Top 160 Bessel A. van der Kolk Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “At the core of IFS is the notion that the mind of each of us is like a family in which the members have different levels of maturity, excitability, wisdom, and pain. The parts form a network or system in which change in any one part will affect all the others.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

102. “The foreword to the landmark 1980 DSM-III was appropriately modest and acknowledged that this diagnostic system was imprecise – so imprecise that it never should be used for forensic or insurance purposes.8 As we will see, that modesty was tragically short-lived.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

103. “DSM largely lacks what in the world of science is known as “reliability” – the ability to produce consistent, replicable results. In other words, it lacks scientific validity.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

104. “Losing the ability to make these distinctions is one sign of what psychoanalyst William Niederland called “soul murder.” Erasing awareness and cultivating denial are often essential to survival, but the price is that you lose track of who you are, of what you are feeling, and of what and whom you can trust.5.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

105. “As my friend Ed Tronick taught me a long time ago, the brain is a cultural organ – experience shapes the brain.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

106. “Semrad taught us that most human suffering is related to love and loss and that the job of therapists is to help people “acknowledge, experience, and bear” the reality of life – with all its pleasures and heartbreak. “The greatest sources of our suffering are the lies we tell ourselves,” he’d say, urging us to be honest with ourselves about every facet of our experience. He often said that people can never get better without knowing what they know and feeling what they feel.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

107. “It takes tremendous energy to keep functioning while carrying the memory of terror, and the shame of utter weakness and vulnerability. While.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

108. “Agency” is the technical term for the feeling of being in charge of your life: knowing where you stand, knowing that you have.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

109. “Antipsychotic medications such as Risperdal, Abilify, or Seroquel can significantly dampen the emotional brain and thus make patients less skittish or enraged, but they also may interfere with being able to appreciate subtle signals of pleasure, danger, or satisfaction. They also cause weight gain, increase the chance of developing diabetes, and make patients physically inert, which is likely to further increase their sense of alienation.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

110. “I have met countless patients who told me that they “are” bipolar or borderline or that they “have” PTSD, as if they had been sentenced to remain in an underground dungeon for the rest of their lives, like the Count of Monte Cristo. None of these diagnoses takes into account the unusual talents that many of our patients develop or the creative energies they have mustered to survive.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

111. “After trauma the world becomes sharply divided between those who know and those who don’t. People who have not shared the traumatic experience cannot be trusted, because they can’t understand it. Sadly, this often includes spouses, children, and co-workers. Later.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

112. “Economists have calculated that every dollar invested in high-quality home visitation, day care, and preschool programs results in seven dollars of savings on welfare payments, health-care costs, substance-abuse treatment, and incarceration, plus higher tax revenues due to better-paying jobs.37.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

113. “Dissociation is adaptive: it allows relatively normal functioning for the duration of the traumatic event and then leaves a large part of the personality unaffected by the trauma.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

114. “To people who are reliving a trauma, nothing makes sense; they are trapped in a life-or-death situation, a state of paralyzing fear or blind rage. Mind and body are constantly aroused, as if they are in imminent danger. They startle in response to the slightest noises and are frustrated by small irritations. Their sleep is chronically disturbed, and food often loses its sensual pleasures. This in turn can trigger desperate attempts to shut those feelings down by freezing and dissociation.11.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

115. “We can assume that parents do the best they can, but all parents need help to nurture their kids. Nearly every industrialized nation, with the exception of the United States, recognizes this and provides some form of guaranteed support to families.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

116. “Games like Simon Says lead to lots of sniggering and giggling – signs of safety and relaxation. When teenagers balk at these “stupid games,” we nod understandingly and enlist their cooperation by asking them to demonstrate games to the little kids, who “need their help.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

117. “How did his brain come to derive comfort from fishing rather than from compulsive sexual behavior? At this point we simply don’t know. Neurofeedback changes brain connectivity patterns; the mind follows by creating new patterns of engagement.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

118. “Trauma happens to us, our friends, our families, and our neighbors. Research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has shown that one in five Americans was sexually molested as a child; one in four was beaten by a parent to the point of a mark being left on their body; and one in three couples engages in physical violence. A quarter of us grew up with alcoholic relatives, and one out of eight witnessed their mother being beaten or hit.1.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

119. “During disasters young children usually take their cues from their parents. As long as their caregivers remain calm and responsive to their needs, they often survive terrible incidents without serious psychological scars.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

120. “Over the years our research team has repeatedly found that chronic emotional abuse and neglect can be just as devastating as physical abuse and sexual molestation.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

121. “More than anything else, being able to feel safe with other people defines mental health;.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

122. “Prior to the advent of brain, there was no color and no sound in the universe, nor was there any flavor or aroma and probably little sense and no feeling or emotion. Before brains the universe was also free of pain and anxiety. – Roger Sperry1.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

123. “Knowing what we feel is the first step to knowing why we feel that way. If we are aware of the constant changes in our inner and outer environment, we can mobilize to manage them. But we can’t do this unless our watchtower, the MPFC, learns to observe what is going on inside us.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

124. “Images and physical sensations may deluge patients at this point, and the therapist must be familiar with ways to stem torrents of sensation and emotion to prevent them from becoming retraumatized by accessing the past.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

125. “The internal system of an abuse victim differs from the non-abuse system with regard to the consistent absence of the effective leadership, the extreme rules under which the parts function, and the absenve of any consistent balance or harmony. Typically, the parts operate around outdated assumptions and beliefs derived from the childhood abuse, believing, for example, that it is still extremely dangerous to reveal secrets about childhood experiences which were endured.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

126. “People who are terrified need to get a sense of where their bodies are in space and of their boundaries. Firm and reassuring touch lets them know where those boundaries are: what’s outside them, where their bodies end. They discover that they don’t constantly have to wonder who and where they are. They discover that their body is solid and that they don’t have to be constantly on guard. Touch lets them know that they are safe.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

127. “Once you pay attention to your physical sensations, the next step is to label them, as in “When I feel anxious, I feel a crushing sensation in my chest.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

128. “One thing is certain: Yelling at someone who is already out of control can only lead to further dysregulation. Just as your dog cowers if you shout and wags his tail when you speak in a high singsong, we humans respond to harsh voices with fear, anger, or shutdown and to playful tones by opening up and relaxing. We simply cannot help but respond to these indicators of safety or danger.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

129. “It is amazing how many psychological problems involve difficulties with sleep, appetite, touch, digestion, and arousal. Any effective treatment for trauma has to address these basic housekeeping functions of the body.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

130. “In the past two decades it has become widely recognized that when adults or children are too skittish or shut down to derive comfort from human beings, relationships with other mammals can help. Dogs and horses and even dolphins offer less complicated companionship while providing the necessary sense of safety. Dogs and horses, in particular, are now extensively used to treat some groups of trauma patients.10.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

131. “When you don’t feel real nothing matters, which makes it impossible to protect yourself from danger.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

132. “Trauma has shut down their inner compass and robbed them of the imagination they need to create something better.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

133. “Since I have started to integrate mindfulness and yoga into my practice, I use these medications less often, except occasionally to help patients sleep more restfully.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

134. “Crucial for understanding trauma, the frontal lobes are also the seat of empathy – our ability to “feel into” someone else.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

135. “I was stunned: Tom’s loyalty to the dead was keeping him from living his own life, just as his father’s devotion to his friends had kept him from living.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

136. “When people are unable to integrate their traumatic memories, they seem to lose their capacity to assimilate new experiences as well. It is as if their personality stops at a certain points and cannot enlarge any more by the addition or assimilation of new elements. Unless they become aware of the split off elements and integrate them into a story that had happened in the past but was now over, they would experience a slow decline in their personal and professional functioning.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

137. “Emotion is not opposed to reason; our emotions assign value to experiences and thus are the foundation of reason.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

138. “Therapy won’t work as long as people keep being pulled back into the past.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

139. “As we will see, finding words to describe what has happened to you can be transformative, but it does not always abolish flashbacks or improve concentration, stimulate vital involvement in your life or reduce hypersensitivity to disappointments and perceived injuries.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

140. “Like so many survivors of childhood abuse, Marilyn exemplified the power of the life force, the will to live and to own one’s life, the energy that counteracts the annihilation of trauma. I gradually came to realize that the only thing that makes it possible to do the work of healing trauma is awe at the dedication to survival that enabled my patients to endure their abuse and then to endure the dark nights of the soul that inevitably occur on the road to recovery.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

141. “Traumatized people are terrified to feel deeply. They are afraid to experience their emotions, because emotions lead to loss of control. In contrast, theater is about embodying emotions, giving voice to them, becoming rhythmically engaged, taking on and embodying different roles.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

142. “The traumatic event itself, however horrendous, had a beginning, a middle, and an end, but I now saw that flashbacks could be even worse. You never know when you will be assaulted by them again and you have no way of telling when they will stop.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

143. “Most human beings simply cannot tolerate being disengaged from others for any length of time. People who cannot connect through work, friendships, or family usually find other ways of bonding, as through illnesses, lawsuits, or family feuds.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

144. “Our relationship maps are implicit, etched into the emotional brain and not reversible simply by understanding how they were created. You may realize that your fear of intimacy has something to do with your mother’s postpartum depression or with the fact that she herself was molested as a child, but that alone is unlikely to open you to happy, trusting engagement with others.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

145. “The brain-disease model takes control over people’s fate out of their own hands and puts doctors and insurance companies in charge of fixing their problems. Over the past three decades psychiatric medications have become a mainstay in our culture, with dubious consequences.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

146. “Even traumatized patients who are making real contributions in teaching, business, medicine, or the arts and who are successfully raising their children expend a lot more energy on the everyday tasks of living than do ordinary mortals.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

147. “I was surprised and alarmed by the satisfaction I sometimes felt after I’d wrestled a patient to the floor so a nurse could give an injection, and I gradually realized how much of our professional training was geared to helping us stay in control in the face of terrifying and confusing realities.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

148. “The opening line of the grant rejection read: “It has never been shown that PTSD is relevant to the mission of the Veterans Administration.” Since.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

149. “When people are compulsively and constantly pulled back into the past, to the last time they felt intense involvement and deep emotions, they suffer from a failure of imagination, a loss of the mental flexibility.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk

150. “After a while most people with PTSD don’t spend a great deal of time or effort on dealing with the past – their problem is simply making it through the day. Even traumatized patients who are making real contributions in teaching, business, medicine, or the arts and who are successfully raising their children expend a lot more energy on the everyday tasks of living than do ordinary mortals.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk