Can the Brain Repress Traumatic Memories? The Controversial Science of Repressed Memory, PTSD, and What the Body Actually Remembers
Can the Brain Repress Traumatic Memories? The Controversial Science of Repressed Memory, PTSD, and What the Body Actually Remembers
Can traumatic memories be repressed and later recovered? Explore the neuroscience of trauma, PTSD, fragmented memory, body-based symptoms, and the ongoing scientific debate about repressed memories with a balanced, evidence-based perspective.
If you've survived trauma, you may have wondered:
Why can't I remember parts of what happened?
Why do certain smells, sounds, or situations make my body react before my mind understands why?
Why do I avoid thinking about certain experiences, even when I know they occurred?
Can the brain truly bury traumatic memories outside conscious awareness?
These questions sit at the center of one of psychology's longest-running and most controversial debates: the science of repressed memories.
For decades, some theories proposed that overwhelming trauma could be unconsciously repressed and stored outside conscious awareness, only to emerge years later through symptoms or recovered memories. Others argued that while trauma undeniably affects the brain and body, there is insufficient evidence to conclude that the mind routinely buries accurate autobiographical memories in a special unconscious vault awaiting retrieval.
The truth is more nuanced than either extreme suggests.
The Origins of Repressed Memory Theory
The concept of repression emerged from psychoanalytic theory, most notably through the work of Sigmund Freud, who proposed that the mind could unconsciously exclude distressing thoughts or memories from awareness as a defense mechanism. According to this perspective, traumatic experiences might remain inaccessible to conscious recall while continuing to influence emotions, relationships, and physical symptoms. Over time, this idea became deeply embedded in popular culture and some therapeutic traditions.
What Does Modern Memory Science Say?
Contemporary memory research paints a more complicated picture. Most cognitive scientists agree that memory is reconstructive rather than perfectly reproductive. Memories are encoded, stored, and retrieved through dynamic neural processes influenced by attention, emotion, repetition, and subsequent experiences. Trauma can profoundly affect these processes.
However, many researchers caution against assuming that symptoms or bodily sensations necessarily indicate the existence of completely inaccessible traumatic memories waiting to be uncovered. Instead, trauma may influence how memories are encoded, organized, and retrieved rather than whether they exist at all.
Trauma Often Produces Fragmented Rather Than Forgotten Memories
Paradoxically, many individuals with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) struggle not because they cannot remember traumatic events, but because they remember them too vividly. They may experience intrusive images, nightmares, flashbacks, physiological reactivity, or persistent reminders.
At the same time, certain contextual details may remain fragmented, incomplete, or difficult to place in chronological order. High levels of stress hormones can interfere with aspects of memory consolidation, producing recollections that feel disjointed or sensory-based rather than coherent narratives.
Avoidance Is Not the Same as Repression
One of the most important distinctions in trauma psychology is the difference between actively or unconsciously avoiding painful memories and having no access whatsoever to those memories. Many survivors understandably avoid discussing traumatic events because remembering them feels emotionally overwhelming or physically activating.
This avoidance can reduce opportunities to process the experience and may contribute to persistent symptoms. Avoidance is a well-recognized feature of PTSD and should not automatically be interpreted as evidence that memories have been repressed.
Can the Body Remember Trauma?
The phrase "the body keeps the score" has become widely recognized, but it is often misunderstood. There is broad scientific agreement that traumatic stress can produce lasting physiological changes. Stress-related activation of hormones such as cortisol, adrenaline, and noradrenaline influences multiple body systems and may contribute to elevated blood pressure, digestive symptoms, sleep disruption, sexual difficulties, hypervigilance, and chronic muscle tension.
Trauma survivors may also experience nausea, panic attacks, rapid breathing, exhaustion, or persistent feelings of unsafety. These bodily experiences are real and deserve compassionate clinical attention. However, saying that the body stores the effects of trauma is different from saying that the body stores hidden autobiographical memories in a way that bypasses the brain's memory systems. Current neuroscience supports the former far more clearly than the latter.
The Risks of Oversimplification
The debate surrounding repressed memories became particularly heated during the 1980s and 1990s when some individuals recovered previously unremembered memories during therapy, while others raised concerns about the possibility of suggestion, false memories, and memory distortion.
Today, many experts encourage clinicians to maintain a balanced position:
— Trauma is real.
— Trauma affects the brain and body.
— Memory can become fragmented and incomplete.
— Individuals may avoid recalling painful experiences for many reasons.
At the same time, memories are malleable and can be influenced by suggestion, expectation, and repeated imagination. Responsible trauma treatment emphasizes curiosity, careful assessment, and avoiding assumptions about events that cannot be independently verified.
Why Certain Triggers Feel So Powerful
Many trauma survivors notice that their bodies react before conscious thought catches up. Triggers may include a sound, a scent, a facial expression, or a location. These triggers may activate emotional learning networks associated with prior experiences without requiring deliberate recollection. This phenomenon helps explain why someone may experience physiological distress despite struggling to articulate exactly why. The nervous system has learned patterns of prediction and protection.
PTSD Is Both Psychological and Physiological
Post-traumatic stress disorder is characterized by more than distressing memories.
Common symptoms include:
— Intrusive recollections
— Avoidance of reminders
— Difficulty sleeping
— Exaggerated startle responses
— Emotional numbing
— Irritability
— Persistent physiological arousal
These experiences reflect complex interactions among the brain, autonomic nervous system, endocrine system, and psychological processes.
Does Healing Require Recovering Every Memory?
Fortunately, no. Many individuals experience meaningful improvement without recovering additional autobiographical details. Therapeutic progress often comes through helping the nervous system become more regulated, processing emotions in the present, improving relationships, and reducing patterns of avoidance. The goal is not necessarily to excavate forgotten memories. The goal is to reduce suffering and increase flexibility, safety, and connection.
A Neuroscience-Informed, Trauma-Sensitive Approach
At Embodied Wellness and Recovery, we approach trauma with both compassion and scientific humility. We recognize that trauma can profoundly affect emotions, relationships, sexuality, identity, and the nervous system. We also appreciate the complexity of memory research and avoid simplistic conclusions about what bodily symptoms necessarily mean.
Our clinicians integrate somatic therapy, EMDR, attachment-focused psychotherapy, and neuroscience-informed interventions to help clients process trauma while strengthening emotional regulation and restoring a greater sense of internal safety. We specialize in trauma recovery, nervous system repair, relationships, sexuality, and intimacy, supporting individuals through evidence-based care that respects both lived experience and the evolving scientific literature.
Understanding trauma does not require certainty about every memory. Often, it begins with recognizing how the brain and body have adapted to survive, approaching those adaptations with curiosity rather than judgment, and creating conditions where the nervous system can gradually experience greater flexibility and peace.
Reach out to schedule a complimentary 20-minute consultation with our team of therapists, trauma specialists, somatic practitioners, or relationship experts, and start working towards integrative, embodied healing today.
📞 Call us at (310) 651-8458
📱 Text us at (310) 210-7934
📩 Email us at admin@embodiedwellnessandrecovery.com
🔗 Visit us at www.embodiedwellnessandrecovery.com
👉 Check us out on Instagram @embodied_wellness_and_recovery
🌍 Explore our offerings at Linktr.ee: https://linktr.ee/laurendummit
References
Brewin, C. R. (2014). Episodic memory, perceptual memory, and their interaction: Foundations for a theory of posttraumatic stress disorder. Psychological Bulletin, 140(1), 69-97.
Lynn, S. J., Lilienfeld, S. O., Merckelbach, H., Giesbrecht, T., & van der Kloet, D. (2014). Dissociation and dissociative disorders: Challenging conventional wisdom. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23(1), 48-53.
McNally, R. J. (2003). Remembering trauma. Harvard University Press.
Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.
Shin, L. M., & Liberzon, I. (2010). The neurocircuitry of fear, stress, and anxiety disorders. Neuropsychopharmacology, 35(1), 169-191.
How Trauma and Shame Shape the Stories We Tell Ourselves: The Neuroscience of Accountability, Victimhood, and Lasting Change
How Trauma and Shame Shape the Stories We Tell Ourselves: The Neuroscience of Accountability, Victimhood, and Lasting Change
What is a metastatic story? Discover how shame, trauma, victim narratives, and self-protective beliefs influence the brain, relationships, and personal accountability. Learn how changing the questions you ask can transform your future.
An idea can alter the course of a life. Not because it is objectively true, but because it becomes unquestioned.
In the film Inception, a character describes an idea as resilient, highly contagious, and almost impossible to eradicate once planted. Neuroscience and psychology suggest something remarkably similar. The human brain constantly constructs narratives to organize experience, reduce uncertainty, and preserve emotional survival. Those narratives become the framework through which we interpret ourselves, our relationships, and the world around us.
Sometimes those stories create resilience. Other times, they metastasize.
At Embodied Wellness and Recovery, we call this the metastatic story, the self-protective narrative that begins with a painful event or wound and gradually spreads into every corner of life, shaping beliefs, questions, behaviors, and perceived possibilities. Rooted in partial truths and reinforced by shame and fear, it can quietly become more influential than reality itself.
When Shame Becomes the Author of Your Life
Perhaps your private behaviors, infidelity, addiction, compulsive sexual behavior, financial deception, or hidden life suddenly became public. The exposure is devastating.
You may feel consumed by humiliation, panic, despair, rage, or a sense of profound injustice. You may wonder:
— Why is everyone judging me?
— Why are they trying to destroy my life?
— Why can't they see what I've been through?
— Why won't anyone understand my pain?
— Why does this feel so unfair?
These questions are understandable. Public exposure can activate the brain's threat detection systems in ways that resemble physical danger. Research suggests that experiences of social rejection and humiliation engage overlapping neural networks involved in physical pain, including the anterior cingulate cortex and the insula (Eisenberger, 2012).
Yet there is another question hiding underneath those reactions. What story has your mind begun constructing in order to survive this moment?
The Narrative That Started Long Before Discovery
The metastatic story rarely begins when the secret is exposed. More often, it started years earlier.
Perhaps it sounded like:
— I have always been misunderstood.
— Nothing is ever my fault because life has been unfair.
— My childhood damaged me beyond repair.
— My partner pushed me into this.
— My stressful career left me no choice.
— Everyone expects too much from me.
— I deserve relief after everything I have endured.
Many of these statements contain elements of truth. Childhood trauma matters. Attachment injuries matter. High-stress environments matter. Betrayal matters.
But the brain often takes valid pain and unconsciously turns it into an organizing principle for identity. Over time, suffering becomes the lens through which every event is interpreted. The narrative metastasizes.
Why the Brain Clings to Victim Narratives
The nervous system is fundamentally designed for survival.
When overwhelming shame threatens our sense of self, defensive processes activate almost instantly. The brain recruits mechanisms such as rationalization, projection, denial, minimization, and externalization to preserve psychological integrity.
From a neuroscience perspective, intense emotional distress can reduce flexible thinking and increase reliance on habitual cognitive patterns. Stress hormones influence activity within the amygdala while diminishing reflective functioning supported by regions of the prefrontal cortex.
The result? Blaming others often feels safer than confronting unbearable shame.
The story becomes:
— My parents made me this way.
— My employer drove me to addiction.
— Society forced these choices.
— If people had treated me differently, none of this would have happened.
Ironically, this narrative provides temporary relief while extending long-term suffering.
Valid Pain Does Not Justify Harm
One of the most difficult truths therapy asks people to hold is this: Your pain may be completely valid, and it still does not justify harming yourself or others. Understanding trauma is not the same as excusing behavior. Recognizing childhood wounds is not the same as relinquishing accountability.
In fact, true accountability often becomes possible only after compassionately acknowledging the origins of one's pain without allowing those origins to dictate the future. Multiple truths can coexist. You may have experienced profound neglect. You may have developed attachment injuries. You may have learned secrecy and emotional avoidance to survive, and you may still bear responsibility for the choices you made. Holding both truths simultaneously requires remarkable psychological flexibility and nervous system regulation.
Better Questions Create Better Possibilities
One hallmark of the metastatic story is that it trains us to ask questions that reinforce victimhood.
Why is this happening to me?
Who ruined my life?
Who should be blamed?
Why can't people move on?
These questions generate answers that deepen resentment and helplessness.
Therapeutic change often begins by replacing those questions with different ones.
— What was I trying to protect?
— What emotions felt too dangerous to experience directly?
— What need was I attempting to meet?
— What truth have I been avoiding?
— What responsibility belongs to me?
— What values do I want to live by now?
The difference between these two sets of questions is profound. One spreads suffering. The other invites transformation.
Shame Thrives in Secrecy and Defensiveness
Researchers such as Dr. Brené Brown have distinguished shame from guilt in important ways.
Guilt says, "I made a mistake."
Shame says, "I am the mistake."
When shame dominates identity, people often become defensive because accountability feels psychologically annihilating. Every invitation to reflect is interpreted as evidence of worthlessness.
The paradox is striking. The more someone avoids responsibility to escape shame, the more shame expands. Owning behavior, while painful, often reduces the need for defensive storytelling.
Trauma Can Explain Patterns Without Becoming Destiny
Many individuals who struggle with addiction, compulsive sexual behavior, infidelity, or emotional avoidance have histories of attachment trauma, developmental adversity, or chronic nervous system dysregulation.
Research consistently demonstrates associations between adverse childhood experiences and later mental health challenges (Schilling et al., 2007). Yet explanation is different from justification.
Trauma may explain why secrecy developed. It does not require secrecy to continue. Neuroplasticity research shows that the brain retains the capacity for change throughout adulthood (Leung et al., 2015). Through repeated corrective experiences, emotional awareness, relational safety, and intentional practice, individuals can develop healthier patterns of regulation and connection.
Rewriting the Metastatic Story Through Embodied Healing
At Embodied Wellness and Recovery, we believe cognitive insight alone is rarely sufficient. The body often continues carrying implicit memories, procedural defenses, and survival responses that operate beneath conscious awareness.
Integrative approaches, including somatic therapy, EMDR, attachment-focused interventions, mindfulness, and neuroscience-informed psychotherapy, help clients recognize the protective strategies that once ensured survival but now interfere with authenticity, intimacy, and accountability.
As nervous system regulation improves, people become increasingly able to tolerate shame without collapsing into it. That creates space for curiosity. Curiosity creates space for honesty. Honesty creates space for repair.
Accountability Is Not Punishment
Many people fear that accepting responsibility means condemning themselves forever. In reality, accountability is often the beginning of integrity.
It means acknowledging:
— I understand the impact of my actions.
— I can tolerate discomfort without hiding behind excuses.
— I can make amends where appropriate.
— I can choose differently moving forward.
— I can allow truth to replace distortion.
This shift is not about perfection. It is about congruence between one's values and one's behavior.
Reflection: What Story Are You Living Inside?
Consider the hardest chapter of your life. What story has your mind constructed around it? Has that story led you toward greater honesty, compassion, accountability, and freedom? Or has it spread quietly through your relationships, reinforcing blame, resentment, and hopelessness?
Sometimes, the most important therapeutic intervention is not finding better answers. It is learning to ask better questions. Stop asking only why life happened to you. Begin asking what you have been protecting. Move beyond searching for someone else to blame. Become curious about what is true. The difference between those two paths may determine whether your story continues to metastasize or finally changes direction.
Embodied Wellness and Recovery
Embodied Wellness and Recovery specializes in trauma treatment, nervous system regulation, attachment wounds, relationships, sexuality, intimacy, betrayal trauma, and compulsive behaviors. Through neuroscience-informed, evidence-based, and somatically integrated approaches, our clinicians help clients develop the resilience to face painful truths with compassion, strengthen their sense of accountability, and cultivate healthier ways of relating to themselves and others.
Reach out to schedule a complimentary 20-minute consultation with our team of therapists, trauma specialists, somatic practitioners, or relationship experts, and start working towards integrative, embodied healing today.
📞 Call us at (310) 651-8458
📱 Text us at (310) 210-7934
📩 Email us at admin@embodiedwellnessandrecovery.com
🔗 Visit us at www.embodiedwellnessandrecovery.com
👉 Check us out on Instagram @embodied_wellness_and_recovery
🌍 Explore our offerings at Linktr.ee: https://linktr.ee/laurendummit
References
Brown, B. (2012). Daring greatly: How the courage to be vulnerable transforms the way we live, love, parent, and lead. Gotham Books.
Eisenberger, N. I. (2012). The pain of social disconnection: examining the shared neural underpinnings of physical and social pain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 13(6), 421-434.
Felitti, V. J., Anda, R. F., Nordenberg, D., Williamson, D. F., Spitz, A. M., Edwards, V., Koss, M. P., & Marks, J. S. (1998). Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 14(4), 245-258.
Leung, N. T., Tam, H. M., Chu, L. W., Kwok, T. C., Chan, F., Lam, L. C., ... & Lee, T. M. (2015). Neural plastic effects of cognitive training on the aging brain. Neural plasticity, 2015(1), 535618.
Lieberman, M. D., & Eisenberger, N. I. (2009). Pains and pleasures of social life. Science, 323(5916), 890-891.
Schilling, E. A., Aseltine Jr, R. H., & Gore, S. (2007). Adverse childhood experiences and mental health in young adults: a longitudinal survey. BMC Public Health, 7(1), 30.
Siegel, D. J. (2020). The developing mind: How relationships and the brain interact to shape who we are (3rd ed.). Guilford Press.
van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.
What Happens in the Body When Your Heart Is Broken? The Neuroscience of Heartbreak, Grief, and Nervous System Healing
What Happens in the Body When Your Heart Is Broken? The Neuroscience of Heartbreak, Grief, and Nervous System Healing
Why does heartbreak hurt so much? Discover what happens in the brain and body after a breakup or betrayal, how attachment and the nervous system contribute to emotional pain, and evidence-based ways to support recovery and reconnect with yourself.
A relationship ends. A partner leaves. An affair is discovered. A dream about your future disappears overnight. Suddenly, your chest aches, your stomach tightens, your appetite vanishes, your sleep is disrupted, and your mind replays memories you wish you could forget.
You may wonder:
Why does this hurt so much?
Why can't I stop thinking about them?
Why does my body feel like it's in survival mode?
Will this pain ever ease?
If you have experienced heartbreak, the intensity of your suffering is not simply "all in your head." Modern neuroscience shows that profound relational loss affects the brain, nervous system, hormones, and even physical health. Heartbreak is an emotional experience, but it is also a physiological one.
Why Heartbreak Feels Physical
People often describe heartbreak with physical language:
"My chest hurts."
"I feel sick."
"I can't catch my breath."
"I feel like someone punched me in the stomach."
Interestingly, brain imaging research suggests that social rejection and emotional pain activate many of the same neural networks involved in processing physical pain. From an evolutionary perspective, this makes sense. Human survival has long depended on secure attachment and social connection. Losing an important relationship can therefore activate powerful alarm systems designed to protect us from separation.
Your Nervous System Goes Into Survival Mode
When an attachment bond is threatened or broken, the autonomic nervous system often responds as though danger is present.
You may notice:
— A racing heart
— Muscle tension
— Digestive changes
— Sleep disturbance
— Emotional numbness
— Panic or anxiety
— Fatigue
— Tearfulness
For some individuals, heartbreak creates cycles of sympathetic activation, commonly known as fight or flight, while others experience shutdown, emotional collapse, or profound exhaustion. Neither response is a sign of weakness. They are adaptive physiological responses to perceived loss and threat.
The Brain Misses More Than the Person
When relationships are healthy, they become integrated into our daily routines and emotional regulation systems. A partner may help regulate stress through touch, shared rituals, humor, reassurance, or simple presence. When that relationship ends, the brain is not only grieving the individual. It is grieving the loss of co-regulation. This helps explain why even routine moments such as waking up, driving home, or eating dinner alone can trigger intense waves of sadness.
Attachment Shapes the Intensity of Heartbreak
People with histories of inconsistent caregiving, abandonment, or emotional neglect may experience heartbreak differently than those with secure attachment histories. Old wounds can become intertwined with present loss.
A breakup may unconsciously reactivate beliefs such as:
"People always leave."
"I will never be chosen."
The nervous system responds not only to today's separation but also to unresolved experiences from the past.
Why You Cannot Stop Thinking About Them
Many people feel frustrated by persistent rumination after a breakup. But attachment bonds are deeply encoded within the brain. Your mind repeatedly revisits memories in an attempt to understand what happened, predict future outcomes, or restore a sense of connection. Unfortunately, repeated mental replay often intensifies emotional distress rather than resolving it.
Stress Hormones Can Flood the Body
Heartbreak is frequently associated with elevated stress hormones, including cortisol.
Chronic activation may contribute to:
— Sleep disruption
— Reduced appetite or emotional eating
— Weakened concentration
— Immune changes
— Fatigue
— Increased anxiety
Some individuals even experience symptoms that resemble depression or panic disorders during acute relational loss.
Broken Heart Syndrome Is Real
In rare cases, severe emotional stress can trigger a condition known as stress cardiomyopathy, or Takotsubo syndrome, sometimes referred to as "broken heart syndrome." Although often temporary, this condition demonstrates the remarkable connection between emotional experiences and cardiovascular function. The phrase "heartbroken" is more than poetic language. The body genuinely responds to profound emotional pain.
Why Trauma Can Make Heartbreak Feel Unbearable
For individuals with unresolved trauma, heartbreak often activates survival responses that extend beyond the current relationship. The end of one attachment may awaken years of grief, rejection, betrayal, or unmet childhood needs.
Without recognizing these deeper layers, people often conclude:
"I shouldn't still feel this way."
In reality, the nervous system may be processing multiple losses simultaneously.
Healing Requires More Than Time
People often say, "Time heals all wounds."
Time helps. But intentional experiences matter too. The nervous system benefits from repeated moments of safety, connection, movement, nourishment, and emotional processing. Simply waiting while remaining isolated may prolong suffering.
What Actually Helps the Brain and Body Recover?
Research and clinical experience suggest several supportive practices:
— Maintaining daily routines
— Spending time with emotionally safe people
— Physical movement
— Adequate sleep
— Self-compassion
— Limiting obsessive monitoring of an ex-partner
— Gradual engagement in meaningful activities
For individuals with trauma histories, therapies that address both cognitive and physiological processes may be especially beneficial.
Bottom-Up Healing After Heartbreak
Heartbreak is not stored solely as a story. It is also experienced through bodily sensations, autonomic activation, and implicit memory. Somatic therapy and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) can help individuals process painful relational experiences while supporting nervous system regulation and reducing persistent emotional activation. As the body begins to experience safety again, intrusive thoughts often decrease, and emotional flexibility increases.
The Meaning You Create Matters
Heartbreak often invites painful conclusions:
"I wasn't lovable."
"I'll never trust again."
"I wasted years."
Yet these interpretations are not inevitable. With support and reflection, many individuals discover that grief can coexist with growth, wisdom, stronger boundaries, and deeper self-understanding.
How Embodied Wellness and Recovery Can Help
At Embodied Wellness and Recovery, we understand that heartbreak is not simply an emotional event. It is an experience that can reverberate through the brain, nervous system, attachment system, and body.
Our clinicians integrate somatic therapy, EMDR, neuroscience-informed psychotherapy, and attachment-focused treatment to help individuals process grief, betrayal, relationship loss, and trauma while rebuilding emotional resilience and restoring a sense of internal safety. We also specialize in sexuality, intimacy, and complex relationship dynamics, recognizing that meaningful recovery involves both the mind and the body.
The opposite of heartbreak is not forgetting. It is gradually reaching a place where memories no longer overwhelm your nervous system and where connection with yourself becomes as meaningful as connection with another person.
Reach out to schedule a complimentary 20-minute consultation with our team of therapists, trauma specialists, somatic practitioners, or relationship experts, and start working towards integrative, embodied healing today.
📞 Call us at (310) 651-8458
📱 Text us at (310) 210-7934
📩 Email us at admin@embodiedwellnessandrecovery.com
🔗 Visit us at www.embodiedwellnessandrecovery.com
👉 Check us out on Instagram @embodied_wellness_and_recovery
🌍 Explore our offerings at Linktr.ee: https://linktr.ee/laurendummit
References
Eisenberger, N. I. (2012). The pain of social disconnection: Examining the shared neural underpinnings of physical and social pain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 13(6), 421-434.
O'Connor, M. F. (2019). The grieving brain: The surprising science of how we learn from love and loss. HarperOne.
Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.
van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.
Wittstein, I. S. (2012). Stress cardiomyopathy: A syndrome of catecholamine-mediated myocardial stunning? Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology, 32(5), 847-857.