Dr. Jordan SampleReading: The Body Keeps the Score
A book I keep recommending — what it gets right about trauma and the body, and a small caveat.
Bessel van der Kolk's The Body Keeps the Score is, by now, one of the most-recommended books in trauma therapy. It deserves its reputation. I recommend it often, with one caveat I'll get to.
What it gets right, more clearly than almost any other accessible book: the way trauma lives in the body, not just the story. The way somatic experience — heart rate, posture, gut, breath — is part of the picture, not separate from the "real" psychological work. The way certain bodies of treatment (EMDR, IFS, somatic experiencing, yoga, theater) can do things that pure talk therapy sometimes can't.
The caveat
It's a fairly intense read in places. If you yourself have unprocessed trauma, you might find specific chapters destabilizing. That's not a reason not to read it — it's a reason to read it with care, ideally with a therapist you can take material into, and to put it down if a section is too much.
If you want a gentler entry point first, Resmaa Menakem's My Grandmother's Hands covers similar territory through the specific lens of inherited racialized trauma, and is more practice-oriented from the start.
Dr. Jordan Sample
Ph.D., Licensed Psychologist (TX)
Dr. Jordan Sample is a licensed clinical psychologist with over a decade of experience helping adults navigate anxiety, depression, grief, and the relationship patterns that get in the way of the life they want.
Her work draws on the conviction that meaningful change happens at the intersection of warmth and structure: a relationship in which clients feel genuinely seen, paired with concrete tools for moving forward.