to feel alive and engaged.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

18. “Mindfulness increases activation of the medial prefrontal cortex and decreases activation of structures like the amygdala that trigger our emotional responses. This increases our control over the emotional brain.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

19. “In contrast, EMDR, as well as the treatments discussed in subsequent chapters – internal family systems, yoga, neurofeedback, psychomotor therapy, and theater – focus not only on regulating the intense memories activated by trauma but also on restoring a sense of agency, engagement, and commitment through ownership of body and mind.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

20. “As the ACE study has shown, child abuse and neglect is the single most preventable cause of mental illness, the single most common cause of drug and alcohol abuse, and a significant contributor to leading causes of death such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer, stroke, and suicide.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

21. “Mindfulness not only makes it possible to survey our internal landscape with compassion and curiosity but can also actively steer us in the right direction for self-care.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

22. “As long as we feel safely held in the hearts and minds of the people who love us, we will climb mountains and cross deserts and stay up all night to finish projects.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

23. “Beneath the surface of the protective parts of trauma survivors there exists an undamaged essence, a Self that is confident, curious, and calm, a Self that has been sheltered from destruction by the various protectors that have emerged in their efforts to ensure survival. Once those protectors trust that it is safe to separate, the Self will spontaneously emerge, and the parts can be enlisted in the healing process.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

24. “Communicating fully is the opposite of being traumatized.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

25. “Because humans are meaning-making creatures, we have a tendency to create some sort of image or story.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

26. “Without imagination there is no hope, no chance to envision a better future, no place to go, no goal to reach.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

27. “When you activate your gut feelings and listen to your heartbreak – when you follow the interoceptive pathways to your innermost recesses – things begin to change.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

28. “Traumatized people are terrified to feel deeply. They are afraid to experience their emotions, because emotions lead to loss of control.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

29. “Our bodies are the texts that carry the memories and therefore remembering is no less than reincarnation.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

30. “The stress hormones of traumatized people, in contrast, take much longer to return to baseline and spike quickly and disproportionately in response to mildly stressful stimuli.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

31. “French psychiatrist Pierre Janet: “Every life is a piece of art, put together with all means available.” As.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

32. “There can be no growth without curiosity and no adaptability without being able to explore, through trial and error, who you are and what matters to you.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

33. “Being traumatized means continuing to organize your life as if the trauma were still going on – unchanged and immutable – as every new encounter or event is contaminated by the past.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

34. “Unlike other forms of psychological disorders, the core issue in trauma is reality.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

35. “We are a hopeful species. Working with trauma is as much about remembering how we survived as it is about what is broken.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

36. “The critical issue is reciprocity: being truly heard and seen by the people around us, feeling that we are held in someone else’s mind and heart.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

37. “Trauma affects the entire human organism – body, mind, and brain. In PTSD the body continues to defend against a threat that belongs to the past. Healing from PTSD means being able to terminate this continued stress mobilization and restoring the entire organism to safety.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

38. “IFS recognizes that the cultivation of mindful self-leadership is the foundation for healing from trauma.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

39. “For our physiology to calm down, heal, and grow we need a visceral feeling of safety. No doctor can write a prescription for friendship and love: These are complex and hard-earned capacities. You don’t need a history of trauma to feel self-conscious and even panicked at a party with strangers – but trauma can turn the whole world into a gathering of aliens.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

40. “It takes enormous trust and courage to allow yourself to remember.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

41. “However, trauma is much more than a story about something that happened long ago. The emotions and physical sensations that were imprinted during the trauma are experienced not as memories but as disruptive physical reactions in the present.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

42. “The challenge is not so much learning to accept the terrible things that have happened but learning how to gain mastery over one’s internal sensations and emotions.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

43. “Victims are members of society whose problems represent the memory of suffering, rage, and pain in a world that longs to forget.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

44. “Our capacity to destroy one another is matched by our capacity to heal one another.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

45. “There is something very empowering about having the experience of changing your brain’s activity with your mind.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

46. “As long as you keep secrets and suppress information, you are fundamentally at war with yourself.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

47. “The essence of trauma is that it is overwhelming, unbelievable, and unbearable. Each patient demands that we suspend our sense of what is normal and accept that we are dealing with a dual reality: the reality of a relatively secure and predictable present that lives side by side with a ruinous, ever-present past.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

48. “More than anything else, being able to feel safe with other people defines mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

49. “If you do something to a patient that you would not do to your friends or children, consider whether you are unwittingly replicating a trauma from the patient’s past.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

50. “In the same way that people can drive each other mad, the company of people, and being understood by people, can also heal us.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk