When reading Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score, the part that I found the most interesting was tied to a brief case study the author discusses that revolves around the trauma of two people, Stan and Ute. These two were in the same car crash together, the source of their trauma, but they reacted in very different ways. As van der Kolk writes on page 65, when the accident occurred, Stan tried his best to escape the car working hard to try and get his crushed door open. He was unable to do so, and had to wait for someone to break his windshield and help him out. During this time, he had to watch helplessly as people died in the accident. Ute reacted very differently. She, unlike Stan, made no attempt to escape the car, and instead sat silent and motionless until the pair were rescued. And even then, she had to be pulled out of the car as she made no effort to get out herself.

The part of the story that I find most interesting is when van der Kolk describes a study done on the two regarding their trauma. During the study, both Stan and Ute’s trauma responses were triggered and brain scans were studied. The fascinating part of this is that when the pair had their trauma responses triggered, they reacted in the same way as they did during the crash. Stan’s blood pressure rose, he started breathing quicker, and he began to sweat, as if he was working to get out of the car all over again. Ute, on the other hand, had almost no visible reaction, going blank the same way she did in the car. Stan’s brain scan shows a lot of activity, whereas Ute’s shows basically none at all.

I think that the fact that both Stan and Ute relive their trauma in the exact same way they first experienced it is extremely interesting. I find it even more interesting that Ute’s reaction to the traumatic events was informed by coping mechanisms she developed in childhood to deal with her verbally abusive mother. This part of van der Kolk’s book showed me that trauma is not simply some monolithic problem. It has a ton of variability on a personal level, and it’s a topic that would take many years of study to even begin to deeply understand.